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1. Christian Horn (globalc@chaos.social)'s status on Saturday, 25-Feb-2023 21:21:14 UTC Christian Horn

   You should know ~2000 Kanji - how to input these with a normal keyboard?
   An attempt to explain how Japanese input works:
   https://blog.fluxcoil.net/posts/2023/02/japanese-keyboard-input/

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Saturday, 25-Feb-2023 21:21:04 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Fred

     Hey @globalc, do you use ibus or fcitx5? With mozc or kkc? On GNOME or KDE?
     @laubblaeser #japanese #linux

   • Christian Horn (globalc@chaos.social)'s status on Saturday, 25-Feb-2023 21:21:06 UTC Christian Horn

     in reply to

     • Fred

     @laubblaeser Right. I had 26 in mind too, looked at a reference which was old and seen 23 there. Thanks for the hint!

   • Fred (laubblaeser@ruhr.social)'s status on Saturday, 25-Feb-2023 21:21:13 UTC Fred

     in reply to

     @globalc
     > The Latin alphabet which is widely used has just 23 characters, so normal keyboards simply map one letter to each key.

     Maybe I'm severely mistaken but last time I checked, the modern version of the Latin alphabet currently consists of 26 characters (which I can also all find on my keyboard). Why did you mention 23? This was only the case before J/V/W were added, so maybe a bit outdated.

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Saturday, 25-Feb-2023 23:16:09 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     @globalc I'm trying fcitx5 + mozc in Plasma Wayland on Fedora 38...

     ...and couldn't get it to work with KDE apps. Though it works in Gnome apps 🙃

   • Christian Horn (globalc@chaos.social)'s status on Saturday, 25-Feb-2023 23:16:11 UTC Christian Horn

     in reply to

     • Bernie

     @codewiz
     fcitx5/mozc/sway right now.
     Gnome is better integrated with ibus I would think (if it plays a role at all), as our devs are mostly working on ibus and Gnome is our default.
     Technically, also ibus/mozc or ibus/kkc would work now for me on sway.

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 03:57:21 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     @globalc The #KDE folks have been working hard to offset the reputation of releasing buggy software.

     #Plasma 5.37.0 was a particularly smooth release, the first one in which I didn't notice any regressions.

     There are a few of course, but they're being tracked and worked on aggressively:
     https://pointieststick.com/2023/02/24/this-week-in-kde-even-better-multi-monitor/#15-minute-bugs-resolved

   • Christian Horn (globalc@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 03:57:23 UTC Christian Horn

     in reply to

     • Bernie

     @codewiz I recognized that I did not use so many bells and whistles from KDE.. and I do not miss upgrade to new major KDE versions and seeing things breaking which worked before. Sway has the functionality I need, does it fast, and is not in the way. :)

     Granted, getting sway with the input methods to run initially was not easy either, see my rants on Mastodon. But now all works nicely.

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 21:42:57 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     @dropbear42 @globalc I have to say, the big GNOME 40 redesign addressed the main UX issues that made me switch to #KDE years ago. With 44, animations finally got smoother.

     I think they still need to embrace configurability a little more. They don't have to get to KDE levels but, come on, my phone is way more configurable than #GNOME!

     But it's definitely getting better, kudos to the developers.

   • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma: (dropbear42@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 21:42:58 UTC dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     in reply to

     • Bernie

     @globalc @codewiz Hiya. Some stuff, fwiw:

     1. My cheeky reply was to Bernie, re their typo.

     2. "Plasma is nice" --> yep, prolly why i've been a KDE4 to Plasma5 user since early 2014.

     3. You'll never catch me offering unsolicited praise to GNOME 😜 I require my DE to be adaptable to me, not vice versa. In fact, the day a post appears under my name, fangirling G, will be the day that the space-lizards finally captured me & substituted an evil replicant 😱

   • Christian Horn (globalc@chaos.social)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 21:43:00 UTC Christian Horn

     in reply to

     • Bernie
     • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     @dropbear42
     Does it count as positive if I say "it can only get better"?

     Joke aside, Plasma is nice, and still my first recommendation for example for my parents or others coming from Mac. I like it much more than Gno'we can remove this one button here'me. :)

     (All my own opinion, not my employers)
     @codewiz

   • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma: (dropbear42@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 26-Feb-2023 21:43:01 UTC dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     in reply to

     • Bernie

     @codewiz @globalc

     >#Plasma 5.37.0

     Ooooh! Is the Future a nice & kind place? 😜

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 01:37:28 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     @dropbear42 @globalc I agree that the decision to kill the system tray was premature, causing years of user suffering.

     Years later, #GNOME 44 is partially filling this gap with the introduction of "background apps":
     https://linuxiac.com/gnome-background-apps/

     #LinuxDesktop #linux

   • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma: (dropbear42@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 01:37:29 UTC dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     in reply to

     • Bernie

     @codewiz @globalc I acknowledge & respect that many peeps like gnome, but for me anyway, i just cannot take seriously any DE which:

     1. offers a default file manager aimed at kindergarten children who've not yet mastered their fine motor coordination, thus need ginormous amateur-hour file & folder iconography. If i put out crap like that, i'd be plain embarrassed.

     2. actively stops me using my MANY apps built on SystemTray capability for core functionality. What fools.

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 01:47:12 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     The Linux desktop needs a well-designed model for managed apps, but it's taking longer than expected.

     Android, iOS, macOS and even Windows have mature app stores with sandboxing, automatic updates, APIs for resource access and for requesting permissions.

     Linux has two competing standards (#Flatpak and #Snap) and multiple barely-working GUI installers: Gnome Software, Ubuntu Software Center, Plasma Discover. If you tried searching for apps, you know exactly what I mean.

     @dropbear42 @globalc

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 02:45:18 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:
     • Jason Francis

     @jf @dropbear42 No matter how badly designed, before removing an API that many popular apps rely on, you should at least have a replacement already implemented, but #GNOME didn't even have a design.

     This forced Ubuntu and other downstream distros to come up with *something* to keep the UX from breaking.

     Good developers don't merely design good APIs. They also design a smooth transition between old and new APIs.

   • Jason Francis (jf@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 02:45:19 UTC Jason Francis

     in reply to

     • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     @dropbear42 Yes, that is why I refer to distributions, e.g. this was supported by Ubuntu and a few others so they would keep the extension working whenever they did a release with a new GNOME version. So you could be reasonably sure an Ubuntu extension would work elsewhere.

     But even so, this was still trivial to keep working, I don't think the shell extension API for indicators has actually changed at all since the first release of GNOME 3 despite being considered "unstable"

   • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma: (dropbear42@fosstodon.org)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 02:45:21 UTC dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     in reply to

     • Bernie
     • Jason Francis

     @jf @codewiz @globalc Ofc i know of the extensions, but i also know, as does any other gnome user or temporary visitor, that inevitably extensions break with new gnome releases, & in some cases stay broken for monthS... some never recover, ie, their Devs walk away in disgust or despair [no doubt visualising Sisyphus].

   • Jason Francis (jf@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 02:45:22 UTC Jason Francis

     in reply to

     • Bernie
     • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:

     @codewiz @dropbear42 @globalc That was never "killed" it was always trivial to add it back with extensions, many distributions did that. However this has arguably caused worse problems because every API for it has been pretty flawed and caused broken behavior in apps. So I don't think it was premature, it likely should have been removed sooner.

     The background apps API is the only one that actually works correctly but it took this long just to design it.

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 02:54:40 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • dropbear42 🌈♀:arch: :plasma:
     • Jason Francis

     An example of a smooth transition is Pulseaudio -> Pipewire. Most users didn't even notice 👏

     An example of a badly managed transition was esound -> Pulseaudio, which broke sound in popular apps and games for multiple years 😩

     @jf @dropbear42

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 06:21:37 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Jason Francis

     @jf Probably my audio needs are very basic, and were covered when #Pipewire was deemed good enough to replace Pulseaudio in #Fedora.

     No software is perfect, that wasn't my point. I'd call it a smooth transition when 95% of users are happy, and the rest can easily rollback for some time.

   • Jason Francis (jf@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 06:21:39 UTC Jason Francis

     in reply to

     • Bernie

     @codewiz And BTW this is what I was getting at. One of the reasons why it was important to just remove it early was to *avoid* this situation where some unworkable API gets dumped into someone's lap who didn't ask for it, and they are stuck trying to figure out how to transition away from it forever.

     Pipewire is an interesting example because there are actually many broken edge cases with Pulse compat that likely won't ever be implemented, you can see them if you check the Pipewire bug tracker.

   • Jason Francis (jf@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 06:21:40 UTC Jason Francis

     in reply to

     • Bernie

     @codewiz I think I am understating just how broken the old APIs were. They are unworkable. Like they are so busted that there is no way to transition them without breaking them further. They just don't work. This was all written up here a few years ago: https://blog.tingping.se/2019/09/07/how-to-design-a-modern-status-icon.html

     Sure it would have been great to have the design of the background apps API twenty years ago! But it took lots of years of experience to just get to this point where it could be designed.

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 06:35:00 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Jason Francis

     #Wayland took years to reach feature parity with X11, and there are still some rough edges.

     Now suppose this was done without the escape hatch of an X11 session. Users with NVidia cards and users who need specific screen sharing apps would be up in arms.

     @jf

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 06:51:42 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Jason Francis

     Disrupting workflows which are important to a significant share of users undermines their trust. Doing so intentionally is even worse: it gets them *angry* at us developers! By now we should have learned the lesson.

     Apple and Microsoft, while not flawless, have done a better job at retaining their userbase than #GNOME and #KDE historically did.

     That's one reason - perhaps the top reason! - why it's never "the year of linux on the desktop".

     @jf #linux #linuxdesktop

   • Bernie (codewiz@mstdn.io)'s status on Monday, 27-Feb-2023 07:12:54 UTC Bernie

     in reply to

     • Jason Francis

     @jf I just finished reading the blogpost, which seems well written. I've always wondered why libappindciator wasn't deemed good enough.

     Now I know, but I'm not sure why we couldn't address the issues with minor API changes to keep apps working and buy us the time to develop a solid cross-desktop protocol.

     By the way, are the new Background Apps based upon systemd scopes? Do they work with Flatpak apps? Is there a FreeDesktop spec or other design documentation?