KDE 3.5.1: The end of the tunnel

Finally the SuSE packages for KDE 3.5.1 have arrived but that's not the end of the tunnel... yet.

On the RSS feed from KDE-developers.org, there was a warning against false dependencies that would be fixed later. I didn't encounter them. I got no strange unresolved dependencies with the packages from my trusty source (Free Ad: RPMFind rulez!) ;-) and RPM only complains about actually missing packages. So far, so good.

The only problem is that somebody totally forgot to build the kdebase3-khotkeys-3.5.1 package. It isn't even available at ftp.kde.org and --of course-- the old version 3.5.0 absolutely wants kdebase3 with the same version number. (What was this expression?... Oh, yeah... Dependency hell.)

Just for the fun of it, I tried to build KHotkeys from sources. I usually don't do such things since I prefer to always have somebody to blame for the bugs. ;-) Well, in fact, I prefer to obtain critical components of my system from trusty sources and I don't count myself amongst them. (This sentence isn't much better than the previous one.) :-D

Any way... Things went rather smoother than I thought. I just made './configure' in the kdebase directory and 'make' in the khotkeys directory. I could even do 'make install' if I wanted but I didn't. KDE and RPM are two giant gas factory and I don't feel like drilling holes in their pipes. In other words, if there were a spec file, I'd build the missing RPM in order not to have gaps in RPM dependencies but that's not the case. So, all I can do is sit and wait for the rain. Definitively not the end of the tunnel...

On the other hand, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel of my style. In my previous post, I said I was waiting for the enlightenment. It wasn't a big flash of light that sent me down to the ground, smiling in extasy but at least I saw the light. What my style does is to paint all the buttons on the tab bar with the same color than the inactive tabs and almost square. This includes the buttons to open/close a tab and the seldom seen tab arrow buttons. I went a step closer from that wonderful mockup...

(Gosh! Aaron Seigo made me loose my track with the sad news about his cat Toes. I didn't want to think about my late cat Charlie any more... Damn!) :'-(

Well, the mockup is here and what I love so much about it is the tab bar with a colored background as wide as the tab panel. Qt doesn't allow us to do such things but we can get closer.

And for the first time, a picture from my style in action... with a glimpse into the RPM dependency hell. (Well, if Blogger wants.) (...) (Third attempt.) (...) (Fourth attempt.)



(For some reason it works better if I don't ask Blogger to host the picture. Grumble, grumble.)

Do you like my tabs? Not your everyday tabs.

What you can't see is the mouseover effects everywhere. The buttons undergo a slight change of color when the mouse reach them. The one I like the most is the button that appears behind the arrow of the combobox (the URL bar). It's colored under the mouse but regular with only the text cursor (focused) and absent in any other case. What you can't see either is how the disabled widgets melt with the background.

Even white text on a black background --really-- isn't a problem. Look at this picture with some more widgets and --while I'm at it-- the style configuration dialog with another colorscheme. By the way, note the name of my style: Serenity.

Look closely at the buttons "Appliquer" (Apply) to see what I mean about "melting". Look also at the buttons "OK"; to have a different color for the default buttons is an idea I cut and pasted from this mockup I liked so much.

When I think that all I wanted to do was to remove some lines from Lisptik style. Finally, I'm maybe closer from the end of the tunnel that I think. Well, there some glitches with the GTK-Qt-engine but nothing is really unfixable --in the computer world at least.

Now, excuse me but I have to go and check KBlogger (if that the right name) because the interface of Blogger is a real P.I.T.A.