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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    My status report
From:       mosfet <mosfet () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date:       2000-05-31 15:06:17
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Since things are going rather slower than I expected over here I figured
I better post a little status report so you all know what I have been
working on, and more importantly what still needs to be done (in case
you would like to help ;-)

Widget Themes:
This is what has been taking up most of my time, something rather
frustrating for what amounts to a little amount of actual code. The
engine has been totally reimplemented and supports a lot more esoteric
features including widget shaping for almost all widgets (including
resizable ones) via a border pixmap. Theme designers can use an alpha
mask when doing a custom pixmapped border, and this will define the
shape for the widget. This includes comboboxes, pushbuttons, toolbars,
menubars, all the scrollbar elements including the slider, groove, and
buttons, etc...  

New things also include much better memory utilization (no more cache
needed, although I had to drop some stuff for this), better gradient
implementation (ala my dedicated highcolor plugin), less mask usage,
more predefined fast border types, mouse-over configuration for some
widgets such as pushbuttons and comboboxes, scrollbar "containers" for
grouping the buttons, more default button stuff like the outside
rectangle and a indicator glyph (ala KStep), optional animated menus,
and toplevel popupmenu and toolbar shaping.

I'm also looking into really funky stuff like making inactive windows
translucent ;-) Scary stuff, and will most likely be tested on one of
the non-themed plugins first.

TODO:
It actually kindof works now ;-) The only thing that really needs
finishing is the scrollbar code.

KWin:
The biggest thing here is we need to start following the user's
configuration. This includes button order and mouse settings. I'm not
sure if we will (or should) support all the same titlebar modes as KWM
tho, since styles sometimes do their own thing.

New things I'm doing here include a new plugin we can possibly use as
default. It's very similar to ModernSystem except it has a QNX like
titlebar (text aligned left with a curved graphic running to the right
of it), and supports the KWM button layout - although all styles need to
do this.  

KControl:
Modules, modules, modules... ;-) I'm doing widget style and color
scheme, please feel free to contribute more. Again, we really need a
theme manager!
 
Mosfet.org:
This is being totally redesigned again and becoming more of a general
KDE2 site. I'm especially looking for co-maintainers, translators, and
content authors. For content I could really use howto's and tutorials
for newbies. This site is going to expand significantly, and could use
any help people care to give. I already got some volunteers for
translations and content, but I could use more! I want people to be able
to read new stuff about KDE on a daily basis :) 

-- 
Daniel M. Duley - Unix developer & sys admin.
http://www.mosfet.org - The place for KDE development news.
mosfet@mandrakesoft.com
mosfet@kde.org

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