Plasma NM 0.8.99 (AKA 0.9.0_rc4)

It has been almost two months since the last release so I think it is time to release Plasma NM 0.8.99 (AKA 0.9.0_rc4). By the way this is my 100th post in my blog :-)

MD5Sum: 0b432b74b3b0a8fc16d553d4cfc0076c
SHA1Sum: 18d625a25b90f9591a5cfdabcf77269eb3ba33e0

Changelog:

291786: Do not use null pointer when updating WirelessInterfaceItem.
291798: Show APN string for the APN seleted by the user in Mobile Connection Wizard.
291122: Hide non-Internet APNs in Mobile Connection Wizard.
. Fix security type identification for wifi shared connections.
290715: fix certificate and key filenames with non-ASCII characters.
290684: fix crash when restarting NetworkManager.
. Small translation string changes.
. Add some checks to prevent crashes.
. Do not crash if no security type has been detected.
289856: Small increase in the height of connection items.
. Fix password flags handling.
289812: support WPA ad-hoc wifi connections. Also allows to create WPA shared wifi connections.
289072: Ask for secrets only once per connection attempt.
. Fix some spelling errors and add some more messages in main CMakeLists.txt.
. Abort cmake if no suitable NetworkManager headers are found.
288831: Fix WPA2 configuration dialog.
. Remove some unneeded files and code.
287794: Change mobile broadband (wwan) checkbox into a tristate checkbox.
285637: Change networkmanagement_configshell to inform errors through dialogs instead of console messages. That is important to make bluetooth tethering errors visible when using Bluedevil to launch networkmanagement_configshell.
. Try not to crash if NM does not respond to the AddConnection call.
287757: Fix crash when no NetworkManager backend is found.
268021: Disable connected notification by default since VPN connections can now use system tray icon to indicate connection's activation state.
287002: Caches deviceUni and activatableType in RemoteActivatable class to prevent dbus calls from freezing the desktop.

The following languages have more than 80% of strings translated:

ar ca ca@valencia cs da de el es et hr hu it km lt nb nds nl pa pl pt pt_BR ro ru sv uk zh_TW

Work and spare time shortage

In the last weeks I have had too little time to blog or to do other things. As you already know my job at basysKom is very related to Plasma Active. Version 2 was released last month and we are working to implement new features and improve the current ones for version 3. Several task proposals are circulating in Plasma Active mailling list. In fact there are more things to do than developers to implement them, so if you are a developer and wish to implement your tablet app using Plasma Active API or improve something in Plasma Active pick your task.

In the Plasma NM front I have been fixing some few bugs, applying some patches that came to me (keep sending them, they are very important :-)) and changing Plasma NM to use asynchronous DBus API as much as possible. This last change is to prevent Plasma NM from causing freezes in plasma desktop, which is related to bug #287002. It is half implemented and I do not know when it is going to be ready. Anyway, it is an extense and invasive change, then it is not going to nm09 branch, only to master.

As you already noticed the usability changes are stalled. I really need help to keep improving Plasma NM. If you have interest in improving Plasma contact me and I will help with the first steps.

More changes in Plasma NM GUI

The changes made the new implementation looks a little more like the old one :-)

• Changed disconnect icon to user-offline.png;
• Re-add the interface list, now it is hidden by default and can be toggled by the new "Show Interfaces..." button;
• The interface list is always shown when clicking on an activated connection. If the connection list was hidden before clicking then it will be hidden after clicking on the "back" button in interface details window;
• Add a disconnect button in interface details window. The current disconnect button is small, someone can wrongly tap on the connection item instead of the disconnect button, which will trigger the interface details window. With a disconnect button in interface details window the user can still disconnect instead of trying to tap the disconnect button again. The button is hidden when the connection is not activated;
• Improvements in the filtering algorithm in connection list;
• Show number of suppressed networks in the m_showMoreItem.

The result is below (use this link if you do not see the video):

And yes, I have noticed the graphical artifacts, the misaligned traffic plotter, the plasmoid's popup always closing when clicking on the "Hide Interfaces" button (it does not happen with 3D effects disabled, do not ask me why) and the not smoth plasmoid resizing. Except for the misaligned traffic plotter I do not think I can fix the other problems.