The Luminosity of Free Software Episode 14

It's that time again: Luminosity! In episode 14 I'll be visiting the following topics as well as taking your questions as we go:

• Grass roots Free software promotion: A lot of the effort of introducing and generally marketing Free software to the public lands on the shoulders of companies these days. They tend to be able to grab a larger audience than the average individual and they can keep pounding out a message for an extended period of time. Yet .. Free software as a concept and many of the best Free software products are not very well known. Is there an opportunity for effective grass roots promotion?
• Wesnoth: Looking at my list of possible topics, I realized that I had been covering a fair number of serious topics and very few frivolous and fun ones. So why not .. let's have some fun this week and take a look at Wesnoth, what makes it tick and keeps people not just playing it but still developing it after all these years. We'll try not to get sidetracked into an actual game as we look at this venerable Free software game.
• Q&A: If you have a burning question to ask, do so in the comments here or on G+ and I'll do my best to get to it in the show. Or you can ask live on irc ...

You can join live tomorrow on G+ or Youtube at 18:00 UTC, with live chat on irc.freenode.net in #luminosity, or catch the show later on my Youtube channel. See you there!

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New Plasma scripting features in 4.11

Since Martin blogged about the new scripting related features in kwin coming to 4.11 today, I figured that I would do the same for plasma-desktop.

Plasma Desktop Scripting

After having been asked for the ability to read and write from other user config files in Plasma Desktop Scripting for the Nth time, I finally buckled down and implemented it. It is documented on the desktop scripting wiki page and using it looks something like this:

// open the kickoffrc file
var config = ConfigFile('kickoffrc');

// switch to the RecentlyUsed group
config.group = 'RecentlyUsed';

// write an entry into it
config.writeEntry('MaxApplications', 25);


// now put Yes=20 into RecentlyUsed/Test
var config2 = ConfigFile(config, 'Test);
config2.writeEntry('Yes', 20);

This is actually re-using the KConfig bindings written by Sebastian Kügler for QML that we ship in the Plasma Active Settings QML import, so it turned out to be very little work to add it, test it and push it for 4.11.

QML

QML is the way write visual Plasma addons such as plasmoids these days, and so it is the support that gets the most attention and love. In addition to numerous bug fixes to the various components and imports, the following new features are available in 4.11:

• A plasmoid (or other) package can provide fallbacks for SVGs that are themed. This allows a plasmoid to safely use an SVG that may only be in some themes while providing its own fallback. Taking this even further, you can even provide SVGs for specific themes by dropping them in a folder that shares the theme's name.
• A units object was introduced that provides compatibility with Ubuntu Touch's object of the same name. They work identically, and the idea is to make writing apps that target multiple platforms a bit easier. Scanning through various QML applications written with Ubuntu Touch in mind, this was by far and away the most often used bit of their API. Personally, I disagree with using such literal units and prefer to have fluid layouts, but compatibility is a boon for all QML platforms.

Most of the work done for 4.11 in the QML support was bug fixes and polishing. This is to be expected as the support is now quite mature and further feature work for QML support has shifted to Qt5's QML2 for Plasma Workspaces 2.

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Polish all the UI!

I've been watching a great set of threads roll by in my email related to a re-boot to the human interface guidelines used by the KDE community. The blog posts by Thomas and Björn explaining what they are up to are great reading and it gives those of us who are developers a really good reminder about user interface fit and finish. ( .. and therefore the above ironic memegif ;)

Inspired, I spent a bit of time in the wallpaper setting dialog yesterday working on visual consistency and typography issues. The fixes were all little things that are pretty unsexy and would not make for an interesting blog if weren't for this new HIG work. It is these "little" things, however, that make things feel not just more polished but more trustworthy and desirable to use. It creates a comfort that people respond to on an emotional level. They find themselves moving through their tasks with more ease and less distraction; the human mind is very good at ignoring sameness and by contrast picking out differences.

So this is a little note of encouragement to my fellow developers for us to pay attention to the human interface guidelines as they take further shape and to redouble our effort to polish the GUI.

Note that we've been working on a HIG that is relevant for touch, also led by Thomas, and as that has been taking more and more shape it will become an important resource for those building applications with QML for devices who wish their interfaces to rock. Just as we have managed to keep a unity on the desktop between the user interfaces, we can do the same on mobile.

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