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    [ANN] Enhancements to Superkaramba

    some time ago - approx 12-18 months - i had a requirement
    to work on a "secure, useable" linux project. i selected,
    along with kmenubar, superkaramba for use with the project.

    superkaramba (0.35) as it stood is full of promise, full
    of great code, but is actually a pain. why? because users
    are expected to edit some stupid text file for a menu, that's
    the only reason why!

    so, i set about adding some enhancements where it would
    read the kde system menu information.

    i also spent many weeks rewriting the "kroller" theme which
    i had downloaded from kde-look.org.

    the results, which include the ability to communicate,
    programmatically, between themes, can be found here:

    http://hands.com/~lkcl/kroller.sez/

    the reason why i mention this is because kubuntu has
    a rollerbar.

    now.

    here's the limitations of kroller.sez, which can be easily
    overcome if using kde 3.4.

    the kde 3.3 "tooltip" is ****e. as you move the mouse over an icon, the tooltip is brought up with the first letter near to the cursor.
    you then move the mouse to the left, to the next icon,
    and the "tooltip" is activated on the next icon.

    however, if you move the mouse to the _right_, then it
    is only when you have moved the mouse far away enough
    from the "tooltip" - which is typically well in excess of
    128 pixels (about 2-3 icons) that the tooltip disappears
    and can "reactivate".

    ... did you note the bit about "2-3 icons"?

    anyway: this issue is solved in kde 3.4 because they
    have that lovely big flashey sxxxe

    ... but for kroller.sez, that wasn't an option (kde 3.4
    wasn't available at the time).... so i wrote my own
    tooltip equivalent, and i decided to make it... well...
    bouncey!

    as a result, it needed a 0.1 second refresh rate, and
    as a result of _that_ it needs to consume about 10%
    CPU (!).

    there are two ways to solve this:

    1) make superkaramba's refresh rate a parameter that
    can be changed: this would be a _really_ superior
    solution because you can activate on mouse-move-in
    and go mad with the CPU usage and then tone it down
    once you're done showing off.

    2) remove the bouncey tooltips, use standard kde tooltips
    instead, and go back to a 1 second
    mouse-move-responding rollerbar.

    have fun.

    l.

    #2
    Re: [ANN] Enhancements to Superkaramba

    hello, hello, well it's quite embarrassing: it's been
    such a long time that i looked at the superkaramba
    patch that it actually already _contains_ the re-timing
    python function, but i just didn't end up using
    it in kroller.sez yet

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      #3
      Re: [ANN] Enhancements to Superkaramba

      well, i decided to do an update - against latest CVS.
      patch is uploaded to sourceforge, too:
      http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index...51&atid=371891

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