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Here I focus on another small issue, just try to make KDE even better

I take a snapshot of my volume control scaling icon(sorry I do not know the exact name for this)



As you can see the whole volume range is divided into 23 small cells. There is nothing wrong to use this number. But one would think when he press the volume up and down button the volume shown here will change cell by cell. In fact it is not. For example, on my thinkpad whenever I press the volume up/down button the volume scales by 1/25(so if I press 25 times the volume will go from lowest to highest). Assuming kmix would now mapp the current volume linearly from minimum to maximum, the white region would definitely not reside into the cells, as shown in this picture, it lays BETWEEN cells.
It is over all not a big issue, just makes me a little confusing though. I would think different hardware venders using different value for their volume scaling, so the mismatching between volume white region and cells probably always happens.

It is probably better not using the cell like separation for this.

I hope someone could search the reason from kde-usability mailing list why it was chosen to have progress bar with blocks what were not whole blocks but possible partial blocks as well.

If I remember correctly, it was just about having a same progress bar along the plasma style (that is depending plasma style, Air and Oxygen) and having blocks was someway easier to calculate when compared to just plain progress bar. The reason for not having whole blocks but just blocks overlaid the plain progress bar was about speed or progression visiblity reason or something.

I would take the "per block" instead what we currently have, as it does look weird currently.

I wondered about this issue too before. And certainly the "black design" is disputable. But I dont really see a way to match this design to the distinct steps certainly being present in the way the volume is controlled.
Reason for this is: the actual step size does not really depend on the hardware or a central place in KDE, but on _how_ you control the volume.
The typical step from a hardware point of view is the far to small to be visualized, so most software controls issue a factor, a step size to switch with each button press. For example my 'pommed' allow me to set a value between 1% and 50% of the total volume space for a single step. On the other hand amarok also controls my volume, and skype does to, and... But they all use their own step size and unit.

So the only way I see would to get rid completely of a layout/design that devides the volume span into distinct blocks and to offer something more 'analogue'. Something more like a progress bar. But this would lack to look like something from an amplifier or stereo set, so the intuitive recognition would be lower...

I just looked at the code and the volume meter bar is alsways 12 times the width of the icon (which is 24px wide), so it is 288px wide.
I don’t know how to determin the width of the blocks that plasma provides, though, you can’t just hardcode this, or it will be broken with other plasma themes.