The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate [LWN.net]

The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate

Posted Jul 2, 2009 12:50 UTC (Thu) by bfeeney (guest, #6855)
In reply to: The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate by callegar
Parent article: The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate

now that KDE is at 4.3 (mature?) and that there is no more support at all for 3.5

As far as I know, the KDE devs are still supporting 3.5 with bug-fix / security releases.

- having (as mentioned) a working print dialogue allowing one to save resources by printing both sides or putting two pages onto one.
- having a kdeprint application (as in KDE 3.5) offering print support to legacy applications;
-the possibility to download photos and files from your handy phone browsing its filesystem with an obex ioslave;

I've got KDE 4.2, and if I hit the "Options" button on the print dialog, and select the (poorly named) "Actions" tab I can select whether or not to use Duplex printing and / or use greyscale only. On the "Pages" tab I can set the pages per sheet to 1, 2, 4, 6, 9 or 16. On the Obex front, it's not finished yet, but people are clearly working on it (http://kde- apps.org/content/show.php/kdebluetooth4?content=84761) so you can't really accuse the KDE team of ignoring your needs.

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The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate

Posted Jul 2, 2009 17:20 UTC (Thu) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]

KDE 3.5.10 shipped 10 months ago and on the KDE site there is no sign of a release schedule for a 3.5.11. So I do not know if bugs were discovered or fixed. Also I am uncertain about the support status of the libraries KDE 3.5 is build upon (qt3 to mention one). But let's stop speaking of 3.5...

First of all... thanks for the information!!! I now see n-up in the options menu! I missed its appearance after the latest updates. Good news!

On the other side, I truly hope the odd/even page selection and the kdeprint application can also arrive first or later... unfortunately, the current duplex options are good only if you have an expensive duplex printer. Also, to print from say a legacy CAD application without a kdeprint dialog application can be tough. With regards to kdebluetooth4, the site you mention has not been updated in the last 6 months, so its hard to appreciate the progress. I expect it to be there, but you must agree that desktop effects and screensavers are getting a better "communication" effort right now.

And I'm sorry if my comments could be exchanged for an accusation. That was not my point at all. In the end I am a KDE user and the one who did not complain about the 4.0 experimental release! Conversely, I only wanted to point out that while I can enjoy all the effects and cuteness of KDE 4 at home (where I have no problem to use pstools or the multivalent pdf tools from the commandline to do odd/even page selection), at the ".3" release still I find issues in advocating KDE in productivity environments where certain features (communication with mobile devices / sensibility wrt paper and ink usage) are taken for granted.

And I also wanted to point out that the wishlist you find on the website is most likely the wishlist of people enthusiastic enough to write their wishes on a website. It may show different priorities (smooth scrolling at the very top) from the wishlist of people who merely use the desktop as a tool.

The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate

Posted Jul 2, 2009 18:52 UTC (Thu) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]

KDE now uses Qt's printing system; there simply was not enough interest in and manpower to devote to printing systems to keep kdeprint going. it fell by the wayside, and now we work with Qt Software on it, increasing the number of people working on printing substantially.

now that Qt has opened up development fully on gitorious, this becomes quite a bit better of a proposition because we can also get involved more directly with what resources we can manage to find in the community development pool.

you should check out this blog:

http://www.layt.net/john/blog/odysseus/

he's a community dev who has been doing some work on printing. you may find it interesting. i'd also suggest providing feedback directly to Qt Software about these things as they are a major part of printing support in KDE now.

The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate

Posted Jul 3, 2009 7:26 UTC (Fri) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]

Thanks for the pointer to the blog. Good to see things moving on this front.

The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate

Posted Jul 5, 2009 0:37 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]

You have got to be kidding me. I am 100% KDE fan, though to this day continue using KDE 3 because it is in Debian Stable.

However it would never even for a second occurred to be that KDE 4.3 - a supposedly mature mainstream desktop environment - does not have something so fundamental and simple Even/Odd printing. This is ridiculous. I don't happen to own a double-sided printer, and I use Linux+KDE 100% of the time, so how the hell am I going to print???

Don't get me wrong, I love KDE, but if this is really the case, then KDE 4 can still only be regarded as an Alpha version. Not only that, but the entire development process seems broken. Before worrying about utter nonsense like widgets on the desktop, the fundamental functionality like printing should work first! The guy on the linked blog seems to really be trying, but people this is 4.3 already!!!! How can you have a desktop environment without printing. Plus, printing happened to work great in the previous version of KDE.

Man, I was really considering upgrading to KDE 4 sooner or later, but now I really don't know. The only problem is that I find Gnome ugly and inconvenient, so I don't really have much of an alternative.

KDE 4

Posted Jul 3, 2009 9:07 UTC (Fri) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link]

Overall I am pleased with KDE 4. I have upgraded all 3 of my Linux boxes to run it.

Except for one thing: KNode. KNode 4 seems a step backwards from KNode 3 in some annoying ways: line wrapping can no longer be reliably controlled; I get some weird behaviour copying and pasting text from web pages; and I no longer have tooltips to show the full version of truncated subject lines.