Configuring KDE paths

As someone who posts to kde-apps.org repeatedly one of the biggest cause of problems I encounter is users missing out the flag '-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr' when running cmake.

The current situation is somewhat ridiculous, applications default to installing into /usr/local, which is in the user's application path but not in the KDE path. The result of this is an application that can load (because it's in the executable path) but not be able to find any of it's resources.

You can check your kde path by running:

kde4-config --path data

The best solution to this is to add '/usr/local' to KDE's path, this allows you to install KDE apps separately from where your package manager installs applications and save you having to worry about compile options.

To do this, set your /etc/kde4rc file to the following:

[Directories-default]
prefixes=/usr/local

KWakeOnLan 0.2

Today I got a patch for a piece of software I released almost a year back and had totally forgotten about

The patch adds support for setting the broadcast address in KWakeOnLan so that it is possible to make it work over a VPN or potentially any internet connection.

It's the first time I've had someone submit a patch for a piece of software that I'd written exclusively till that point, and it feels really good - it shows people are using your software enough to want to edit it

So thanks to Sebastian Kloska I present KWakeOnLan 0.2 + (a few interface tweaks by me)

Proposed new KDE toolbar configuration

The current tool bar system in KDE is a bit dated, the window is filled with lots of buttons, and reordering items isn't all that intuitive. It's not all that 'user friendly'.

The existing toolbar configuration

My suggestion

I've made a working prototype of a new click and drag solution. Essentially it's a very similar toolbar configuration scheme to that of Firefox. A lot of the code required already existed in KToolBar, it just wasn't being used. This demo only really has changed to the toolbar editing dialog. If this is accepted by kde-usability people, I'll try tidying it all up, ready to be a patch to show to the kdelibs guys.

Below is a screencast showing my prototype mockup:

Ogg vorbis video

Source code