[Kmymoney-devel] KMyMoney 4.5 is out. The stable version for KDE4 has arrived.

[Alvaro Soliverez]

Hello Mikael,

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Mikael Kujanpaa <mahead80 at nic.fi> wrote:
> Alvaro Soliverez <asoliverez at kde.org>:
>> The KMyMoney is pleased to announce the release of a stable version
>> for KDE Platform 4. With over 15 months of development, this new
>> version is the starting point of a new series of KMyMoney versions to
>> leverage the stellar features offered by the KDE Platform.
>
> Hi, and congratulations on your good work! I just downloaded and compided new
> release, and in general I was amazed how well it worked starting from
> compilation. It felt very polished and truly as a native KDE 4 application,
> which it is, of course. However, I also noticed some issues. In general these
> are quite a minor ones, which speaks itself pretty much about the high quality
> of this release.
>
> Here is what I noticed. Please don't take this list in any way offensively,
> these are just things I noticed while I was testing it. The list of working
> things would be tens or hundreds times longer. :)
>
> - The graphs: there were some rendering problems. The lines width changed in
> the middle of graph, and also some characters were broken in same way.
> Resizing the window usually moved the problem to other part. Please see:
> http://koti.kapsi.fi/mahead/temp/homepage_forecast.png ,
> http://koti.kapsi.fi/mahead/temp/homepage_forecast_marks.png
>
> - Sum's were not always drawn on the top of the bar graphs. Also seeing the
> date for specific bar was pretty difficult, please compare KDE3 and current
> version: http://koti.kapsi.fi/mahead/temp/networth_change_KDE3.png and
> http://koti.kapsi.fi/mahead/temp/networth_change_KDE4.png . The rendering
> speed had also some issues, for example the grid was drawn about 10 sec later
> than rest of the graph.

We'll upgrade to the latest version and then report the bugs if
problem persist. The underlying widget is not ours, but developed by a
company. They are pretty responsive if we are clear in our reports,
though.

>
> - In line graph with values, the marks for specific points were quite big.
> Maybe it could be changed to be a little bit smaller and related to the
> selected line width?

We might add a choice to either have markers or not. Right now it's
fixed on a chart-by-chart basis.
>
> - In the ledger view, there were text boxes for increasing and decreasing the
> balance. While I think this is good change, the meaning of the boxes weren't
> very clear. I had to test what they do before I knew. Also, using the increase
> text box in first time caused KMyMoney to crash. However, the second time I
> tested it, it worked okay so I cannot repeat the crash.
>
We'll keep an eye on it. We haven't noticed any crash on that specific
widget. But, the ledger is the most complicated area of the
application, and most likely to have issues. If you find it again,
please file a bug in bugs.kde.org

> - When the split editor is left and there is dialog asking about unmatching
> sums (with three radio buttons), I have to press three times down arrow from
> my keyboard before the selection was changed to second option.

Did the selection change to other widget or did it just stay selected
on the first item?

>
> - Generally, the user interface feels a little bit sluggish. Various features
> caused the window to be redrawn with speed that cannot match the old version.
> For example, in ledger view I have the form hidden. When I create new
> transaction, it draws quite slowly (about 5 sec) the form in the screen. Or,
> the reconsilation function: if I clear the transaction by pressing ctrl +
> space, it takes second or two to actually change the status of transaction.

This is a known problem, and we will work on it. Basically, the whole
ledger is refreshed every time something changes (and in some cases,
other views are refreshed too). We have to rework some signals and
refreshes here and there so that it only refreshes what's needed. That
should speed things up. It's not easy and we have to be very careful
not to miss a needed update.
>
> - In the help / About KMyMoney. In the translation tab, is the content as it
> is meant to be? It seems to display generally KDE translators, not the ones
> who actually translated KMyMoney. Not very big issue thought. :)

I'll check with a localized version, but it could be the right answer,
since this version has been developed AND translated within KDE.

>
> Here were my quick observations. I would say that issues with graphs were most
> visible ones and therefore might give bad karma for some users. Also the
> sluggisness might be something that many don't like.
>
> But I want to stress, that although I listed only issues here, I'm still very
> impressed with the quality of this release. About everything from old version
> were there functioning as they should!

Thank you for the feedback and the detailed description of the issues!

Regards,
Alvaro