[SOLVED] Various issues/tweaks/questions

[DoYouKubuntu]

I'm really big on how my desktops look. So some of these issues may seem ridiculously trivial, but I'd still like to get them resolved.

1) in Dolphin, I've tweaked its icon settings but can't get the look I'm after:



The icons are sized as I want, but they're crammed too tightly together; however, selecting the next larger spacing makes them too far apart. Using 'medium' as its 'Label width' setting, it crams 5 icons across; using 'large,' it spreads 3 across with lots of white space. There is no custom setting. Am I just stuck with crammed or spread? Compare the old look:



2) also in Dolphin, I do not see the root directory in my list of places, as I did before. See #1 in both of the above images. I can get there, but it's a pain. How do I get / back in my list?

3) #2 in the second pic, note the beautiful, animated progress bar. I've spent ALL DAY looking through, downloading and testing new themes, and trying various settings, but I haven't yet hit on what I want! Just wondering if anyone happens to know of a specific theme/add-on/setting/etc. that will give me back my lovely progress bar.

4) #3 in the second pic, was a widget, I think it was called 'Quick Access.' I can't find it anywhere, including after downloading lots of widgets. It was brilliant! I'd single-click on the pretty blue folder icon, and up would pop a list of just the filesystem, no files, just directories, starting with root. I could scroll through it and single-click any directory to have Dolphin open it. At the very top was / and clicking that opened Dolphin in /. I downloaded a few widgets that looked similar, but they don't function exactly as I want. I haven't looked, so please don't yell at me, but are old widgets available on, say, store.kde.org?

5) Spectacle, the screenshot app that replaced KSnapshot sucks!! KS was -so- easy to use in terms of naming a bunch of sequential files. For example, say that I took a screenshot of Dolphin, and saved it as tmp_Dolphin_111919_1.jpg, and then took another shot--all I had to do was click 'save as' and it automatically populated the filename with tmp_Dolphin_111919_2.jpg (which was highlighted, so if I chose to start typing a new name, it was easy, as the old text would disappear), and then tmp_Dolphin_111919_3.jpg and tmp_Dolphin_111919_4.jpg and so on. I cannot figure out how to make Spectacle reproduce that behavior:



I don't want ANY of those choices! Please tell me there's a way to get the old behavior back. I' ve relied on it for many years...I'm not eager to get used to something else at this point.

Thanks in advance for the helpful and thoughtful input I know I'll get here.

[vinnywright]

I will try

#1 rite click to the left of the "space indicator" at the bottom of the dolphin window and check "show zoom slider" using it to resize the Icons gets me the kind of spacing I think you want , if the size of the icons gets to big for the available window space they bunch up.

#2 the "root" icon may be hidden , rite click in the places area , you should get an option to "show hidden places" or to add a place.

#5 you are correct Spectacle dose not seem to remember the last "save as" name , BUT you answered your own question you can in the settings you show type in the naming scheme you want and it will do the sequential numbering you want so as in your example naming , tmp_Dolphin_111919_1.jpg (I am assuming that means tmp_Dolphin_November-19-2019_1.jpg) you would type "tmp_Dolphin_ %M%D%y_%d" and have JPG selected .

yes you would half to redo this every time you want to change the base part of the name , O and you do not have to type the %M and such just click it in the list and it will be inserted.

VINNY

[woodsmoke]

Hi
as a comment as to why Spectacle does not save names, it MIGHT be because "most" (and who "most" is ...is a matter for debate ) may tend to take multiple screenshots over a short period of time and so the default is to provide a "next iteration" default save. Dunno, but I use it that way when I'm doing certain editing tasks.
woodsmoke

[claydoh]

#4 Look for the File Drawer widget

[DoYouKubuntu]

I will try

Thank you.

#1 rite click to the left of the "space indicator" at the bottom of the dolphin window and check "show zoom slider" using it to resize the Icons gets me the kind of spacing I think you want , if the size of the icons gets to big for the available window space they bunch up.

Thanks, but no. I don't like having the slider shown, so I had already removed that. I'm adjusting the icons' settings in Dolphin's settings; from there, I've tried various icon sizes and 'label width' settings and, as noted, 'medium' squishes them too close and 'large' puts too much white space between them.

#2 the "root" icon may be hidden , rite click in the places area , you should get an option to "show hidden places" or to add a place.

Worked like a charm!

#5 you are correct Spectacle dose not seem to remember the last "save as" name , BUT you answered your own question you can in the settings you show type in the naming scheme you want and it will do the sequential numbering you want so as in your example naming , tmp_Dolphin_111919_1.jpg (I am assuming that means tmp_Dolphin_November-19-2019_1.jpg) you would type "tmp_Dolphin_ %M%D%y_%d" and have JPG selected .

yes you would half to redo this every time you want to change the base part of the name , O and you do not have to type the %M and such just click it in the list and it will be inserted.

Those file names were just examples which, yes, did include MMDDYY in their names. But I didn't mean for that to be taken globally. They could just as well be:

SeaMonkey_with_various_tweaks_1.jpg
SeaMonkey_with_various_tweaks_2.jpg
SeaMonkey_with_various_tweaks_3.jpg
...
SeaMonkey_with_various_tweaks_64.jpg

and so on.

Is there some way to install the old, brilliant KSnapshot?

Thanks for your help, Vinny. I appreciate it.

[DoYouKubuntu]

#4 Look for the File Drawer widget

I can't check right now, but I'm pretty sure that's one of the widgets I tried. I'll post back later.

Thanks.

[claydoh]

This does require editing the settings to show the directory you want, but it does exactly what you, minus opening "/"
Oops..... of course it shows files, I missed that somehow.

[claydoh]

You *can* configure a Folder View to show just the root dir, if you specify the device (not necessarily the location), and set a filter to only show directories. it does dice in to the directory, however, and the right-click to open Dolphin or something else is cumbersome. The top location (the device) is clickable to open dolphin.

I usually do this setup, but filter to exclude directories

[DoYouKubuntu]

Why on earth do perfectly good, useful, logically-designed apps get tossed?! Damn, at least they should still be available. I don't care if they're old. If they still serve their purpose, that's good enough for me.

Is there somewhere I can find old widgets?

I still have one--on my desktop running 9.10--that I absolutely loved, but it disappeared years ago. I haven't removed it because it still does its job and I love the way it acts/looks. Of course, right now its name completely slips my mind...Fancy something...I'll look at it later...

[claydoh]

The person who created it stopped working on it not long after KDE 4.1 was out. Investigations reveal that a couple of forks kept it alive for a while, but comments seem to indicate that the features and options in Plasma 5's stock Folder View widget filled their needs, so no one ported the independent, third-party widget to Plasma 5.

[Don B. Cilly]

Why on earth do perfectly good, useful, logically-designed apps get tossed?! Damn, at least they should still be available. I don't care if they're old. If they still serve their purpose, that's good enough for me.

Well, in many cases, they simply don't get upgraded.
Apparently Qt underwent major changes recently. That meant that most apps had to be rewritten to fit the new code..
Personally, I so bemoan the loss of Karamba and especially the globe/marble wallpaper with live clouds that you could rotate and zoom.

Is there somewhere I can find old widgets?

You can probably find them on store.kde.org.
A lot of them won't work though.

The best thing is probably to look for alternatives.
For example, I lost Karamba, I use conky. Karamba was better for graphs. Conky is better for... flexibility.
I lost the Globe wallpaper, I use xplanetFX. Not as good (you can't rotate/zoom) but better resolution.

It seems sometimes we just have to - in my grandmother's harsh but kind words - "grow up, deal with it, move on". :·)

[GreyGeek]

Well, in many cases, they simply don't get upgraded.
Apparently Qt underwent major changes recently. That meant that most apps had to be rewritten to fit the new code..
..

I ended my programming career in 2008 after using Qt4 as my only dev tool for four years. Afterwords, I maintained a personal installation of Qt4, using the downloadable sdk, in case I was called upon for help. That occurred only once. After 2010 I no longer installed the Qt sdk and never reinstalled the source code for the apps I wrote and later was supporting while retired.

Your remark about "major changes recently" made me wonder how extensively those changes were. "major" is an understatement!



Installation:
It used to be that installing the Qt API (Noob reader pro tip: API means Application Program Interface) was a simple matter of selecting qt4-sdk in the repository and installing it. (Noob reader pro tip: sdk means Software Development Kit). QtCreator was a separate install but later was made part of the sdk. The last sdk package I can find was for Qt4.0 in 2010. That's so old I would never consider installing it, even in a sandbox. Go out to the Qt website today and ALL you'll see is a 31Mb online installer for the Qt 5.13 version, the latest. I never ran it but I have little doubt that it would require you to create an account with Qt in order to get updates, fixes, patches, etc... Even if I only developed open source code I would want those items and would create an account.

If you want to use the Qt tool that is in the repository you'll find it is for Qt 5.9. You would install it using

sudo apt-get build-essential qt5-default
sudo apt-get install libxcb-xinerama0-dev

You may have to examine the repository listings for qt5-* entries to find other features that were not loaded in the default install.

If you want to compile the latest Qt from the source then here is your ticket:
https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_5_fro...he_source_code

Using the full source code of Qt 5.13 from the Git website you will most certainly have to be an experienced coder to follow that route.

The following instructions, posted June 10, 2018, are no longer valid because the Qt5-sdk is no longer available on the Qt web site.
https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Qt-SDK-on-Ubuntu-Linux

Prices:
The opensource version is free but comes with restrictions. When I was using it the opensource and paid version differed only in that the paid version came with pre-compiled Oracle drivers, which were proprietary binary libraries.
There were various opensource drivers available which one could add. Today, I do not know what the differences are between the opensource version and the paid version, but I suspect that the automation, automotive and Safe Render modules are not in the GPL version. If someone knows I'd be interested in reading about it.

The paid version of Qt5.13 costs $459/month/term/seat! Or, $5,508/year/term/seat. I'm not sure what the length of "term" is, but probably means you can buy a seat for a month, a quarter, etc... In 2004 the proprietary version cost $1,500/year/seat and could be renewed for $700/year/seat. $1,500 in 2004 Dollars is $2,044 Dollars today. So, taking account of inflation, the Qt propritary version is almost tripled in price.

Paradigm Shift:
I jumped into Qt just before the end of the 3.x version. Had it not shifted to version 4.x I would have dropped it because all coding in Qt3 took place by adding entries to drop down combo boxes on the Qt3 Designer Interface. Fortunately, the 4.x paradigm was based on normal C++ coding practices, utilizing headers, main.cpp, and various function.cpp components. Any editor, the gcc compiler and Kdbg worked great. One used the designer to design user interface windows and dialogs.

Qt4 introduced the greatest component in Qt, IMO, which is the "Signals & Slots" paradigm. In C++ a callback function is a function that is called through a function pointer. If you pass the pointer (address) of a function as an argument to another, when that pointer is used to call the function it points to it is said that a call back is made. The callback paradigm is klutzy, to say the least. Qt's "Signals & Slots" is described here:
https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/signalsandslots.html
Signals can be turned on at any time and turned off as well. So, during the flow of a program, if the programmer does not want a certain Signal to be emitted during the execution of a section of code, the first line in that section turns off the Signal, and the last line turns it back on.

Platforms and Devices:
Back in 2004 the big thing was to be able to write and compile code on Linux that could be compiled and run on Windows or IOS. That wasn't so great for Microsoft or Apple but it was wonderful for about everyone else. I was using Qt to write client applications that interfaced with Oracle servers. I was using Visual Studio C++ 6.0 with a Qt extension. It was slow and crashed on occasions. So, I switched to Qt installed on SuSE 6.3 and running against a PostgreSQL database. I could code, compile and debug 2-5X faster on Linux. I used compiler defines to switch in either Oracle or PostgreSQL code at compile time, depending on the environment the compile was taking place in.

Today, Qt apps can run on top of any OS, on laptops or desktops, with or without touch screens, on iPhones and Android phones, IoT, automation devices, automotive environments, and safety critical devices.

And, I hardly know it anymore.

[DoYouKubuntu]

I'm late getting back to this thread. Thanks for the thoughtful posts. As always, I'm fascinated by GG's interesting stories.

Instead of starting multiple new threads for other, minor tweaks, I'll just add them here.

1) I'm not seeing the setting in startup/shutdown where you can specify that the username field should be blank upon booting up. I do not want any user's name pre-filled, and only have to supply their password; I want both username and password to have to be typed.

2) Please keep in mind that I'm not done re-setting up Samba on this laptop [since the clean install of 19.10], so this issue will disappear once I figure out what I've missed. So here's the deal: In Dolphin, you can see my Compaq desktop, i.e., compaqAll (which is its share name, and means / on the Compaq), listed under Network [left pane], and Dolphin [window] sees Compaq (the computer's name):



But when I select compaqAll, I get this error message:



Yet if I select Compaq [from within Dolphin's window], I get the contents of the Compaq desktop:



This is perplexing more than an actual problem, so don't please spend too much time pondering it! As long as I can access Compaq's files from the laptop, I'm happy.

In case anyone's interested, I've used the exact same syntax in my fstab as I did before the upgrade--and have used for 13 years:

//192.168.1.108/compaqAll /mnt/compaq cifs rw,username=myname,password=mypasswd,file_mode=0770,dir_mode=0770,auto 0 0

but when I try to mount the Compaq it fails with:

# mount -a
mount error(2): No such file or directory
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs) and kernel log messages (dmesg)

Yes, the mount point, /mnt/compaq, exists and is readable/writable. No, I haven't actually done what the mount error tells me to do. Yet.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Hello?! Is anyone still reading this post? I've already created a million threads in the past two weeks or so, and thought I could avoid that for every little tweak by dumping them here. Help!

[jlittle]

Have you got cifs-utils installed?