On https://notes.kde.org/p/applications_19.04_new_features we collect features for the announcement text.
Proposed Schedule
Mar 25: All features collected
Mar 26: Start writing announcement text
Apr 07: Announcement text finalized
Apr 08: Announcement text committed for translation
Apr 13: Images/other media planning
Apr 17: Images/other media committed
Apr 18: Release!
| Status | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolved | None | T10636 Announcement text for the Applications 19.04 release | ||
| Resolved | xyquadrat | T10712 Applications 19.04 Video |
Could someone from the Promo team please check the proposed schedule and give feedback?
It looks good to me: No blockers and no coinciding events or announcements in the way. We'll ,make sure the 18th is kept free so there is nothing overshadowing this release.
KDE Apps are now available in Appimages, Flatpaks and Snaps, it would be good if the announcement pointed to these. I can talk to the relevant people and come up with useful text.
It would also be good if kde.org/applications wasn't a decade out of date, this is a long standing todo item of the community, maybe I can try to drive it forward for Apps 19.04 time.
Oooh! Good idea.
It would also be good if kde.org/applications wasn't a decade out of date, this is a long standing todo item of the community, maybe I can try to drive it forward for Apps 19.04 time.
Surely we can get that sorted for before the 17th, right?
We should also add version number data to the appstream files before release. @cfeck where's your script that updates version numbers again to add this? I'm thinking the 19.04 "external" version number is better to use then the random internal version number.
It would also be good if kde.org/applications wasn't a decade out of date, this is a long standing todo item of the community, maybe I can try to drive it forward for Apps 19.04 time.
Surely we can get that sorted for before the 17th, right?
Oh so naïve :) It's been ongoing for years
https://phabricator.kde.org/T10159
I've updated the etherpad document with content for Dolphin, Gwenview, Kate, Konsole, Okular, and Spectacle. It's quite a major release for them.
And yes, it would be lovely if we can update the tooling to embed a <release> tag in the AppStream files for this release.
Script to add a release version and date and remove old entries from appstream xml files
https://invent.kde.org/jriddell/appstream-metainfo-release-update
I added this to the Plasma release scripts now
Didn't we discuss it and decided that it's not a good idea? Especially the dates. Please hold on this (talking about editing the <release> tag)
URL for snaps: https://snapcraft.io/search?category=&q=kde (they haven't yet implemented a per-publisher page)
URL for appimages: https://www.appimagehub.com/search?projectSearchText=kde except they're all outdated and not maintained by KDE so best ignore it
URL for flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/search/kde
The prior discussion concerned whether or not to add release notes into the AppData and how, which exposed complexities with translation and the schedule that we have yet to resolve. This current proposal is simply to programmatically add the current version number into the AppData file, which requires no translation and won't present any of the problems we ran into before.
The version number is fine, for example the KDE Applications release script already bump it in few applications. What I'm not sure about is the release date, which is something that can't really be added beforehand.
We don't need to add the date, just the version number is fine. IIRC the date is optional anyway (can't check since freedesktop.org is down at the moment, and that's where the spec lives).
I added some code to release-tools to update the release data in appstream files, needs verification and confirmation from cfeck what he wants to do with the date and merged into master
I would personally prefer if we don't mention appimages, flatpaks and snaps in the KDE Applications 19.04 announcement
for flatpaks there's:
our repo only has master branch (AFAIR) so not useful for users
flathub repo has a random selection of apps updated to a random version that someone remembered to update.
For appimages i can't find anything indicating all the applications are built from stable tarballs (and personally i wouldn't recommend appimages to anyone given how they are not upgrade friendly)
I don't know much about the status of snaps but https://snapcraft.io/lokalize says last updated 16 August 2017 so it seems that it's not good either.
I suggest that until we have a clear strategy that makes sure these things are up to date i'd rather not confuse our users even more mentioning package delivery mechanisms that will probably not have the version we're announcing.
If the committed code is not catastrophically and urgently wrong, can we fix it instead?
I tend to agree that it's probably not the best idea to announce Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage support just yet. With my user hat on, I would be very frustrated if we didn't have launch-day support for up-to-date versions of all KDE apps in these formats (since that's basically the point of them). In fact, this is a current actual frustration of mine. :) I would heartily approve of improving this situation though and getting all our apps published in all three formats.
Revert, fix, commit again when fixed.
Setting Okular version to 19.04 is wrong, okular version is 1.7 you may not find catastrophically and urgently wrong, but i do.
I tend to agree that it's probably not the best idea to announce Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage support just yet. With my user hat on, I would be very frustrated if we didn't have launch-day support for up-to-date versions of all KDE apps in these formats (since that's basically the point of them). In fact, this is a current actual frustration of mine. :) I would heartily approve of improving this situation though and getting all our apps published in all three formats.
Yes, we need to figure out a plan to have that working, let's have this conversation somewhere else, i don't feel it belongs here.
Paul, my question for approval was mostly for the announcement text writing schedule. For the previous release, I had to commit the developer change notes verbatim, because an announcement text was not available.
Regarding the release day (Apr 18), I am running a workshop the weeks before and after Easter, and I won't be able to flip the "release switch" before about CEST 16:00 (UTC 14:00).
Okay. Let's bump up the writing of the announcement so you can go over it before your workshops. Is the content at https://notes.kde.org/p/applications_19.04_new_features complete now?
The proposed schedule says "Mar 26: Start writing announcement text", but you could of course already plan/write about those sections where content is already there.
I expect quite a few user-visible changes for kdenlive. Maybe contact kdenlive developers separately; they may have already planned to document them, or even prepare a release video.
Regarding release video, I think @xyquadrat also planned to create something for KDE Applications? Needs coordination for voice-over texts.
Thanks @ngraham for tracking the new stuff in our "basic" apps! That's a lot again to look forward to.
I do plan to make a release video; will start working on it this weekend so that it should be finished by April 17 or earlier.
Regarding Kdenlive: @afarid planned to make a video if I am not mistaken, but I don't know if/where they documented their changes.
I am writing the announcement and there is a section were we mention the amount of bugs squashed, but I can't see a number in the notes. Can you tell me what that number is?
I fill in the amount of bug fixes when committing the text for translation. Until then, fixes are still ongoing.
@paulb I added a new feature of Spectacle to the list and updated the corresponding screenshot. You should see it based on the different color.
Hi,
I've added a few more lines to KMail changelog and added a changelog for KOrganizer as well (just below KMail).
Version numbers and their inclusion in appstream files moved to https://phabricator.kde.org/T10755
There are 44 Snap packages available in the Snap store and marked stable, they will be updated to the new release at release time. This is a way for people to get our software on any Linux distro without having to wait for any third party projects to do their own release as many of our current channels require so I would like it included in the release announcement from KDE.
Snaps are:
bomber
bovo
cantor
gwenview
kalgebra
kalzium
kanagram
kapman
kate
katomic
kblackbox
kblocks
kbruch
kcalc
kcolourchooser
kfourinline
kgeography
kgoldrunner
kig
kiriki
kiten
kmines
kollision
kolourpaint
konquest
kpat
krdc
kruler
ksirk
ksnakeduel
kspaceduel
ksudoku
kteatime
ktouch
ktuberling
kturtle
kubrick
kwordquiz
minuet
okular
palapeli
picmi
rocs
umbrello
with more to come and metadata being updated
Added at bottom. The crappy part is there's no view on the Snap store to view snaps from a publisher so the link to the search for 'kde' is the best we can do but it's not complete.
There's a late-breaking bugfix included in Gwenview in 19.04: full High DPI support! This should definitely get a mention as it's been long in coming and highly anticipated.
Could you please add the link for the text? I would like to prepare the page so that translators can start.
We also included the Kdenlive notes. With the changes, the text needs to be revised again. As soon as it is done, I will upload it somewhere.
We are also waiting for the number of bugs that have been corrected so we can complete the introductory section.
Ballpark figure would be fine: "More than 100" or something like that.
@cfeck I added the stuff and re-edited the text to make it all more consistent, coherent and friendly to read. I passed the text on to @skadinna so she can re-touch and proofread it. Once she is done, I will copy and paste and format it in notes so everybody can access it, although you may want to read it first to check that everything is factually correct... I'm pretty sure it is, but just in case.
@cfeck : Please take a look at the revised and edited text.
How do you want us to do the next step? We would want to insert a lot of links to, for example, individual application websites, but I am not sure how you want us to do that: should we use the system used in the original tact, putting the link alongside the text and somebody else HTMLises it? Should we HTMLise it ourselves? Should we use markup?
Thanks @paulb, this looks fantastic. I've done a bit of light editing; hope you don't mind. Thumbs up from me now.
Au contraire. We appreciate the feedback.
But what do we do now? For Plasma 5.15 we wrote each paragraph into a PHP thingy. Should we do that now? We would need to know what document to edit. Also notice we are missing some links at the end of the text. Do we know, for example, where the downloads will be located?
Great. I did not relish the prospect of editing the bare PHP, to be honest.
Note that, apart from the obvious links, we would also advise including links to the landing pages of the applications that are mentioned in each section too like this:
KMail [Laurent]
KMail is KDE's privacy-protecting email client. Part of the Kontact groupware suite, ...
It seems these were lost along the way.
Instead of
https://i.imgur.com/9opOWt6.png
https://i.imgur.com/lWvEh5e.jpg
and
- The filename template chooser now has clickable tokens (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=390856).
and displays a preview of how the filename will look (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=381175)
By the way, I don't know what that line means. We left it in out of respect, but it will probably be lost on the average reader. Is there a way to explain in a friendlier way?
It means that the %Y, %H, .. are now clickable.
I think the original text was from @ngraham. But maybe we could so something like
The save settings display now a preview of how your filename template will look and you can now click on the placeholders to add them to the filename template
Okay. Got it. What about...:
Save settings now shows you what the filename of a screenshot will look like. You can tweak the filename template to your preferences.
... or something like that?
Yeah seems fine.
One small nitpick, you could always tweak the template the new thing is that you don't have to manually type it but click on the available placeholders.
So
Save settings now shows you what the filename of a screenshot will look like. You can tweak the filename template to your preferences by clicking on the available placeholders in addition to typing them in.
?
Save settings now shows you what the filename of a screenshot will look like. You can also easily tweak the filename template to your preferences by simply clicking on placeholders.
^^ @davidre ?
Yep :) I started the conversion to php, see https://kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-19.04.0.php
More tomorrow.
Regarding the images, I guess we need new ones with a slight shadow or margin (as in the 18.08 text), but let's discuss that when I have more time.
I added a small sentence for the section for 'Games and Education'.
I also added the KOrganizer section that was missing in the text, probably because developers were late to add them when we collected features.
Please review above link if text needs to be expanded or improved.
I didn't yet investigate which images to add. While the change notes include lots of images, most only show a small change, instead of a complete application. If you created better images, please add links here.
I would prefer screenshots of windows with a small shadow and without the wallpaper background, e.g. https://kde.org/images/screenshots/kmplot.png but I am open to other suggestions as long as we remain consistent.
The new text looks great.
I've started incorporating the Plasma wallpaper into my screenshots these days because I think it looks good, but I'd be happy to make screenshots without that if you'd prefer. Let me know what features you want screenshots for and I'll get some for you. Whatever we standardize on, I would recommend using the default window shadow settings and making our standard easy to capture using Spectacle. :)
@cfeck : Will this be the link you will use for the announcement?:
https://kde.org/announcements/announce-applications-19.04.0.php
The margins in the Dolphin screenshot are a bit large, but it shows an ebook thumbnail, so it's better than the old screenshot.
I could need screenshots of all featured applications: Dolphin, Kdenlive, Okular, KMail, Kate, Konsole, Lokalize, Gwenview, Spectacle and KmPlot.
If these show some mentioned improvements, the better.
Now that the release is over, I'd like to share a few thoughts on how the release announcement went and what we might want to improve:
| Twitter (likes/retweets) | r/kde upvotes | r/linux upvotes | YouTube + PeerTube views | |
| Release 18.08 | 100 / 46 | 121 | 78 | - |
| Release 18.12 | 188 / 70 | 142 | 105 | 6919 |
| Release 19.04 | 293 / 108 | 177 | 232 | 4687 (likely to increase) |
Things that we might want to investigate:
Unfair comparison, it's been 3 days since the release so you shouldn't compare current state of 18.12.0 but the state on December 16, which was
applications-18.12.0: en,ca,pt,uk
so one language more now than for 18.12.0
Still i guess it would make sense sending a reminder to the kde-i18n-doc that the announcement would be most impactful if translated before release day (not everyone follows releases as closely so people may not be in the loop that they should prioritize stuff)
Sorry, I assumed that the release announcements would always either be translated in advance or not be translated at all.
Still i guess it would make sense sending a reminder to the kde-i18n-doc that the announcement would be most impactful if translated before release day (not everyone follows releases as closely so people may not be in the loop that they should prioritize stuff)
Sounds good to me.
