[PLASMA 5] Configuration questions

[doctordruidphd]

A few of questions about setting up plasma 5:

1. Is it possible to add quick launch icons to the panel? Used to be (KDE4) that in the launcher, there was an "Add to Panel" right click option, which no longer seems to be there.

2. In trying to add new themes, color-schemes, etc the gui for adding these things always pulls an error, something about an xml file not found (sorry I don't have it up in front of me). Is there some location that has these, as kde-look doesn't seem to have any categories specifically for plasma 5 stuff.

3. Most of the icons for gtk applications (firefox, etc) are coming up black. Do these all have to be reconfigured manually, or did something not upgrade properly?

[vinnywright]

I would half to say something did not upgrade well ................your #1 their is definitely a "add to panel" option.

#2 this was an old bug that is fixed ,,,,,,,,or is @hear

#3all Icons good @hear as well .................................................. .................screenshot .





if this is 15.04 ,,,, fully up to date you should not be having these problems .

VINNY

[doctordruidphd]

Thanks for the info. What I have here (14.10 upgraded to 15.04) looks and behaves completely different. I think the next step is to try with a clean .kde directory. I will report back with what I find out.

[kubicle]

1. Is it possible to add quick launch icons to the panel? Used to be (KDE4) that in the launcher, there was an "Add to Panel" right click option, which no longer seems to be there.

This only works if widgets are unlocked, check that they are. (EDIT: like claydoh mentioned, also depends on the menu widget used)

Thanks for the info. What I have here (14.10 upgraded to 15.04) looks and behaves completely different. I think the next step is to try with a clean .kde directory. I will report back with what I find out.

kf5/plasma5 doesn't use ~/.kde to store userfiles anymore. Instead, they have adopted the XDGDIRS (things are stored in ~/.local/share [appdata], ~/.config [configfiles] and ~/.cache [tmpdata]) so cleaning ~/.kde shouldn't affect kf5/plasma5 (of course, there are still quite a lot of kde4 apps on 15.04, which are naturally affected by ~/.kde).

[claydoh]

1) In the normal menu, there is not the right click option, but you can simply drag and drop them right onto the panel.
Vinny is using the "classic" menu option.

2) Not seeing that on either my clean install or my 14.10>>15.04 upgraded box. This *was* a problem early on, for many of the add-on installers, long since fixed.
Color schemes will work in plasma 5 just fine, at least all the ones I tried.

3) Not seeing this,on any of my setups. WHich icon theme are you using?


4) Plasma specific configs are not stored in .kde anymore, most are now in .config (along with other non-kde stuff as well), though most applications and other non-plasma kde stuff are still in .kde

Try a new user account to see how that looks there.

[doctordruidphd]

Some things I have found out:

1. As expected, clearing out ~/.kde did nothing.

2. I do seem to be able to import color schemes from the /usr/share/kde4/apps/color-schemes directory, however, even when hitting APPLY and OK, they do not take effect until logout/login. Not a big deal.

3. I can't drag and drop things for the launcher to the panel, however adding from the classic menu does work.

4. Changed to the Breeze-Dark icon set, GTK icons still all black. Cannot edit their icons. I suspect this is because their menu entries are in a root-accessible area, not anywhere in ~. Firefox did come back with switching to BreezeDark, but nothing else (synpatic, for example) has returned. So adding icons to the panel is a disaster, as there is no way to tell what the blank spaces are.

5. Things are set so that applications only require single clicks. However, everything in SystemSettings requires a double click. Strange.

6. I still cannot add themes, color-schemes, etc from the "Get New..." dialogs, I get the message "Loading of providers from http://downloads.kde.org/ocs/providers.xml". If that's a fixed bug, it isn't fixed here. Any idea what needs to be reinstalled or reconfigured to fix this, or even a manual hack?

[claydoh]

[QUOTE=doctordruidphd;370233]Some things I have found out:

1. As expected, clearing out ~/.kde did nothing.[/url]
Right - all the plasma specific things, and many application configs are now in ~/.config

2. I do seem to be able to import color schemes from the /usr/share/kde4/apps/color-schemes directory, however, even when hitting APPLY and OK, they do not take effect until logout/login. Not a big deal.

3. I can't drag and drop things for the launcher to the panel, however adding from the classic menu does work.

I can drag and drop from the kmenu to the panel

4. Changed to the Breeze-Dark icon set, GTK icons still all black. Cannot edit their icons. I suspect this is because their menu entries are in a root-accessible area, not anywhere in ~. Firefox did come back with switching to BreezeDark, but nothing else (synpatic, for example) has returned. So adding icons to the panel is a disaster, as there is no way to tell what the blank spaces are.

Which plasma theme are you using? if you use the Dark Breeze icons, they may clash with a lighter Breeze desktop theme. Since plasma uses opengl for the widgets, you might try enabling/disabling/adjusting the Blur desktop effect, checking out the Background Contrast effect, and also look at the Compositor settings in the display configuration section of System Settings, Make sure that one of the opengl version is selected - xrender is a failsafe of sorts.

5. Things are set so that applications only require single clicks. However, everything in SystmSettings requires a double click. Strange.

6. I still cannot add themes, color-schemes, etc from the "Get New..." dialogs, I get the message "Loading of providers from http://downloads.kde.org/ocs/providers.xml". If that's a fixed bug, it isn't fixed here. Any idea what needs to be reinstalled or reconfigured to fix this, or even a manual hack?

I can't reproduce any of these, and haven't seen the Get New Stuff error since probably February.
Are you fully up to date? You are running 15.04, correct, and not 14.10 with the plasma 5 ppas added, or a 14.10+plasma5 ppas upgraded to 15.04? What does trhe "About System" in system settings show for Plasma and Qt versions?

[doctordruidphd]

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate your help in trying to sort this out.

This is 15.04 upgraded from 14.10. There were (and are) no plasma5 or project neon ppa's installed.

 greenman@Crynfyd: ~[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#000000]$ uname -a [/COLOR]
Linux Crynfyd 3.19.0-12-generic #12-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 3 04:03:26 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x8
6_64 GNU/Linux
[/FONT]

About KDE says Frameworks 5.8.0; it's whatever installed with the upgrade, no ppas.

From About System:
KDE Plasma version 5.2.2
QT version 5.4.1


The drag and drop from kmenu to panel just doesn't work. When I tried it just now, with the Konsole item, I got a space on the panel, no icon, no functionality. Logout/login and the space went away. Weird.



I have tried both regular Breeze and Breeze Dark, all combinations of theme and icons. Same problems all around.

Messing with Blur was a disaster -- turning it off made the panel unusable. Compositor is set to OpenGL2.0; I tried 3.1, did not change any of the problems. Still no GTK icons. I tried switching back to the Oxygen icon set, still no gtk icons.
Also tried adjusting Background Contrast, did not correct the problem.

Still same error trying to download themes, etc.

Is there something that can be reinstalled or reconfigured that might fix the Get New error? I seem to remember this happened with KDE4 when it first came out, and eventually fixed itself with an update.

Edit: I tried creating a new user, all of the problems remain: can't drag to the panel, no gtk icons, can't "Get New...".

Edit further: toady's (4/14) upgrade to 5.9.0 did not change any of the problems.

[Hermiti]

Thanks for the video. It nicely lillustrates a the usability problem with icon size.

Dropping a shortcut to desktop has the default icon size something close to 1x1 mm.
If you are forced to resize those by hand, then all icons end up with a different size!?


[QUOTE=claydoh;370245][QUOTE=doctordruidphd;370233]Some things I have found out:

I can drag and drop from the kmenu to the panel

[doctordruidphd]

At this point I cannot drag and drop to either the panel or the desktop from the Kickoff.

[claydoh]

3. Most of the icons for gtk applications (firefox, etc) are coming up black. Do these all have to be reconfigured manually, or did something not upgrade properly?

Please list your:

1. Plamsa theme
2. color scheme
3. icon theme

And could you point me to any screenshots you posted? Old Claydoh The-One-Fingered can't seem to find them

[doctordruidphd]

Please list your:

1. Plasma theme: have tried Breeze, Breeze Dark, Luminate, Oxygen
2. color scheme: have tried Breeze, Breeze Dark, OpenSUSEorg, Obsidian Dark Green, a whole slew of them.
3. icon theme: have tried Breeze, Breeze Dark, Oxygen, Crystal Project, Kempelton, others.

Edit: since the "Get New" box doesn't work, I can't download any new ones. These are all ones either installed with the upgrade, or copied from KDE4.


Sorry, I don't have any screen shots, nothing to see except a black square where the icon should be. If it really matters I could try to figure out how to do that, but nothing really to see.

Also, an interesting thing is that if I go to Edit Applications in the Kickoff menu and search for synaptic (as an example), the icon is shown in the menu. But if I click on it to edit, the icon in the edit menu is blank. If I click on the icon, the chooser comes up, I can choose an icon, but it never gets copied into the edit menu, it just stays blank.

[claydoh]

I am trying to replicate what you have, hoping to make my system behave as yours does, in terms of the icons specifically, so which are you using currently?


if you want to try, ksnapshot is included be default, and you can either open it from the kmenu, or you can try your PrintScreen button, then add the image to a post.


I know it sounds silly, but I am kinda frustrated that I can't help people fix some of these niggles as I don't seem to have any of the issues to fix for the most part, even on a drive that's been upgraded successfully over 5 releases, and has an Nvidia gpu.

[richb]

I am trying to replicate what you have, hoping to make my system behave as yours does, in terms of the icons specifically, so which are you using currently?


if you want to try, ksnapshot is included be default, and you can either open it from the kmenu, or you can try your PrintScreen button, then add the image to a post.


I know it sounds silly, but I am kinda frustrated that I can't help people fix some of these niggles as I don't seem to have any of the issues to fix for the most part, even on a drive that's been upgraded successfully over 5 releases, and has an Nvidia gpu.

Same here except an Intel GPU.

[doctordruidphd]

I am trying to replicate what you have, hoping to make my system behave as yours does, in terms of the icons specifically, so which are you using currently?
.

I am using both 14.10 and 15.04, on separate partitions, so I can boot either.
This system has an nvidia gpu as well, but it's older, GTS240. Nonetheless, compositing seems to be working, albeit maybe a bit slower than 14.10.

I appreciate your help, as this is probably some idiosyncratic thing in the system where some file or configuration didn't get updated. Just haven't been able to find it.

I'll try the screenshots later, but really, nothing to see.

Edit: In trying to figure out how to use ksnapshot, I notice that the help system also does not work. Hitting the Help button, then ksnapshot handbook, I get a gui that says, "The requested operation could not be completed. Cannot Initiate the help protocol. Technical reason: Unable to Launch Process."

Edit further: Here is another problem that has popped up -- I can't navigate with Gwenview. In trying to look through snapshots, if I double click an image in Dolphin it brings up the image in Gwenview, but the nex/previous buttons don't do anything. If I try to enter a directory in Gwenview, it just brings up an error box.

Screenshots to follow.