We weren’t done after implementing the new lock and login screens! Here’s this week’s process on the Open/save dialog project:
Open/Save dialog project
- The dialogs now display previews for the same assortment of file types as Dolphin does (Alex Nemeth)
- Grid Spacing in icons view has been tightened up to match Dolphin, allowing more to be shown in the window (Alex Nemeth)
These improvements will land in KDE Frameworks 5.46.
And of course that’s not all; here’s the usual assortment of miscellaneous goodies:
New Features
- The System Monitor Plasmoid can now be configured with a custom update interval (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.13)
- Gwenview’s image resize dialog now lets you resize by percentage and has received a visual overhaul (Huon Imberger and Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
- Gwenview now shows a count of the total number of images and videos, as well as the position of the currently-viewed one (Huon Imberger, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
- In Kate (and other pieces of KDE software using the KTextEditor framework), single-clicking on a line number in the left gutter will select that line (Randy Kron, KDE Frameworks 5.46)
Bugfixes
- Hardware power management (e.g. what happens when pushing the power button or closing the laptop lid) works again following a recent regression (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.5)
- Changing your user picture now correctly updates the image used in the Kickoff Application Launcher (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.13)
- Okular no longer saves files with the wrong permissions (Ranjan Pradhan, KDE Applications 18.04.1)
- Dolphin window titles are now always correct after closing a split view (Robert Jennings, Dolphin 18.04.1)
- When using the blur background behind a wallpaper, the blur is now rotated correctly when the image has a rotation tag (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.5)
UI Polish & Improvement
- The Places Panel (in Dolphin, file pickers, Gwenview, etc) now has entries for Desktop and Downloads by default (Me, Nate Graham, in KDE Frameworks 5.46):
- Dolphin’s context menu now shows the “Open With” and “Open In” entries on top where they are logically grouped together, and also shows the name and icon of the default app that will be used to open the selected file (Me, Nate Graham, in KDE Frameworks 5.45 and KDE Applications 18.08.0):
- The Fonts page on System Settings now shows you a preview of the different sub-pixel anti-aliasing options (Julian Wolff, in KDE Plasma 5.13.0):
- The Application Menu (Kicker) is now able to show longer app and document names (Albert Astals Cid, KDE Plasma 5.13.0
- KDE authentication dialogs have gotten some much-needed polish: they now show better information when the Details button is clicked (Scott Harvey, KDE Plasma 5.13)
- The desktop’s context menu now has more keyboard shortcuts (Kau Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.13.0
- Gwenview now displays an interpolated (smoothed and slightly blurry) version of the image up to 400% magnification–increased from the prior 200% threshold (Huon Imberger, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
- When typing a username into the login window, the enter key now moves to the password field (Fabian Vogt, KDE Plasma 5.12.5)
If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal.
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
Thanks again for these!
Have you seen any mention of plasma session autosave? I rarely purposefully log out but reboots happen and I get the desktop I last remembered to manually save. A timed save would be great.
Not sure if this is something konsole could fix but each restored window doesn’t get its previous command history, they all seem merged.
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Interesting ideas! I would recommend filing bugs at bugs.kde.org.
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Found one from 2003! 100 votes!
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60894
I’ve no idea where to direct the command history request, it might be bash rather than konsole.
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Continually amazed by the rate of progress being made with Plasma, it’s wonderful to be able to have such a responsive and thoughtful approach being made to the quality of life and a11y items. I couldn’t imagine using any other environment. Thank you all again!
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Thanks so much for your encouraging words. We love hearing feedback like this! It’s a pleasure to work on the project with such appreciative users.
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I was raised around computers even before the first PCs ( talking about Amiga / Spectrum / Amstrad …. ) … and always had ’em around, loved ’em , saw everything grow & change a lot over the years ….
Even with all the different OS / distros / version my eyes have seen so far ( and that’s a lot of them ) … i’ve never felt so excited as i am nowadays with the current state of Plasma. Said it before, will say it again: i’ve become addicted to this weekly reports; amazing job !! i’d even dare to say “historical” … time will tell š . Thanks a gazillion !!
Quick question:
Is there anything already planned to fix file search on Dolphin/Baloo related issues ? So far, something like a simple search for a picture file i already know it exists doesn’t work ( KDE Neon, up to date ) … and i see there’s a fair amount of baloo bug reports on the bugtracker already:
https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=baloo&list_id=1514149
Not rushing things, just asking if this is something that it’s already on your agenda.
Thanks again !
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Thanks so much for the kind words! As for Baloo, we currently have several active contributors working on it daily. It is now improving with every Frameworks release. Just take a look at the recent git log: https://cgit.kde.org/baloo.git/log/
We know this is a major strategic issue and are working to remedy it.
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Man, I’m using KDE Neon for just a week and I fell like I arrived at just the right time.
During the first days I was just getting around things, seeing how it works and at day four arrived an updated that added a little config option I wanted on Dolphin. Best first impressions ever! Thanks.
May I ask something?
In Gwenview there’s a way to, when you are viewing the imagens in a folder, when you get at the last image the program goes back to the first one like a carrossel? Or a button to go to the first and last image? It’s already there? If not maybe it could be added…
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Yes, see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=387380 and https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334847
Hit the spacebar once you reach the last image; the arrow keys don’t work yet. I submitted a patch for this last year that ran into problems. I’ll dust it off once I dig myself out from under today’s email avalanche…
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What can I say? Thanks again.
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Absolutely awesome! Thanks for this reports that keep us excited and in touch with Plasma development!
P.S. Yesterday I discovered in Dolphin that I can hide certain sections in Places. I wrote about it once here, but I don’t know if it was implemented so quickly lately or was it there from the beginning? Either way, I still learn something new and exciting about the Plasma after using it 2,5 years. I’m stunned. Best DE ever!
Thanks!
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We implemented this late last year. There are even further plans to improve it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=389803
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Excellent work. we continue to use KDE as our preferred DE for Enterprise users in our organisation . One complaint we receive from the devs who usually work in Windows and have to use Linux from time to time is the inability to copy files from their Home folder to either /opt or /var/www via GUI.
Is it feasible to allow these changes via Dolphin by asking for authentication when transfers to these particular folders are made?
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Yes, this is in progress and in fact very close to completion. See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=179678 and https://phabricator.kde.org/T6561 and https://phabricator.kde.org/T8075
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How about the window shadows on HIDPI screens? They don’t seem to scale at all, so you end up having smaller shadows than intended. Maybe that’s because kwin doesn’t respect scaling settings?
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