This week in KDE: Re-bindable mouse buttons

This Week in KDE 3 Minutes

This week we merged support for re-binding the buttons of your multi-button mouse! You can assign buttons to keystrokes or keyboard shortcuts. Thanks to David Redondo, who implemented this for Plasma 5.26!

But that’s not all: we have much more, including a ton of work on Discover!

Other New Features

Elisa now defaults to saving playlist files with relative paths internally when the music files they reference live in the same folder–which is what most other music players do–but this can be changed if you prefer your playlist files to always contain absolute paths (Yerrey Dev, Elisa 22.12. Link)

Kate now has a keyboard macro feature! (Pablo Rauzy, Kate 22.12. Link)

Discover now lets you choose the frequency with which it notifies you about new updates! And within those frequencies, it’s now less aggressive about notifying you; no longer will you have the experience of updating, rebooting, and then immediately getting a notification about another update! Finally, this frequency UI also controls the frequency of automatic updates, if you’ve got those enabled. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3):

User Interface Improvements

Dolphin no longer pointlessly tells you “User canceled action” when you canceled an operation before confirming or completing it (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 22.08.1. Link)

When using Discover in mobile/narrow mode, clicking on a non-parent category in the drawer now automatically closes the drawer (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

System Settings’ Audio page now features a streamlined layout with smaller list items so that the whole view isn’t consumed by just a few audio devices (Oliver Beard, Plasma 5.26. Link):

The app selection dialog for sandboxed/portal-using apps now has significantly improved keyboard navigation (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26. Link):

Discover’s Updates page now shows you the correct installed version for Firmware updates and no longer shows you both the version number and branch name for Flatpak apps and runtimes, which was confusing in the case when the app’s branch name looked like a version number so it seemed like the app had two version numbers (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.26. Link 1 Link 2):

Discover’s screenshots now also support animated images (Ellie Dent, Plasma 5.26. Link)

Your cursor position is now remembered across screen arrangements (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.26. Link)

The path bars in various KDE apps like Dolphin and Gwenview now accept relative paths (Ahmad Samir, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Kate and other KTextEditor-based apps now support various mouse-based methods of adding more cursors using the multicursor feature (Waqar Ahmad, KDE Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Significant Bugfixes

(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)

Filelight once again uses correct text colors with a dark color scheme and looks fine when using a fractional scale factor (Harald Sitter, Filelight 22.08.1. Link 1 Link 2)

Discover now inhibits automatic sleep while it’s installing apps or updates (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24.7. Link)

Discover no longer freezes on launch if you launch it without a network connection (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

System Settings’ Quick Settings page no longer sometimes shows duplicate items in the “Frequently Used” section (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 5.25.5. Link)

On Discover’s Updates page, Flatpak apps or runtimes no longer sometimes show the wrong version number (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.26. Link)

All KDE apps using KIO for file transfers now benefit from faster copy speeds, especially NFS which can be up to 3-4x faster! (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.98. Link)

Other bug-related information of interest:

Changes not in KDE that affect KDE

In the Plasma Wayland session, the standard Qt color picker dialog can now pick screen colors (Harald Sitter, Qt 6.5. Link)

Lowering the brightness to its lowest level when using an OLED with an Intel GPU screen no longer turns off the screen until restarting the machine (Jouni Högander, the next release of the Intel GPU drivers. Link)

…And everything else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org, where you can find more news from other KDE contributors.

How You Can Help

If you’re a developer, check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly! Otherwise, have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Published by Nate

Published

18 thoughts on “This week in KDE: Re-bindable mouse buttons”

  1. > “All KDE apps isonh KIO for file transfers now benefit from faster copy speeds, especially NFS which can be up to 3-4x faster! (Méven Car, Frameworks 5.98. Link)”
    I think you meant “All KDE apps using KIO…”

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    1. I thought it was just my disability flaring up for a minute. I had to read it three times for my mind to finally realize there was a typo, and it wasn’t me not comprehending.

      Not only that, but I need to remember to look for a KDE-Accessibility group and join it to see what I can do to help. I’m lucky that I’m still “early” in my disability progression, but there is no chance of reversing the progression.

      As much as I like to laugh at those “whoops” moments like these, I make far too many of them myself. 🙂

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  3. About the Wayland Qt color picker, which application can I expect in the nearest future?

    I am currently using wl-color-picker as a working alternative, but it’s an GTK application and has a confusing startup.

    And it’s fixed in qt 6.5, does that mean that we have wait for kcolorpicker to be ported to Qt 6?

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    1. All apps that use the Qt color picker will get the fix once they use Qt 6.5, or earlier if we backport the fix into our Qt5 patch collection.

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    2. If Plasma will move to Qt6, which minimal version of Qt6 is currently considered to be used at this time? Qt6.3, 6.5 some other? Thank you!

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    3. Plasma will move to Qt 6 when it’s fully ported (it’s not yet, though this is in progress) and QA-tested to ensure that nothing has been broken in the process. There is currently no ETA; these things often take years. It’s normal.

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    5. You can use the Plasma color picker widget. It works on Wayland, and has been working on it for quite a while now.

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  5. Awesome news, as always!

    Nate, even if I know it’s not your area and that surely you already have a lot on your hands, I have to ask you something:

    What’s up with Calligra??!

    Honestly I use LibreOffice, because Calligra lacks a few features I need, but I dream of the day I can use Calligra instead (just because it’s a clean and fresh project and has good ideology)… But we don’t get many news or releases of it these days…

    When it got some funding some time ago I though it was then it was taking off…

    But it’s been terribly silent…

    Do you know anything you can share with us (when you get the time)?

    Thanks

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  6. “Discover now inhibits automatic sleep while it’s installing apps or updates”

    YAY!!! We of the slow connection thank you profusely.

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  7. The systemsettings mouse-button dialog sees a buttons as Button 4, but xev shows it as Button 12. I wanted to see if I could edit the config and add a shortcut for Button 12. Where are the mouse button settings stored? Tried to grep into ~/.local/config to find any place where these are updated.

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