Time for your weekly dose of Usability & Productivity! We’ve got some good stuff today, including some nice improvements for the Open & Save dialogs–with a lot more on that front to come soon!

Additionally, another major bug worth highlighting has been fixed! Previously, image slideshows used for the desktop wallpaper or in a media frame widget would leak memory like crazy, eventually crashing the system. Veteran KDE developer David Edmundson traced this to a Qt bug and submitted a patch that’s been accepted! It’ll go into Qt 5.11 which hasn’t been released yet, so go bug your distros to backport the fix into their Qt 5.9.x or 5.10.x branches, as we plan to do for the upcoming Kubuntu 18.04 release. Soon KDE Plasma users will once again be able to use slideshow wallpapers without blowing up their computers!

But wait, there’s more…

New Features

When audio is set to switch to new sources that become active, this is now indicated with an on-screen display depicting the new device (KDE Phabricator revision D12083, implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik):



You can (once again!) copy the text of the date and time from the Clock widget (KDE bug 355190, implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Bernhard Schiffner))

Bugfixes

Fixed a bug that prevented removable devices from automounting correctly (KDE bugs 391706, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12.5 and KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Stefan Brüns)

Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma to crash when switching the desktop from Folder View to Desktop View (KDE bug 391642, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by David Edmundson)

Fixed a bug that could cause Konsole to not copy long text correctly under certain circumstances (KDE bug 352616, fixed in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Mariusz Glebocki)

Fixed a bug that could cause Gwenview to not update an image’s thumbnail in the Thumbnail bar after rotating it (KDE bug D11714, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)

Fixed a bug in Gwenview that could cause an image’s thumbnail to not update properly after undoing a crop or rotate operation (KDE bug 356998, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)

Fixed a bug in Gwenview that could cause changed shortcuts to not take effect until after the program was restarted (KDE bug 389331, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)

Fixed a bug causing Baloo (KDE’s file indexing service) to incorrectly

handle complex boolean queries (KDE bug 392620, fixed in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Stefan Brüns)

UI Polish & Improvement

Columns in KDE Open & Save dialogs are now always sized correctly, and resize appropriately as the window is resized (KDE bugs 354388, 338502, 196508, 177743, and 96638, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Scott Harvey):



The Open dialog now opens in the correct location when using a file located on a remote filesystem (KDE bug 374913, improved in KDE Plasma 5.12.5, authored by Alex Richardson)

A consistent (and better) icon is now used for “configure” everywhere (KDE Phabricator revision D12034, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by me, Nate Graham):







The login screen now uses the same icon as the Lock screen for the “find or log in as other user” feature (KDE bug 392830, improved in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Scott Harvey)

Dolphin’s Information Panel can now optionally show condensed absolute dates rather than long relative dates – try right-clicking on it! (KDE bug 392352, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0)

Gwenview now displays a better background for parts of images that are transparent, and lets the user configure more alternate backgrounds if desired (KDE Phabricator revision D11630, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger):



Gwenview now honors the chosen background color setting for SVG images (KDE bug D11629, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger)

Gwenview’s transition effect between images has been improved (KDE bug 373161, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger)

Dolphin’s “Open path” and “Open path in new folder” actions now scroll to and highlight the selected file (KDE bug 377510, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by me, Nate Graham)

Non-square icons can now be used for the Application Launcher’s button (KDE Phabricator revision D12161, improved in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik):

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