Posts

  • Implementing xdg-dialog-v1 in Qt and KWin

    If you have used a moderately complex application there are chances that you have interacted with what is called a “modal” dialog. A modal dialog is a dialog that requires you to close/address it before you can continue interacting with the main application window. This can be implemented by the application in a straightforward manner but compositor didn’t know if a dialog was modal or not.

  • Update: xdg-toplevel-drag merged

    In the last post I talked about making things like detachable tabs or widgets work in a Wayland work. The protocol I submitted has now been merged into wayland-protocols!

  • Dragging Docks and Tugging Toolbars on Wayland

    A tug boat towing docks and a toolbar Most of our desktop applications have a toolbar, sometimes they even have multiple toolbars next to or stacked on top of each other. More complex desktop applications such as Krita, Kdenlive or LabPlot often consist of multiple sub-windows, docks, tabbed views, etc. Docks and toolbars can be undocked, moved around and arranged freely and when dragged over a part of a window snap back into the window. This allows the user to customize their work environment to their liking and needs. This worked fine on X because it lets you do anything, this post explores the situation on Wayland.

  • Akademy 2023 in Thessaloniki

    My conference badge On Friday Akademy 2023 came to a close. This was the second time I attended the conference physically after the online editions of 2020 and 2021 and I want to give short retrospective this blog post.

  • Plasma Sprint 2023 in Augsburg

    Finally a sprint again! The 2019 the Plasma Sprint in Valencia was my first in person KDE event and I was hooked instantly. However something mysterious happened in the next years that and in person meet ups stopped happening. While Akademy 2022 happened in person again, a sprint has different atmosphere and I was awesome to see people that couldn’t make Akademy or for whom it was their first sprint. Other attendees have blogged about the sprint as well, check them out too. Either on the planet or over on discuss Carl created a collection of a bunch of them.

  • Wayland native interface in Qt 6.5

    Qt 6 introduced a new way to access platform specific objects and functionality in the QNativeInterface namespace. Starting with Qt 6.5 it will be possible to obtain handles to wayland object handles this way. Let’s look at what’s new and how it improves on the past method.

  • Setting a default global theme has just become much easier

    tl;dr: Just set the default global theme in /etc/xdg/kdeglobals and your good to go.
    In the last years System Settings has been gradually improved with each release featuring more pages being cleaned up, redesigned or even rewritten from scratch. In this process there was also focus on proper state handling, adding ‘Defaults’ button where missing and sensible, adding highlighting of changed settings and making sure that these systems do the correct thing. In this post I will explain how Global Themes factor into this and how their pre-run set-up is now much simpler for distributions starting with Plasma 5.24.

  • Shortcut configuration in 2020

    The new shortcuts settings module Last year I spent some time working one the (formerly global) shortcuts settings module, including rewriting it from scratch. Given that Plasma 5.21 is to be released soon, I though it was a good opportunity to do a write up of what has happened in this area in the past year. I want to apologize in advance for the size of this blog post that turned out longer than I expected.

  • Plasma 5.21 Beta Review Day

    Konqi hunting Plasma 5.21 bugs

    I am happy to announce that we are going to hold the second Plasma Beta Review Day on the 28th January from 9.00 CET to at least 20.00 CET. We will meet in a Big Blue Button room and you can join via audio, video or text.

  • Displaying Problems inline in KDevelop

    KDevelop displaying some problems inline

  • KF6 Sprint in Berlin

    Last week I arrived on a rainy Thursday evening in Berlin to attend the KDE Frameworks Kickoff sprint. The next three days were spent with discussions and ideas about the future of the libraries that are the base of most of the software of the KDE Community.

  • Usability & Productivity Sprint 2019

    Valencia beach