caspian

Maybe you don't have python installed? I've not seen this error before. - Jan 14 2005

There is an option in the config file to "autoPosition" kroller. Set it to 0, and it won't automatically place itself in it's usual spot. Then I think it will start in the same place each time. You can also manually specify the positioning in the kroller.theme file if you'd like. - Jul 09 2003

This is currently not (easily) possible, but I have mentioned this to the SK developers, and they will have a version out (hopefully) soon with the extensions I need to make this work correctly. - Jun 05 2003

Those are icon names from an old version of the configuration file. Simply use the kroller.conf included in the new package and you'll be set :)
You could also try changing it from konsole2 to konsole. That would probably fix it too, but using the new configuration file is your best bet. - May 31 2003

There are really two things here:
1. How high the icons get "raised"
2. How large the icons get

To change the first one edit kroller.py (currently about line 305) and change the "raiseIcons" variable to something smaller than 30 pixels.

To change the second one edit kroller.conf and set the largeImageSize to something smaller than 128 pixels.

Hope that helps! - May 30 2003

OK, the reason is it is using an old kroller.conf, and the format of the configuration file has changed slightly. Basically you need to change all the "addSmallImage" entries in kroller.conf to "addIcon". Or you could just switch to the kroller.conf provided in the latest version and edit it. To do that just copy the new kroller.conf to ~/.superkaramba/
Hope that helps! - May 29 2003

OK, [begin typical debug response]
can you set the debug value in kroller.conf to 1, run it form a konsole, and email me the output? Also if you can find where your icons are actually located and let me know that would help too. Kroller is currently searching a large number of directories for your icons, I'm not sure why it wouldn't be able to find them.
Thanks! - May 29 2003

OK, try 0.93b.. I suck! It was a silly white-space error due to tabs vs. spaces in the patch I received! - May 29 2003

I just posted 0.93 for the purpose of fixing this bug. Please try it and let me know what happens. Thanks! - May 29 2003

OK, a friend of mine sent me a patch that will fix this problem! It's not a perfect clean fix, but it will make kroller work. I will be posting 0.93 soon and it should finally fix this error. - May 29 2003

I just posted 0.92c, try it out and see if it works. If it doesn't work try setting the "debug" variable to 3 in kroller.conf and running kroller from a konsole. Then email me the output and I'll see what I can do. Thanks! - May 28 2003

hmm.. Your the first person to report this error on a Slackware install. All my computers here at home (and work) use Slackware 9.0, and I've never had the problem. However, I've seen several posts to this forum from people running other distributions that have had the exact problem you've just described.

I honestly don't know what it is. So I have a few more questions.

1. Did you try kroller first with the default Python that comes with Slackware 9.0? Because that's what I'm using and it works.
2. What compiler did you use when compiling SuperKaramba, and did you use any special configure options? I always just do a plain "./configure; make; make install" for SK.

I can't think of any other questions right now. - May 26 2003

I'm not sure. It would be a feature that SuperKaramba would have to implement, not Kroller. I suspect that it would be fairly difficult, but I haven't looked at the SK code yet. You should ask this question on the SuperKaramba forum. - May 26 2003

Good news is it's configurable... don't like the virtual desktop selector turn it off :)

I control my pc over the vnc/remote desktop sharing in KDE at least once a day, and the key bindings for switching desktops doesn't work through that, so getting the virtual desktop selector working was a big deal for me.

Thanks for the feedback though. If you have any good ideas (or patches ;) please let me know. I know I've been slow getting releases out.. I've been very busy at work lately. - May 23 2003

Most of the features currently present in kroller seem to be working properly. I have not added task-bar functionality yet though- if by that you mean the ability to maximize and minimize running programs. I never personally use that feature, and so it hasn't been too high on my priority list. I'll get it added some time in the next few weeks though.
Isn't the whole reason for multiple desktops so that you don't need to minimize tasks? ;) - May 22 2003

I'm pretty sure you need to upgrade to a more recent SuperKaramba. Try that and let me know what happens. - May 22 2003

I think it already does half of what your asking. Currently, it looks for an icon of the exact size it needs, then if that fails it starts from the highest res dir and works down. i.e. look in icons/128x128 then in icons/96x96 etc, clear down to 16x16. I'm guessing that the source of the problem your seeing is that you probably don't have large icons for a few of the icons on the bar, and therefore kroller is forced to scale a 32x32 icon to 128x128.

I could be wrong, but I think that's whats happening. Feel free to get back into coding again and send me patches anytime though :) - May 21 2003

Yeah, your right, you could specify all the old icons like you did and it will work. But I'm trying to get Kroller to automatically locate the icons for the currently installed KDE icon theme instead. So apparently your KDE icons are some place I haven't thought of.

Can you find where your KDE icons are stored? Maybe if I update kroller to look in more places for the icons it would resolve this issue the correct way so you don't have to edit the configuration file.

Anyone reading this please feel free to jump in and help me out. It works fine on all my systems, so it's hard for me to debug this :| Information like what distributions don't work would help too, that way I can bring up a test box on that platform for future QA. - May 21 2003

hmm.. Well I'll do some digging and probably end up posting an updated kroller later today after I get off of work. Thanks for the info! - May 21 2003

My guess is that the KDEDIR environment variable is not setup.. Are you running KDE? If you are could you go to a konsole and run "set", and look for a KDEDIR environment variable. If it's there what is it set to?

Has anyone else had this problem? - May 21 2003

Unfortunatly I don't think this is possible until XFree86 supports true alpha belnding. And then SuperKaramba will have to be modified to support that as well.
So the short answer is no, not yet :(

I think everyone is anxiously awaiting true alpha blening in X windows :) - May 14 2003

willihus is the one who posted the updated kroller.py script that supports the orientation option. He did a fantastic job, but it was mostly designed as a proof-of-concept for testing new functionality in SK. As such the formulas he wrote did not work correctly with all sizes of icons (it only worked right for 32x32 and 128x128 icons.) Since v0.85 of Kroller I have re-written most of my placement and sizing algorithms to make sure the current kroller works with all (reasonable) icon sizes correctly. As a result I can not easily merge his code into the current version of Kroller. I am having to re-invent most of what he did, and since I personally wouldn't run Kroller at the top of my screen I just haven't made it a priority ;)

However, now that you've expressed an interest in this functionality I will resume my efforts to get that functionality merged... along with trying to get some sort of task management functionality built in as others have been requesting (again I personally wouldn't use those features)

Of course all of this is on hold until after I see Matrix Reloaded later tonight ;)

Anyway, hope that helps you understand what's going on! - May 14 2003

OK, I'm 99% positive that you just need to upgrade to the latest SuperKaramba to get it working.
The recent SK supports the initWidget function and previous versions did not, so SK themes for pre/post SK v0.24 can be incompatible. - May 13 2003

Hmm, that's the first I've heard of this problem. Can you tell me:
- Version of Python
- Linux Distribution (Redhat/Slackware/etc)
- If you compiled SuperKaramba yourself what compiler you have installed

And then turn debugging to a high level (3) in kroller.conf and run "superkaramba kroller.theme" from a konsole and post the output.

If you could do that, it would help a lot in tracking down the source of the problem.
Thanks! - May 13 2003

Now I see what you mean. Actually I was thinking of that earlier but I couldn't decide if I'd like it or not. I'll add it to my list of things to do and see what I can hack up in the next few days. Thanks for the idea :) - May 13 2003

You mean the way kroller v0.88 worked? I guess I could have an option to do it that way. - May 12 2003

It means Python couldn't load the time module. I'm not sure why this happens to some people. If there are any Python gurus out there who can help out that would be great. I don't have a Redhat box to test with or I'd tell you how to fix it :|
I will post an answer if I can find one, but so far I have been unable to duplicate this error, so it makes it hard for me to fix! - May 12 2003

OK, got it added to my current version here. I'll post an updated version with that feature later tonight. - May 12 2003

ahh, now I see what your talking about. I've never tried the BOTTOMBAR=TRUE, I'll play with it this week and see if there's anything I can do. - May 11 2003

There is a variable in the script called iconSeparation. You can edit kroller.py and manually set it to whatever you like. The formula I was previously using to guesstimate the iconSeparation didn't work well if the icon sizes were too close to eachother, so I changed it. But you could edit your version and manually specify anything you want for it. Edit around line 275. In the next release I'll make the iconSeparation be configurable in the configuration file. - May 11 2003

Maybe someone more familiar with Gentoo can help me out here. The error means it can't find a Python module called "time." I think the time module is a standard part of all python installations (someone correct me if I'm wrong!) If it is part of all Python installations then I'm not sure why your installation isn't finding it. I know Gentoo places some packages in very strange places, so maybe that's the problem? I'm using Slackware 9.0 with Python 2.2.2 and it works for me. - May 10 2003

The easy way to do this is to adjust the size of the icons in kroller.conf. Try setting
smallImageSize => 24
LargeImageSize => 32
or something like that and see if that's better. - May 10 2003

Thanks, I like the bouncing icon idea :)
I'll add it to my list of things to do and see if I can't get it done sometime this week. I would like to do the task management stuff too, but I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to get to it. - May 06 2003

Thanks. I am planning on putting a background bar image back in. Just haven't gotten to it yet ;) Maybe I can do that tonight if I have time.

It doesn't require doubble click unless you right clicked and selected "Toggle Locked Position." To change it back to single click, either restart kroller, or right click and lock it's position again.
Hope that helps. - May 06 2003

Thanks for the good report.
I will make sure the 64x64 icon clipping gets fixed in the next release (I was going to fix that in this release, but I forgot!)

As far as the iconbar streching out when you put your mouse into it: I'm not sure how to fix this. I think I might be able to do it if I just space everything out a bit more or something. I can't promise this will get fixed too soon, but I'll do my best. If anyone has any good ideas let me know! - May 06 2003

I'll take a look at it later tonight and get it fixed. I'm calculating the height of the widget dynamically based on a few variables, I bet I just need to tweak the formula a bit.
Thanks for the report! - May 01 2003

You can acheive this behavior by editing the kroller.theme file and changing "ONTOP=false" to "ONTOP=true".

Hope that helps! - Apr 30 2003

Because of all the hard-coded values in Tuxbar, I didn't end up using any of the original formulas for calculating the position and size of the icons. I'm not sure if my formulas for this are better or not than the original ones.
I think the reason Kroller uses so much less CPU is because it doesn't have the bar in the background, so my theory is that karamba doesn't have to alpha-blend the icons against the bar image, making it much faster.
I won't know for sure if that's it until I add support for a background image again. Contrary to what Ratbert said, adding the bar again isn't as simple as uncommenting the bar related code in kroller.

Thanks for the feedback! - Apr 30 2003

> AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'createClickArea'

Hmm.. I'm not sure, but I would guess that when you updated superKaramba it didn't update the python module that goes with it or something like that, because it's saying the "keramba" module doesn't have a "createClickArea" object, but it should.

I guess it could be the .pyc file that needs to be recompiled on your computer? Try deleting the .pyc file and re-running.

Brandon - Apr 30 2003

Sorry, I didn't realize I had to actually upload it to the kde-look.org servers for the download link to work properly. It should be working now. - Apr 29 2003

FYI I think I found a bug in SK last night while coding on kroller.

Steps to re-produce bug:
1. createImage
2. resizeImageSmooth
3. applyImageEffect (highlight is what I was using)
4. Notice that image has now been resized to original size :(

This does not happen if you use the non-smooth resizeImage function.

Anyway, it wasn't a show stopper, but thought I should let you know. - May 14 2003

Is there a way for SK to know if the mouse is currently over our widget or not? I am famialiar with mouseMoved callback, but when widgetUpdated gets called I have no way of knowing wether the mouse is currently in our widget or not. This problem usually happens when the user is tricky and escapes from the SK widget directly to another application without leaving the borders of the SK widget. Does that make sense? It would be nice to have a callback like int moseInWidget(). If that's not possible how about just getting the absolute x/y coords of the mouses current position on the screen? - May 14 2003

Very good idea! Of course I should have thought of that, but thanks for pointing it out.

Even with this standard though, it would still be a nice feature to have in super karamba. At least then the python extension can try (as a last resort?) to load the configuration file from the directory where the .theme file is stored. Most unix apps will try home dir first, then global dir second. - May 04 2003

I think a very useful addition to SuperKaramba would be the ability to request the full path to the .theme file that SuperKaramba used.

There are an increasing number of SuperKaramba projects that are using configuration files in their python programs, but the python program has no way of automatically finding it's configuration file. It would be nice if there was a karamba.getPath(), or something like that.

Brandon - May 01 2003