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Updates for Plasma Software Engineer & plasma-keyboard

· 5 min read

Its been a minute since my last posts when I went over plasma-keyboard and its new diacritics feature, and the mega-sprint in Graz.

Overview​

I've been busy with a whole lot of things, but here's a brief highlight:

  • Tons of bugfixes for plasma-keyboard and the diacritics feature after some distros set plasma-keyboard to be on by default. This unexpected new batch of testers found a host of bugs that warranted a bunch of frenetic bugfixing after the launch of Plasma 6.7; thankfully these were successful and the flow of bug reports slowed
  • Improved the plasma-keyboard documentation for new contributors
  • Added a bunch of unit tests for plasma-keyboard; a few months ago we had 0% test coverage and now we have 57% of C++ code covered by tests (would prefer it higher, but progress!)
  • Added apidox to some difficult kwin code
  • plasma-setup maintenance (we've had new contributors 🎉, bugs, proposals, etc)
  • In relation to the STF grant to KDE, I've been doing technical review on behalf of the e.V. for all the changes being done (spoiler alert: a massive amount of amazing work has been/is being done!)
  • A whole bunch of gardening, reviews, bug triage/fixing, etc — not so much of the fun stuff I would like such as the new plasma-keyboard features I have planned, but important work that has been needful
  • Fixed the OSK (on-screen keyboard) button on the lock screen, and added a matching one to plasma-login-manager
  • Hopefully being merged in time for 6.8: redesigned/fixed up system tray applet for plasma-keyboard

ci-healthcheck​

I created a utility to check the health of KDE CI along with a web dashboard to visualize the results, and began making weekly updates on the state of all Plasma's CI health on the mailing list.

screenshot of the ci-healthcheck dashboard

In the beginning we regularly had a dozen or more repos with CI failing on master, dozens of repos whose CI hadn't been run in months or in a few cases years, and 14% of repos configured to report failing tests in the MR view.

Now we usually never have more than 1 or 2 repo with failing CI in master any given week and even had a few weeks in a row with no failing CI, every Plasma repo runs its CI against master at least once a week to catch issues, and fully 94% of Plasma repos are configured to report failing tests in the MR view.

I consider this a massive success! 🎉🎉🎉

Still more that can be done to improve the reports and CI health, but kudos to everyone for helping trim the fat and keep our software stack healthy and reliable! 🍪

plasma-morekeys​

There have been requests for plasma-keyboard to support full-sized keyboard layouts, however there has been debate about if that is appropriate to have in plasma-keyboard; such a feature seems like it would be rather niche, while adding a fair amount of complexity and maintenance burden.

Full-sized layouts wouldn't add any benefit for the vast majority of users who want a way to type in a search, a text message, etc — it seems like a much rarer user who would want to perform desktop keyboard shortcuts, use vim in a terminal, change tty from their OSK instead of a real keyboard, etc.

The super talented Aleix created plasma-morekeys as a solution for those who want a full keyboard layout that simply emulates a real keyboard and can do all of the above mentioned things like keyboard shortcuts, and more.

screenshot showing plasma-morekeys working with a terminal

This is intended as a test; it was put together quickly so those who need this feature can try it and provide feedback. If it proves successful then we can transition it to an official project, perhaps provide integration with plasma-keyboard to make choosing/using it seamless.

If you are one of the people with interest in a full-size keyboard layout for your OSK, please give it a try:

  • Install the plasma-morekeys flatpak (consider this alpha software!):
curl -L -o /tmp/plasma-morekeys.flatpak "https://nextcloud.merritt.codes/s/x4gqrs596NPYarF/download" && flatpak install --user --or-update --bundle /tmp/plasma-morekeys.flatpak
  • Test out how it works for your usecases
  • If you encounter bugs or find it isn't quite working how you require, report it and tell us what's wrong and what your usecase is so we can try and address it

Akademy​

Its just over a week until Akademy!! I'm looking forward to seeing a whole bunch of my KDE family again in Graz, and the chance to get some important work done together.

I have a bit of face blindness, so please don't be offended if I can't recognize everyone on sight! (I often rely on other cues like mannerisms, hair style, voice, etc)

I will try my best to be outgoing, but if I come across as a very anxious wallflower please know that I am friendly and super happy to see you all, and I appreciate the social butterflies pulling me into the mix! 😆

See you soon! 👋👋👋