http://www.osnews.com/story/17091/KDevelop_3_4_Brings_Many_New_Features Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:15:17 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?206681 http://osnews.com/thread?206681 nice slideshow Sun, 28 Jan 2007 17:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206704 http://osnews.com/thread?206704 Why wasn't it referred to as a PDF file outlining the features? What came into my mind on mention of a slide show, was a PowerPoint or OpenOffice.org's Impress presentation!

That aside, while I agree that many bugs were quashed and new features introduced, Kdevelop by default, has terrible fonts! These fonts are blurry and not clear/crisp as one would expect of a new product in this day and age.

When shall we have these fonts "fixed" without Microsoft's help? Sun, 28 Jan 2007 18:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (villagerman) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206706 http://osnews.com/thread?206706 1) Use URW++ or Nimbus fonts.
2) Use a version of FreeType2 with BCI enabled.

Problem solved. Sun, 28 Jan 2007 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dylansmrjones) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206734 http://osnews.com/thread?206734 "Why wasn't it referred to as a PDF file outlining the features? What came into my mind on mention of a slide show, was a PowerPoint or OpenOffice.org's Impress presentation! "

The term "slide show" refers to a certain form of a presentation. It does not refer to a special media, file format or output device. The classical slide show uses foils / slides, printed with a laser printer or done by hand, that are projected onto a wall (or something similar) using a overhead / daylight projector ("Polylux"). It's not a video or sound file. It does not to refer to a special file type created by and only viewable with the proper application.

The use of a PDF file is a relative good way to share a slide show via Internet. PDF is available nearly everywhere, not like the proprietary MICROS~1 "PowerPoint" formats. Surely something like OpenOffice Impress was used to create the slides, but they were exported to PDF in order to make the content availabe for many platforms without the need of installing huge office software packages. A good idea in my opinion.

A slide show as you might prefer it can easily be done with

% xpdf -fullscreen showcase.pdf

after downloading the file from the location given in the article's description. Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Doc Pain) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206737 http://osnews.com/thread?206737 It actually IS a slide show. Just open it with KPDF (hey, it's about a KDE application, better use KDE tools to view it), and press Ctrl+Shift+P (View->Presentation) Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (evert) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206754 http://osnews.com/thread?206754 Sideways tabs... why, God, why? Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MechR) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206756 http://osnews.com/thread?206756 congratulations to the KDevelop team, great work! Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SK8T) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206762 http://osnews.com/thread?206762 Because the guy who got dibs on the UI thought it was cool... Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206775 http://osnews.com/thread?206775 Most slideshows I see are PDFs. I would say this is the standard for most mathematical talks. Might be related to the fact that latex produces PDF slideshows.

The fonts are not the default fonts. This are the fonts that the creator of the document uses. If the fonts are not clear/crisp it might be the case because you run your display with a different resolution (dots per inch) and are looking at a screenshot. Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ponto) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206777 http://osnews.com/thread?206777 I can only say that this is the best UNIX IDE I know. Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ponto) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206792 http://osnews.com/thread?206792 Great work by the KDE team. We need an IDE for Gnome development that's at this level. (I don't mean this as a comparison of KDE - Gnome DEs - no flames.)

Nice to see Ruby support! Sun, 28 Jan 2007 22:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zerohalo) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206797 http://osnews.com/thread?206797 what about Eclipse? Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netdur) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206799 http://osnews.com/thread?206799 I very much doubt that KDevelop itself is choosing which fonts are used and how they are rendered. It will use the system-wide KDE settings for font rendering.

You may have tried the tips below before, but if not:

The DejaVu font used by default in the interface in Kubuntu is used for almost everything and isn't as well suited to user interface controls as the Tahoma font in Windows XP or Segoe UI in Vista. XP and especially Vista has excellent typography because Microsoft invested a lot of time and effort into getting it right. However, it is possible to get clear, readable text in a modern Linux distribution using only the tools that come in the box (ie. no microsoft fonts or rebuilding freetype). The evidence is currently staring back at me. When will this be made as easy as it is in Vista? I can't answer that question.

So, how can you get better font rendering in KDE?

Adjusting the font-rendering options in the KDE Control Panel (or "System Settings" for Kubuntu users) may help.
Go to the KDE Control Panel -> Appearance -> Fonts

Ensure that the "Use anti-aliasing" is checked. Click the "Configure..." button next to it. Tick the "Use sub-pixel hinting" box, and set the hinting style to full.
The colour-arrangement box (which by default has the caption "RGB" with three vertical bars) is important to get right for this to work. The default option is correct for most monitors, so try that for now and click the "Apply" button. Then start a new KDE application (such as KDevelop - but make sure there are no instances of the same program already running), and see if any difference is notable. If the characters have weird fringes of colour around them, try the other options in the colour-arrangement box.

As a last resort you can also experiment with the DPI box.

I hope this is of some use. Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (robertknight) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206809 http://osnews.com/thread?206809 Eclipse is a nice all-purpose IDE (though quite "heavy"). I was thinking something more specifically tailored to make Gnome development easy, like the way KDevelop integrates with QT-Designer, etc. Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (zerohalo) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206810 http://osnews.com/thread?206810 Subpixel hinting is nice, but it should be noted that if one is using nVidia's proprietary drivers, subpixel hinting in KDE seems to bring massive performance penalties. Any combo of greyscale hinting, non-nVidia card or non Qt toolkit is not as bad *weird*

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=65857 Sun, 28 Jan 2007 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MamiyaOtaru) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206814 http://osnews.com/thread?206814 I'm not a native English speaker, so not sure if this is a typo or if it really makes sense:

New PHP Parser / code competition

Did they mean "code completion"? IIRC, th code completion in Kdevelop for PHP was bound to pressing a key for each word. I hope they made it automatic, because if you do want code completion having to press a key all the time is quite uncomfortable.

Anyway, congrats to the team for the release. I'm looking forward to trying it soon. Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Luis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206859 http://osnews.com/thread?206859 kpdf also has an option to display a pdf as a slideshow. Click on the "View" menu, and there is an option to show it as a presentation. Mon, 29 Jan 2007 04:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dumbkiwi) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206871 http://osnews.com/thread?206871 I guess you still can't get rid of the sideways tabs that you don't need?
The most annoying thing about kdevelop. Mon, 29 Jan 2007 05:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Rapsey) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206873 http://osnews.com/thread?206873 Problem is there's nothing close to Qt Designer for the GNOME/GTK environment. GLADE doesn't even come close, and it never will. KDE will always have the superior development tools. It's a shame that (IMHO) KDE just doesn't look or act as consistent as GNOME. Hopefully KDE4 will change my mind, but most of the hype around Plasma kinda disintegrated into more of the same talk about how great Qt4 is. Slots and signals, unfortunately, won't make all of the unintuitive, unlabeled button widgets go away. I don't want to hover over each button to find out what it does!! Mon, 29 Jan 2007 05:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206882 http://osnews.com/thread?206882 Slots and signals, unfortunately, won't make all of the unintuitive, unlabeled button widgets go away. I don't want to hover over each button to find out what it does!!

Actually, that was one of the very 1st things that was changed - all buttons now by default have text displayed underneath them. Since they are so much larger it also forces the developer to choose the most important ones meaning they are much more intuitive as well since you don't have a million that do different things a lot of people never use.

Of course, that behavior can be overridden but from what I've seen all the standard kde apps are doing it that way. Mon, 29 Jan 2007 07:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206897 http://osnews.com/thread?206897 I guess it's a pretty minor thing to patch, and they would most likely accept it... Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (superstoned) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206899 http://osnews.com/thread?206899 Because they are usefull? Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (m_abs) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206915 http://osnews.com/thread?206915 I worked on KDevelop but when I saw eclipse on FC6 I found out that it has a code completion that KDevelop hasn't, but it is not comparable with other features that KDevelop has. Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmrezaie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?206937 http://osnews.com/thread?206937 Anjutas quite good and written for gnome.

http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cole) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?207098 http://osnews.com/thread?207098 Hu? KDevelop has had code completion for ages, and improved on it in 3.4. Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cm__) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?207244 http://osnews.com/thread?207244 That's great! I'm glad that one of my last remaining major gripes with KDE is being addressed. KDE has been getting cleaner and less cryptic throughout the 3.x series, but the lack of text labels is just wrong. Unless is a really obvious what the buttons do (firefox for example), they should have text labels. So this pleases me greatly.

Maybe soon I'll love KDE as much as Linus does ;-) Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?207288 http://osnews.com/thread?207288 The very first page boasts about being the best UNIX IDE out there.. IMHO sorry guys that goes to Sun Studio
Keep up the good work though, competition in any way, shape or form is healthy Tue, 30 Jan 2007 07:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (The Lone OSer) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?207331 http://osnews.com/thread?207331 but the lack of text labels is just wrong

But the text lables are not missing, they have been there forever(since KDE 2.0). It has not been the default setting, but it is in the library so it works on all KDE apps. You can configure it on a app by app basis or for the whole desktop. Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Morty) Comments