Quick tiling merged

So, after a few days of full time testing, and some last minute consultations over style changes, I committed my quick tiling changes to kwin! What does this mean, exactly? Well, here's a screenshot of my current desktop.

Basically, it's now very possible, and very easy, to flip windows between taking up one half of a screen - and later on, restore them back to what they were with just one mouse movement or keystroke, the same as 'aero snap' in windows 7.

If you're interested in turning this on, and you're a trunk user, take a look at the 'Keyboard & Mouse' section in systemsettings, go to 'Global Keyboard Shortcuts', and search for 'quick tiling' in kwin.

After you've set them up (for me, it's meta+left and meta+right), make a window active, and hit one of the hotkeys.

If you're also interested in checking out the mouse drag, take a look at 'Desktop' -> 'Screen Edges' in systemsettings. The option you're after is 'Tile windows by dragging them to the side of the screen'. ;)

Next up for me? I'm not sure. I'll be sure to let you know when I do.

[oh, and sorry to planet readers for spamming you: i didn't realise planet would import my other kde posts when i added myself, and i promise i won't post again unless i've got something new to say now. ;)]

kde - first commit!

So, after waiting for a few days, I got a reply from KDE's sysadmin team, and I'm in. My first patch is also now in -- thanks much to Martin for comments, review, and assistance.

What does it do, I hear you ask?

Basically, if you use compositing, open systemsettings, and enable (or disable) plugins. Notice that flicker while it changes plugins? That's gone now.

Small, but a very nice usability enhancement.

Now, if only the KCMs weren't so ugly. Hm.

Dear Google

Dear Google,

We've been heavily in love for many a year now, and the mere mention of your name can still bring a twinkle to my eye and take my breath away...

...but at the same time, I'm really getting fucking sick of you sending my valid emails from bugtrackers and more to spam, and sending more spam to my inbox.

This is not cool.

I use gmail because you filter my mail for me, and usually, you do a good job. I'd hate to have to hand-filter the ~2k spam I get per day, so thanks for that.

But I'm almost willing to hand-filter ~2k spam to avoid ~3 valid mails a month going to junk, because each of those 3 can possibly cost me money or reputation.

So, sort your shit out.

Thanks,
A Concerned User.

Quick tiling

So, I said I'd write about it, and here it is.

This hackery, by the way, was all inspired by John (or, Special, as he's more commonly known). He started blabbing on about how wonderful Windows 7 is (yet again), and I wondered whether KDE had this particular part of wonderfulness: 'aero snap'. I quickly discovered that it had parts of it ('pack window to X' direction shortcuts), but I also found out that they basically sucked, so I started researching how best to implement it that night. I didn't make a lot of progress - I'm still very new to kwin.

The next day, I talked to Martin - who has been most helpful in making me feel welcome to the kwin (and more widely, the KDE) family -- hi!

He happened to tell me that he'd already written a lot of the snap stuff, so hooray, it was there. The bit that he *hadn't* done, however, was the very bit that I wanted: hotkeys.

So after he committed his work, I got down and dirty and started hacking, and in short order, I had hotkeys.

I then took it a step further, and added in geometry saving, so that windows also get restored back to their original size after no longer being snapped (or 'quick tiled' as we call it in kwin land).

Night drew to a close, and it was still rather buggy and annoying in places, so when I got home from work the following day, I hacked some more, and that's where I am right now: kwin now has hotkey support *and* screen edge support for quick tiling ("aero snap") that works with maximized windows, saves geometry and restores it when un-tiled/maximized correctly, and much, much more.

All in all, I'm quite proud of what I've managed to achieve given my (so far) limited exposure to the kwin codebase, and also thanks to the rather ..unique.. way some of the geometry code is structured.

Hopefully I'll be useful in helping make some more sense out of all this as time goes by. ;)

1.2.0 released!

I suppose I should have actually written about this a while ago, but InspIRCd 1.2.0 is (finally) released.

It's been a long time coming, and a hell of a lot of work, but I think we're now set up to reap the rewards. The number of bug reports we've had since release is practically a record low (1-2), and adoption has been huge, although most of the 1.2 users we've had all the way along the release path (RCs etcetera).

I'd like to throw a huge thanks to the other developers and all of our testers, as well as families and friends who have stood with us during this often testing time, and give you all kudos for putting up with us.

Here's to 2.0!

kde & kwin

As you may (or may not) know, I'm a big KDE fan. I've been using it (on and off, more or less on a daily or at least weekly basis) since 4.0, and loving it. I think graphically and "feel"wise, things have taken huge leaps forward since 3.5, and that's something I'd like to encourage.

With this in mind, it's something I set out months ago to achieve, but I really feel like I'm starting to help out, and apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks this.

I've been dropping a few patches for various things over to the kwin folks, the latest one being to add hot-key and window size/position saving to Martin's recently committed "quick tiling" (think aero snap) feature. I'm just about done with that patch, but that's not what this post is about...

Martin suggested last night that I apply for KDE SVN access, and that's exactly what I've done. Hopefully this will provide impetus to me to get my finger out and get more work done, assuming it gets approved.

I'll still be contributing either way, it's fun to see my work directly having an effect on the environment I use, and knowing that it will be used by thousands of people is all the more exciting. I hope I can eventually help drive kwin forwards and fix up lots of interesting problems on the way.