I have been using openSUSE 11.0 for some time now and love the feel of KDE3.
Especially KPager, which shows me at a glance what is open on each desktop.

This is really important when I am doing cad design with my Win-XP CAD, running in vmware in one desktop, interacting with my linux CAD in another desktop, gathering data from the www with Firefox in another dektop, while my emails and Skype are on the 5th desktop.

So, on a 'spare' pc I decided to try openSUSE 11.2, KDE4 version.
To keep it short, I am extremely uncomfortable with KDE4.
It may be fine for wizzie, pretty applications but I find it extremely cumbersome - dare I say it - like Windows 7 !!

And worse still, there is no KPager functionality.

So, finally,

Can the KDE3 KPager be downloaded from source and be compiled in KDE4?

If not, how long will KDE3 be around before it is superseded by KDE4?

I think that the older I get, the more I dislike change!!

It should b, especially if it is a QT application.
Have you tried browsing kde for it or a similar pager?

Thanks for your reply.

I don't know if it is a QT application, I shall investigate.

I have been trying to find a similar pager and will continue to do so.

Thanks for your reply.

I don't know if it is a QT application, I shall investigate.

I have been trying to find a similar pager and will continue to do so.

I got kpager to compile with KDE 4!

I was very sad when kpager dissappeared, since I haven't found any replacement that gives the option of showing actual pixmaps of the windows on the desktops instead of just icons for the applications the windows belong to, and I like my pager down in the corner and larger than I would like a standard panel.

Here's what I did to get it to work on my machine (a 64-bit Fedora 12 system)... no guarantee it will work for anyone else, though.

1) Setup- I made sure my installation had qt 4 on it and set up my .bashrc so that the QTDIR QTLIB, etc environment variables were pointing to the right version of qt (they were originally set for qt 3, even though I also had 4 installed) and that my LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH let me find the right version of qmake and the qt libraries. Also made sure that I had the development packages installed for qt4 (so I had the header files) and that I also had the KDE headers and libraries and all that stuff (kdelibs package and kdelibs-devel or whatever package provides the kdeinit4_kuiserver... I think I added a bunch of extra packages too because I wasn't completely sure which packages were needed since I haven't really done any compiling of KDE stuff before).

2) I got the source code by doing
"svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/utils/kpager/" in some convenient directory

3) in the directory with the code, I created bin and obj directories for convenience

4) edited the kpager source code as follows:
Comment out the '#include "kpageradapter.h"' and 'new KPagerAdaptor(this);' in kpager.cpp.
Comment out any lines in the code that #include .moc files (there are four or five places -- most at the end of files, but one elsewhere).
Since I like the pager to show up without a titlebar and decorations, in kpager.cpp I also changed the constructor call from ": KXmlGuiWindow(parent)" to ": KXmlGuiWindow(parent,Qt::FramelessWindowHint)" (without the quotes).

5) in the directory with the kpager code, I did "qmake -project" to create a qt project (.pro) file. Edited the .pro file so that it had "TARGET=kpager", "DESTDIR = ./bin/", "OBJECTS_DIR = ./obj/", "INCLUDEPATH += /usr/include/kde4", "QT += qt3support" and
"LIBS += -L/usr/lib64/ -lkdeinit4_kuiserver" (of course without the quotes, and modify as necessary for the location of the files on your system).

6) in the directory with the code, do "qmake", then "make". At that point, kpager ran, so I copied the kpager program to somewhere in the PATH (I have a ~/bin directory in my PATH for installing my own stuff in my home directory, or you could put it in usr/local/bin or somewhere for everyone to use, or whatever.

I actually run kpager on the gnome desktop instead of KDE because I like gnome better. So I logged in to a gnome session and from a terminal, I did "kpager &". Configured it how I like it (horizontal layout with 4 desktops and showing pixmaps instead of icons). Held down alt while I moved the pager to where I wanted it, also resized it to how I like it by holding down alt and right-clicking. Once sized and positioned, I did System->Preferences->StartupApps from the gnome menu. On the options tab checked "remember running applications". Closed everything except the pager (the terminal window is all I had open), logout, log back in and then in the same dialog, unchecked the "remember running applications" box. Now whenever I log in, kpager opens up automatically and is sized and positioned how I like it without a titlebar, etc.

I am happy to have kpager on my desktop again and hope that someone will see the light and add kpager back in to future releases of KDE or at least make the new plamoid pagers or whatever they're using now show what the windows look like as pixmaps/images instead of just application icons. (Maybe they do somehow, but I couldn't find it if they do).

The end.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you rhood for a most useful first post.

Welcome to LQ

I tried to follow rhood's instructions to compile kpager for opensuse 11.3 (64bit). In the make stage, the compiler cannot find 'settings.h' I tried to find 'settings.h' in my system. There are only two copies, none of these worked.

I also miss kpager and appreciate your help!