[Slackbuilds-users] request for QPrompt package

[Kevin McCormick]

I am looking at a program called QPrompt, which is a teleprompt program 
useful for video presenters or people doing public presentations.

The program is at https://github.com/Cuperino/QPrompt-Teleprompter

The build instructions are at: 
https://github.com/Cuperino/QPrompt-Teleprompter/blob/main/BUILD.md

According to the build instructions, it appears all except one 
dependencies are already in Slackware 15.0.

The dependency not in Slackware 15.0 is "QHotKey" at: 
https://github.com/Skycoder42/QHotkey

It turns out that QHotKey needs "qpmx" for installation: 
  https://github.com/Skycoder42/qpmx#installation

Thanks, Kevin McCormick

I also received this email from the QPrompt developer:

Cuperino  left a comment
(Cuperino/QPrompt-Teleprompter#462)

Hi Kevin,

I appreciate you trying to build a Slackware package.
QHotkey

The use of QHotkey is very minor if you try to build the QPrompt 2.0.1 
or 2.0.0. There it's used to provide one shortcut that toggles window 
transparency (not to be confused with the background transparency that 
is controlled by a slider). You can remove it from 2.0.x and no one will 
notice. Feel free to do so, but only for the 2.0 branch.

That is no longer the case for 2.1.0 branch, which is currently in 
development under the main and 2.1 branches. There, QHotkey takes a 
prominent role alongside a new dependency called KGlobalAccel. These two 
dependencies together add support for global hotkeys in both X11 
(QHotkey) and Plasma Wayland (KGlobalAccel). KGlobalAccel could also add 
support for hotkeys under X11 but, I have programmed it for GlobalHotkey 
to take precedence because I find it to provide a better user 
experience, as it is less invasive. KGlobalAccel shortcuts remain in 
operation across sessions because it sets the shortcuts at the Plasma 
Desktop level. A user of X11 who is not expecting this find themselves 
frustrated if we only used KGlobalAccel.

Since it will be a while before 2.1 is released next year I can make 
QHotkey completely optional in the 2.0 branch, so you could make the 
Slackware package without it. This would be a temporary measure, because 
it would have to be present for QPrompt 2.1.
qpmx

Sometimes dependencies introduce dependencies that weren't there before. 
This is probably the case with qpmx and it was probably either KDE's 
KCoreAddons or KDE's Kirigami that introduced it, both KDE dependencies. 
Neither of these dependencies can be made optional. Kirigami is an 
integral part of QPrompt's DNA. KCoreAddons could be replaced with a bit 
of reverse engineering or creating a stripped down fork of it, but I'm 
not willing to do either of those things, as that would move us away 
from my goal to have QPrompt join KDE someday.

I ship older versions of KDE Frameworks on my Windows and macOS builds, 
so I haven't had to deal with this sub-dependency yet. For my Deb 
package I just use the packages shipped by the distribution, and that 
works for every Linux dependency except for QHotkey, which isn't shipped 
by Debian. That includes optional dependencies like KCrash, which I 
don't include on Windows and macOS because it has a ton of 
sub-dependencies and it is non-essential. KCrash is only used to restart 
the app automatically in the event of a crash.
Memory leak bug

There is a bug in Qt 6.10 and later that causes a memory leak when 
Screen > Projections is checked. It's already been fixed but the fix 
hasn't made it out to a release yet. For that reason we removed the 
Screen Projections feature from the official Ubuntu package. A variation 
of QPrompt 2.0.1 with the feature removed is found in the 
v2.0.1-no-screens tag. That's what was used to create the Ubuntu 
package. You should use it too if Slackware happens to be shipping Qt 6.10.