Last week’s focus on bugs continues into this week, with the VHI-priority Plasma bugs slashed down to just three! In addition, Plasma 6 UI improvements are starting to land now that it’s stabilized a bit. In fact I’m typing this post from within a Plasma 6 session right now!
User Interface Improvements
In Elisa, double-clicking on a song or clicking its “Play now” button now puts its entire album in the playlist and begins playing from that song (Melissa Autumn and me: Nate Graham, Elisa 23.08. Link)
While annotating a screenshot in Spectacle, annotations now have a nice hover outline so it’s obvious how to select them (Noah Davis, Spectacle 23.08. Link)
In Plasma’s Disks & Devices widget, you’ll no longer see a useless “Mount” action for MTP-connected devices (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)
The way you configure your panels is now much more visual, with explanations too! (Tanbir Jishan and Niccolò Venerandi, Plasma 6.0. Link):
Discover now has smarter search behavior, putting more weight on direct title matches and words that appear in the title, rather than the description (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 6.0. Link)
Search results in Kickoff are now ordered the same way they are in KRunner and other KRunner-powered searches (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 6.0. Link)
It’s now possible to do math function s like sqrt() in KRunner without having to prefix the operation with an equals sign (Alexander Lohnau, Plasma 6.0. Link)
When the current wallpaper’s image file is changed on disk, it will update the wallpaper in real-time (Oleg Solovyov, Plasma 6.0. Link)
You can now convert to and from kilometers per hour using the “kph” keyword (June Knauth, Frameworks 5.106. Link)
Significant Bugfixes
(This is a curated list of e.g. HI and VHI priority bugs, Wayland showstoppers, major regressions, etc.)
Dolphin’s selection mode is no longer inappropriately activated or deactivated by the Spacebar key when it’s pressed despite not being the assigned shortcut for that action, or when pressing it while an interactive UI control is focused (Eugene Popov, Dolphin 23.08. Link)
Fixed a recently-introduced source of KWin crashes in the Plasma Wayland session when hovering over Task Manager icons or closing windows (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)
System Settings no longer crashes on launch when your Activities database has become corrupted (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)
Fixed another cause of screens overlapping by one pixel in multi-screen setups which would cause various other weird bugs (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)
When using a multi-screen arrangement, the lock screen’s unlock button now always works on the first click (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)
In the Notifications history, long notification title text can no longer sometimes push that notification’s close button partially out of view (Eugene Popov, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)
When connecting a Bluetooth device, the separator line between connected and disconnected devices no longer briefly overlaps the connected device (Harald Sitter, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)
Invisible Breeze-themed progress bars throughout Qt software no longer sometimes consume CPU resources by animating while out of sight (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.27.5. Link)
Entering paths with spaces in them now works properly in the Properties dialog, Shortcuts page, and Autostart page in System Settings (Bharadwaj Raju, Plasma 5.27.5 and Frameworks 5.106, Link 1, link 2, and link 3)
Fixed a variety of embarrassing layout glitches in KDE software when used with an RTL language (Ivan Tkachenko, Plasma 5.27.5 and Frameworks 5.106. Link 1, link 2, link 3, and link 4)
Fixed a major source of crashes when copying files in Dolphin and other apps (Fushan Wen, Frameworks 5.106. Link)
Other bug-related information of interest:
- 3 Very high priority Plasma bugs (down from 6 last week). Current list of bugs
- 47 15-minute Plasma bugs (same as last week). Current list of bugs
- 208 KDE bugs of all kinds fixed this week. Full list of bugs
Automation & Systematization
Re-did the top-level Plasma documentation page for greater clarity (Thiago Sueto, link)
Massively overhauled the Kirigami API documentation for better clarity and style (Matej Starc, 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
Check out KDE’s new forum at https://discuss.kde.org! This is a great place to ask for help if you’re experiencing an issue that might not necessarily be a bug, and to help others with their own issues.
If you’re a developer, consider working on known Plasma 5.27 regressions! You might also want to check out our 15-Minute Bug Initiative. Working on these issues makes a big difference quickly!
Otherwise, visit https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover other 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!
And finally, KDE can’t work without financial support, so consider making a donation today! This stuff ain’t cheap and KDE e.V. has ambitious hiring goals. We can’t meet them without your generous donations!
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
Excellent work, devs! 👏
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have a problem with the new Spectacle. There is no way to create frames around the text. This is the most basic annotation tool. Without it, Spectacle became useless. Additionally, when I use the tool to create squares and similar areas, there is no quick, easy way to make them transparent. The old version had it. I am very, very disappointed and need to move to a different screenshot tool for now. I hope this will be added in the future, but the update is a regression to me :(.
LikeLike
You can make the square transparent by selecting the square button, then clicking the on the “Fill” button and change the alpha channel value to zero (0).
Just make sure that the Stroke setting has a value of at least 1 pixel
https://imgur.com/undefined
LikeLiked by 1 person
“While annotating a screenshot in Spectacle, annotations now have a nice hover outline so it’s obvious how to select them (Noah Davis, Spectacle 24.08. ”
I assume that’s meant to be Spectacle 23.08.
LikeLike
Yes, thanks for noticing! Fixed.
LikeLike
Your panel configuration layout issues come from the fact that there are 4 items in the visibilty section. Reduce them to three by combining the windows in front and windows behind options, like so: https://images2.imgbox.com/e6/41/uyryZRlI_o.png The one in use would be highlighted. I’m sure you KDE wizards can code this in notime.
LikeLike
Hmm, how would that work? How would the panel know which windows should overlap it, and which windows should go under it?
LikeLike
@Nate
I am bambooozled. I thought that function is a on off thing, either all windows can overlap the panel or no windows can? How is that function different with two options visible compared to one visible with both functions one click away. So click once and the forefront window lights up because you have just chosen all windows to overlap the panel, click again and the window in the back lights up because you have just chosen the panel to not be overlapped by any windows. In fact that kind of thing could be baked into the rest of the options as well somehow if the visuals change when you click, so your choice is the visual image that you leave visible. With the choices text explanations of course also changing while you click away. Could save even more space without being too complex. Dunno, just that those four visibility options there are cluttering up the whole thing and messing with my Feng Shui ! =)
Still, a very good step in the right direction. Kinda like you see on phones today.
LikeLike
@Nate
So yeah, that would look awesome: Just four windows that you can click on and when you open up the panel you see right away which four options you have chosen at the moment and the panel would be wayyyyyyyy smaller than what it is now.
LikeLike
Regardless the Visibility section is kind of odd, not quite logical. If you select always visible, you can/should also select one of the below options. It does not look like a multiple selection area. Perhaps it need a delimiter or something?
Also the Alignment section, where do you select full width?
“How would the panel know which windows should overlap it, and which windows should go under it?”
Perhaps active window overlap, the rest under? Can’t quite see why you want it and the use case.
LikeLike
I would like to know if Plasma 6 will be based on Vulkan render or it will provide an option to activate Vulkan render which should guarantee enhanced compatibility with Wayland stack.
LikeLike
Look at all those visual enhancement the panel is getting! That’s awesome! 😃
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love the panel configuration graphics, hope we see more of this in Plasma 6!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Me too! Some more is also planned; see for example the mockup attachment in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=466166.
LikeLike
> Re-did the top-level Plasma documentation page for greater clarity.
Don’t know if it’s meant to be that way (since it’s “self-explanatory”, but then so are the others), but on that page, the “Plasma desktop scripting” and the “Create a custom window switcher” as well as “Krunner cc+ plugin” entries don’t have a description like the others do. By the way, could you guys take a look at this dolphin/KDE reported bug: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=445468 ? It’s been there since 2021-11-14. There someone said “This isn’t a KDE bug but a udisks2/libmount one and ultimately a ntfs3 one”. But I think it is, cause I installed dolphin on XFCE an experienced the same behavior, it went away once I removed it. And great work as usual! Thanks for all your hard work! 🙂
LikeLike
“In Elisa, double-clicking on a song or clicking its “Play now” button now puts its entire album in the playlist…”
Why would someone expect that doubleclicking on one song gets the whole album in to the playlist?
LikeLike
Yep, that one seems odd to me too. If I click on a song I expect only it to go into the queue, if I click the album I’d expect the whole album to go into the queue. How then do I add a single song to the queue?
LikeLike
To add a single song to the end of the queue, you click on that song’s plus sign button; nothing has changed here.
LikeLike
Wow, the redesign of the “more options” widget on the edition mode of panels is just awesome. Not only for the enormous visual improvement but for the better separation between de configurate options of the panel and the remove panel option. I think now it’s even more dificult delete a panel for mistake. Awesome job of Tanbir Jishan and our favorite youtuber 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person