KDE Plasma 6 Has New Role For "F10", Kate/KWrite Text-To-Speech & Smooth Scrolling

It was another exciting week in the KDE Plasma 6 and KDE Frameworks 6 space with a number of notable new features being merged.

KDE developer Nate Graham is out with his usual weekly recap of all the interesting developments taking place for KDE Plasma 6 / KDE Gear / KDE Framework 6 development. KDE development remains on track for seeing the big "6" releases in February. Some of the notable changes to come together this week included:

- KWin has added an effect that will change the colors of the entire screen to better support various forms of color-blindness.

- THe F10 key is now used by most KDE apps to open the main menu or hamburger menu. This is intended for better accessibility that in the KDE Frameworks 6 world, F10 can be assumed for the main menu / hamburger menu. F10 is already used for this role on GNOME, Microsoft Windows, and other prominent software. For apps that used F10 for a new file, that shortcut is now Ctrl + Shift + N.

- Kate, KWrite, and other KTextEditor software can now speak text from the document via optional speech synthesis support using QTextToSpeech.

- Qt Quick powered KDE software when scrolling the mouse wheel will now smoothly animate the view.

- The Plasma Wayland session now allows for mirroring (visually flipping) a display.

- Fast user switching from a password-less account now works.

More details on these KDE changes for the week via Nate's blog.