Reporting bugs is a small but valuable contribution to a project, it makes you actor, you get involved, you belong!
The first thing you need is to open an account to http://bugs.kde.org.
Usually bugs come in two flavours:
- you notice something which is not working properly or not working at all, a bad design, a missed functionality... Open the application Help menu
and Click on "Report Bug..." You will then be guided to http://bugs.kde.org. Some information will be automatically picked up like the application version number.
- the big ugly bug which is called a crash: your program disappears and another window appears named "The KDE crash Handler".
This is quite scary but you will be guided to efficiently report this crash. The link in the dialog "Learn more about bug reporting" will explain you the process. If you choose to report the problem, click on "Report Bug" and an assistant will guide you through the steps. The requisite to report a crash is to have your distribution debug packages installed in order to provide a valid backtrace.
I will write some more posts about Bugs in the next days, stay tuned!
8 comments:
> The first thing you need is to open an account to http://bugs.kde.org.
I actually like the KDE's simplicity to report bugs and crashes but I think that "hard requiring" users to register for a bko account is an overkill. Just put yourself in a "standard user"'s shoes: the application you were working with just crashed and a diallog appears asking you to install more packages and on top of it to register on a website, go through the e-mail identification dance and only then report the bug. This will definitely put most new kde users off reporting anything. Having anonymous reports would definitely improve that.
Once again, this mostly concerns new and inexperienced users, but they do make for a large part of KDE's user base.
Anyway, this blog post (and the series you are promising) is quite usefull. Could you post it on userbase too?
I agree that the demand for registration is littlebit too much. But as well it is good to keep spam from entering to the BKO.
The worst thing what I find on the whole bug reporting thing is that you need a web browser. The BKO is not so easy to use at all.
The fix would really be to make a bug-reporter what would be a native application what allows user to register a account at first time and then later just type all the needed information from the application itself, without at all opening a web browser.
The bug comments should be as well brought to that application. Think about a simple email- or twitter-client.
The web apps are not so powerfull and easy to use. They are actually very hard to use and one pain in the ass.
BKO includes good database for bugs, comments and patches. Why we just can not simply have a native program for that, other than web browser?
There were about two weeks ago a blog post about saying that the native application did not have maintainers. So I would say that it is demanded that such will be maded.
Store the user information to the kwallet.
We do need user account system where we can easily then delete the user and all the spam made from there.
And the BKO entrying could be to demand a simply captah (like calculate a mathematical sum 5+10 or select a third word from the phrase) for every entry if done by anonym way.
Filling a bug report really is not so difficult for advanced user but for normal user it is terrible experience to go a new website what asks all kind questions, demands to press Next next and so on.
> Having anonymous reports would definitely improve that.
I agree that this way more people would report bugs. The problem however is not the spam but that developers cannot contact the reporter for more information.
Also to be useful a bug report needs more than 'app x just crashed :(' which is what most anonymous bugs look like.
Sorry for question. Will have "picture frame" in kde 4.6 again "keep aspect ratio" option?
@montfras:
> but that developers cannot contact the reporter for more information.
Well, by anonymous I really meant that you do not need to register with bko to submit a bug. Any bug report should contain the reporter's mail anyway.
Also, to be fair, nothing prevents a reporter submitting a completely useless bug report, with the present status of things.
@liso no, it was removed for performance issues, see http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=1104147
:(
Oh I am really sorry about that. :(
I like very much this widget but this is big handicap... :(
Probably you could add option for file mask for slide show for example *.thumb.png.
And one could prepare usable thumbnails in directory.
I think I could create relatively simple python script to create thumbnails (using PIL module) from pictures in directory...
PS. Probably you mean that I could create thumbnails into other directory and start slideshow in this directory. But then open picture wont work correctly because it open just small picture.
Mask could add simple workaround (because gwenview sort files alphabeticaly you just need one click to change image from thumbnail to full version :)
(other method could be transform function from thumbnails in subdirectory ".thumbnails" in directory where will be slide show)
PPS. Sorry my english has to be hard to read. I hope not to disturb you. :)
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