Gwenview is a core KDE app, and an important tentpole of the Usability & Productivity initiative.

However, a few months ago Gwenview had no maintainer and few contributions. It was still a jewel, but was starting to bit-rot. Fast-forward to today: a lively crew of interested contributors are improving it daily, fixing bugs and resolving UI papercuts. Check out the Gwenview Phabricator project; it’s a hotbed of activity!

Gwenview highlights the value of joining a community over going your own way. Apps developed by a single person are vulnerable to dying when that person leaves the project, but apps with many developers can outlive the loss of any individual contributor.

Before starting a new project all by yourself, please consider joining an existing project whose design vision you can live with–it will be far more likely to outlive your interest in it. KDE offers a rich assortment of mature and popular cross-platform software already in use by people all over the world, so there are a lot of great options here!

Anyway, the new Gwenview team has been hard at work knocking out polish and fit-and-finish papercuts and adding new features. Here’s an assortment of what they’ve been up to recently:

New Features

Gwenview now has a “Fill” feature that will make the image always fill the entire viewport (KDE bug 195579, implemented in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Silas Lenz)

Bugfixes

Fixed a bug where the upper selection handles could become inaccessible iun full screen mode (KDE Phabricator revision D10876, fixed in KDE Applications 17.12.3, authored by Henrik Fehlauer)

Fixed a bug that caused SVG images to not be scaled up when “Enlarge smaller images” is set in Gwenview’s Configure window (KDE bug 364822, fixed in KDE Applications 17.12.3, authored by Henrik Fehlauer):



UI improvements & polish

Back and forward icons are now more appropriate, and all the buttons in the Save confirmation window now have icons (KDE Phabricator revision D10847, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Andrew Crouthamel):





Replaced a few uses of -symbolic icons with regular ones, for better compatibility with non-Breeze icon themes (KDE Phabricator revision D10843, fixed in KDE Applications 17.12.3, authored by Andrew Crouthamel)

icons with regular ones, for better compatibility with non-Breeze icon themes (KDE Phabricator revision D10843, fixed in KDE Applications 17.12.3, authored by Andrew Crouthamel) Selection and accent colors in full screen mode now match the system color scheme (KDE Phabricator revision D10649, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Huon Imberger):



The Crop and Red Eye Removal toolbars now look right in full screen mode (KDE Phabricator revision D10763, fixed in KDE Applications 17.12.3, authored by Huon Imberger):



The thumbnail bar now remembers whether it was shown or hidden while in full screen mode (KDE Phabricator revision D10785, fixed in KDE Applications 17.12.3, authored by Huon Imberger)

Gwenview now starts in full screen mode if it was in full screen when last quit, like other KDE apps do (KDE bug 383093, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)

The URL navigator now has consistent and appropriate margins in full screen mode (KDE Phabricator revision D10881 fixed in KDE Applications 17.12.3, authored by Huon Imberger)

There’s more on the way, too. One of the core KDE apps, Gwenview’s future is bright and getting brighter. Come check out the Phabricator project and join the Gwenview team!