30 November 2008

How to disable access keys in Konqueror

Well, this suggestion by Dimitri on how to disable access keys in Konqueror made my day:

kwriteconfig --file khtmlrc --group "Access Keys" --key Enabled --type bool false

Labels: GeekDiary, kde, konqueror

posted by GiacomoL @ 10:09 AM   0 comments links to this post

17 December 2007

Things I learnt last week on Python, PyKDE and KDE

• if PyKDE segfaults on you, don't despair: you are probably just using the wrong arguments for a method call. Get the right invocation and you'll be fine, no need for recompilation or other drastic measures.
• KCmdLineArgs is cool!
• how to use KConfig from python (saves so much time):
  conf = KConfig("your_rc_file") # ends up in $KDEHOME/share/config/
  conf.setGroup("yourgroup")
  conf.writeEntry("your_option","your_string")
  # non-string values DON'T work
  conf.sync() # this will actually write out the stuff
• KIO.NetAccess can save a lot of trouble storing passwords etc., seamlessly integrating with konqueror and kwallet
• distutils is cool, in its own way. PyPi integration looks terrific, can't wait to upload my stuff there...
• dependency checking in distutils still sucks. Either you go with setuptools, or you have to litter your setup.py with ugly import tests.
• kdedistutils (from pykdeextensions) looks useful enough
• the KDE TechBase is very good for KDE4. For KDE3, better to get the kdelibs-apidoc packages in your distro. Don't understand why (on Debian Etch) it doesn't register with QtAssistant.
• Google Translations can be weird.

I'm very close to releasing "KDelicious 3.0", which is a big improvement on pykeylicious. While adding a few "simple" options to manage how del.icio.us bookmarks are imported into Konqueror, I tried to refactor out nontrivial code from the main script into modules, and added a GUI to manage these options. I also pushed the integration with KDE in order to do things like transparent proxy support and kwallet integration, which spared me from maintain connection code, passwords, etc... I ended up with several files to distribute, which required a "proper" installer.

This release will still use the kdialog hacks. I'll get rid of them in 3.1, because I really want to put this out before the end of the week and get some feedback.

On bookmark synchronization: in an ideal world, synchronization would be done in the background, if we are online, every couple of hours, and by just pulling the more recent posts. But this is a bad world, and I'm a bad coder... KDelicious will only synchronize manually, will download all your bookmarks each time it runs, and will just try to stop you from getting banned by del.icio.us if you launch it too often. The only way around this would be to write a KService or a systray applet (which would also allow me to support other "minor" browsers like Opera), but this stuff is changing in KDE4 so I don't want to spend time on it before march.

After Christmas I'll think about putting the code on sourceforge (or savannah, or something) and have a proper homepage for it. But first, let's release ;)

Labels: Debian, delicious, GeekDiary, kde, kdelicious, konqueror, pykde, pykeylicious, PyQt, python

posted by GiacomoL @ 2:46 PM   0 comments links to this post

04 December 2007

pykeylicious 2.0

Why stop when you're having fun? :)

pykeylicious 2.0 is out, with a brand new feature: local synchronisation of your del.icio.us bookmarks! I hope people will like that one (and the few bug fixes here and there).

Now I'll probably take a break; further features (heck, even the current ones) will require a configuration screen, and there is only so much you can do by leveraging kdialog. The logical step would be to implement a "proper" PyQt application, which will require a bit of time and effort; in the short term, I'll probably just release a 2.5 version to support system-wide installs (the only feature from konqil.icio.us that I didn't replicate).

Labels: delicious, GeekDiary, kde, konqueror, pykeylicious, python

posted by GiacomoL @ 10:35 PM   0 comments links to this post

29 November 2007

On pykeylicious, Python vs Perl, and the state of Konqueror

If you use KDE, as I do, you should check out KDE-apps; it's a nice site full of all sorts of programs and add-ons for the desktop environment, from full-featured applications like K3B and Amarok to simple enhancement to the UI, kicker replacements, etc etc.

On this site, there is a fantastic little feature that allows you to "subscribe" to an application; when the application is changed/updated, you get a reminder via email. I personally subscribed to a few little apps (KShutdown, QtEmu, kio-locate...) that are not included in the standard KDE and are often off-the-radar for mainstream distribution packagers, so they are a bit difficult to track in the regular ways.

One of these apps was konqil.icio.us, an addition to the Konqueror right-click menu to do a few things with del.icio.us. Last night I found the email saying that a new version was out, so I went there and downloaded it; while reading the description, I immediately thought "why do I need to do all this messing with folders and permissions, a little installer could do it for me!". Then I checked the dependencies, and found that the script was in Perl... there was no chance I'd write an installer in Perl (I hate it) and send it to the original developer; also, adding a dependency on python for the installer looked a bit silly. So I decided to rewrite the script in python, add the installer, and upload it, and pykeylicious was born.

All this reminded me of how easily "tweakable" Konqueror (and KDE in general) is. You add a file in the right place under $HOME/.kde/, and you have just hooked the interface to your programs and scripts. The problem is often finding the right place; documentation exists in non-obvious places, as KDE developers tend to talk more about the C++ infrastructure.

I personally think this is one of the factors that stopped people from moving to Konqueror from Mozilla/Firefox: developing third-party extensions seems hard in comparison. This might or might not be the case; as konqil.icio.us demonstrated, it is fairly trivial to build a simple extension... however, if you want to manipulate webpages and the internal DOM, you have to write a C++ plugin, which might be easy for C++ coders, which net-people usually are not. Net-people like "easy" languages like java, javascript, python or ruby.

Last time I brought this up (yes, it's one of my pet-subjects) on the pykde list, I found out that yes, you can probably build plugins in python, but you have to jump through several hoops and basically try to fake that you are a C++ program. Not good enough. The day this sort of things becomes easy is the day that Konqueror goes back to be a serious alternative to FF in the Linux world.

Labels: GeekDiary, kde, konqueror, python

posted by GiacomoL @ 5:19 PM   2 comments links to this post