I tried KDE 4.2.2 in Mandriva 2009.1 RC 2 today and encountered a couple of layout inconsistencies which give KDE 4 a quite ugly and unprofessional look. I took some screenshots in order to show what I mean. I wonder why there are such inconsistencies in KDE 4 and how non-KDE applications often manage to look quite good even when they use Qt, too.

Quit dialog:

"Rechner ausschalten" and "Abbrechen" are partly written over the buttons, "Rechner neu starten" almost, too. The downward arrows are not aligned with anything, neither horizontally nor vertically.

Calendar, when clicking the clock in the panel:

The input field for the week of the year is not horizontally aligned with the input field for the date and the number is written not in the center of the field but in its lower right corner. The whole window is drawn partially over the panel and while it has a visible border to its left, right and top, there is no visible border at its bottom, which looks odd.

Menu and Panel:

The application menu is drawn partially over the panel, too. The icons and taskbar entries in the panel are not centered vertically, on top of the panel there is an unused space, several pixels high.

KNotes, dialog:

At both tabs, the tab titles are partially written over or border at the icons they belong to.

KNotes:


When the KNotes window is not activated anymore, its title, containing date and time, is re-centered over the width of the whole window, which means that it moves to the right, because the close button in the upper right corner is removed from the title bar. Also, any text in the Notes window is moved upwards, because the title bar is drawn thinner. (This can't be seen on the screenshots, because I didn't enter any notes)

Quassel:

The text in the menu bar is not centered vertically and starts farther to the right than usual, i.e. there is too much unused space between "Datei" and the window border. I found this in other applications, too, for instance in Dolphin. There are more layout flaws and inconsistencies in Quassel, which I marked in the screenshot.

The calendar and KMenu blend perfectly with Panel in trunk currently.
The logout dialog does not show the same problem yours does, but that may still be valid. It is probably best to file a bug report if you are running KDE 4.2+

melkart wrote:I tried KDE 4.2.2 in Mandriva 2009.1 RC 2 today and encountered a couple of layout inconsistencies which give KDE 4 a quite ugly and unprofessional look.

Just a question first (since I haven't tried Mandriva in ages): is this the default configuration or have you changed anything?

melkart wrote:"Rechner ausschalten" and "Abbrechen" are partly written over the buttons, "Rechner neu starten" almost, too. The downward arrows are not aligned with anything, neither horizontally nor vertically.

I've noticed the downward-arrow alignment problem too in some themes, but the text layout may be due to the font you're using. I say may because it's not necessarily the case. It could also be that the logout dialogue is a bit "allergic" to too long strings. If it's the latter, I would definately call it a bug (either in KDE or Mandriva). I would first try to use English and see if the same problem occurs there though.

melkart wrote:The input field for the week of the year is not horizontally aligned with the input field for the date and the number is written not in the center of the field but in its lower right corner.

See above.

melkart wrote:The application menu is drawn partially over the panel, too. The icons and taskbar entries in the panel are not centered vertically, on top of the panel there is an unused space, several pixels high.

THAT menu is not a default KDE4 menu. It actually looks like the KDE3 menu ported to KDE4, and I've never seen it before in KDE4. I wouldn't be surprised if that is a Mandriva-port, and if so: it's a Mandriva problem and not a general KDE problem.

melkart wrote:At both tabs, the tab titles are partially written over or border at the icons they belong to.

That looks like the KDE3 version of Knotes.

I don't use Quassel so I won't comment on that.

I don't think, however, that the problems you've listed and provided screenshots of are symptomatic of KDE4.2.2. Why? Because it looks like a a rather peculiar mix of KDE4 + KDE3 apps + Mandriva specific things. And that will lead to inconsistencies, major or minor.

Kryten2X4B wrote:

melkart wrote:The application menu is drawn partially over the panel, too. The icons and taskbar entries in the panel are not centered vertically, on top of the panel there is an unused space, several pixels high.

THAT menu is not a default KDE4 menu. It actually looks like the KDE3 menu ported to KDE4, and I've never seen it before in KDE4. I wouldn't be surprised if that is a Mandriva-port, and if so: it's a Mandriva problem and not a general KDE problem.

That is the "Classic Application Menu" and is shipped by KDE, from 4.1 I believe. It is available by right clicking on Kickoff with Plasma unlocked and selecting "Switch to Classic Menu"

bcooksley wrote:That is the "Classic Application Menu" and is shipped by KDE, from 4.1 I believe. It is available by right clicking on Kickoff with Plasma unlocked and selecting "Switch to Classic Menu"

Hm, it doesn't at all look like the classic menu I have (under 4.2.2). Mine doesn't have a "All programs", or a "Recently used" list at the top. Or a submenu under "Leave" for that matter. Or an "Actions" heading.

@Kryten2X4B: These are options available from the configuration of the menu launcher, at least on my Trunk installation. If they are not present on your 4.2 install, I would say Mandriva backported it.

bcooksley wrote:The calendar and KMenu blend perfectly with Panel in trunk currently.

That's good to hear. I hope the next KDE Four Live CD will be out soon so I can try out myself.

The logout dialog does not show the same problem yours does, but that may still be valid. It is probably best to file a bug report if you are running KDE 4.2+

Done.

Kryten2X4B wrote:Just a question first (since I haven't tried Mandriva in ages): is this the default configuration or have you changed anything?

It's the default configuration, with German set as system language.

I've noticed the downward-arrow alignment problem too in some themes, but the text layout may be due to the font you're using. I say may because it's not necessarily the case. It could also be that the logout dialogue is a bit "allergic" to too long strings. If it's the latter, I would definately call it a bug (either in KDE or Mandriva). I would first try to use English and see if the same problem occurs there though.

With English there is no such problem.

That looks like the KDE3 version of Knotes.

I think you are right. It says it's KNotes version 3.9, using KDE 4.2.2.

About the calendar and the input field for the week of the year: I just tried the openSuSE KDE Four Live CD 4.2.2. Looks quite different, but here the input field for the week is not aligned vertically with the input field for the date, either - it reaches farther to the bottom. Also the window is partially drawn over the panel, too.

Code: Select all

KNotes version 3.9, using KDE 4.2.2

You are using the KDE 4 version of KNotes, since Qt3 / KDE 3 applications need to be ported to Qt4 / KDE 4 before they can use them.

The input field for the week appears to be vertically aligned with the date input field on Trunk also.

bcooksley wrote:@Kryten2X4B: These are options available from the configuration of the menu launcher, at least on my Trunk installation. If they are not present on your 4.2 install, I would say Mandriva backported it.

So it seems. I was wrong about the knotes version (I was fooled by the settings dialogue...I accidently compared the general settings with the note-by-note settings) so it seems Mandriva is only using 4.x apps.

Which changes my conclusion: now it instead seems like Mandriva is _too_ liberal in backporting things. While backporting can be useful (hey, I'm using Suse so I'm used to that...) it can sometimes make things less than optimal and my gut-feeling right now is that at least some of the OP's problems stems from that.

Kryten2X4B wrote:

bcooksley wrote:@Kryten2X4B: These are options available from the configuration of the menu launcher, at least on my Trunk installation. If they are not present on your 4.2 install, I would say Mandriva backported it.

So it seems. I was wrong about the knotes version (I was fooled by the settings dialogue...I accidently compared the general settings with the note-by-note settings) so it seems Mandriva is only using 4.x apps.

Which changes my conclusion: now it instead seems like Mandriva is _too_ liberal in backporting things. While backporting can be useful (hey, I'm using Suse so I'm used to that...) it can sometimes make things less than optimal and my gut-feeling right now is that at least some of the OP's problems stems from that.

If you aren't running Mandriva cooker right now, how can you know if their backporting policy works OK or not? and reading what bcooksley said, he is running KDE trunk not 4.2.2, so he is saying that these options are available but he's not sure if they are in 4.2.2 or not, well they are available in 4.2.2, not backported.

medo3891 wrote:If you aren't running Mandriva cooker right now, how can you know if their backporting policy works OK or not? and reading what bcooksley said, he is running KDE trunk not 4.2.2, so he is saying that these options are available but he's not sure if they are in 4.2.2 or not, well they are available in 4.2.2, not backported.

Obviously I can't know, but I can suspect. I.e. bcooksley say he can see the vertically aligned week in trunk, as shown in Melkart's screenshot from 4.2.2. I can't on my 4.2.2 installation in OpenSUSE, and I couldn't in Kubuntu or Debian either. Unless it's something that's gone wrong with his installation, that suggests there's a Mandriva specific problem in that regard.

The same thing with the classic startmenu. There are some options there that are not available in a regular 4.2.2 (not in Suse at least), and at the same time there's a menu-problem that I haven't seen anywhere else.

Kryten2X4B wrote:The same thing with the classic startmenu. There are some options there that are not available in a regular 4.2.2 (not in Suse at least), and at the same time there's a menu-problem that I haven't seen anywhere else.

So you want to tell me that the menu layout in OpenSuse is the default kde4 layout, I think not. They customize it. Something similar, but on a lower scale, FC change the kmenu icon, customizations, right?

Still a hands off approach isn't the same as actually running the distro, I think

medo3891 wrote:So you want to tell me that the menu layout in OpenSuse is the default kde4 layout, I think not. They customize it. Something similar, but on a lower scale, FC change the kmenu icon, customizations, right?

No, I'm not saying that. OpenSuse is quite liberal when it comes to backporting and patching things too, and sometimes that break things. Not necessarily the menu, but something. And yes, I think they should be more careful too. All I'm saying is:

1. Distros should be _very_ careful about backporting things. After all, to continue with the classic menu example, the backported feature(s) may not even be finished yet and most likely have some bugs that needs ironing out before release.
2. When there are problems, the problems should be taken up at the appropriate place. That is, if it's an upstream problem: file a bug/wishlist at bko. If it's a disto-specific problem, use their bugtracker.

It's often hard to know where the problem is coming from though, which is why I can understand why people can think that problems showing up in their distro of choice may be a more general problem (i.e. looking ugly, inconsistent, and/or unprofessional) rather than a distro X or distro Y problem.

Although I think there is a difference between backporting and branding your product. The first one requires code, the latter one doesn't. That isn't meant to say graphic designers are second-class, only that replacing graphics is not as likely to cause problems.

But kde4.2.2 is in Mandriva cooker, cooker is the development branch of Mandriva, so new stuff land in cooker first, get tested and break all they want then get fixed. A stable release is made every 6 months; in a stable release no new stuff are backported, only bug fixes and no major upgrades. (the reason why Mandriva 2009.0 is still running 4.1.x, the policy is no major version upgrades in a stable release as this would defy the definition of stable) .

BTW a Mandriva 2009.1 is due to be released in a few days time.

medo3891 wrote:But kde4.2.2 is in Mandriva cooker, cooker is the development branch of Mandriva, so new stuff land in cooker first, get tested and break all they want then get fixed.

As it should be, but I saw nothing mentioned in the original post about the poster using cooker. It said Mandriva 2009.1 RC 2, which should be considered almost ready for prime time.

Still, regardless of where the problems stem from: I hope the Mandriva maintainers are aware of the problems and that they will be fixed before the final release hits the servers.