Awinterz 

A gentle reminder: please occassionally check back on bugs you've reported and resolve them if they have been fixed in recent versions. Sometimes we developers fix bugs but forget to resolve them ourselves; sometimes bugs are fixed by newer versions of other software we depend on; sometimes bugs are fixed as consequences of other fixes. Read More

FYI: I just added some symbolic links on the api.kde.org machine to make accessing the 'stable' and 'unstable' dox a little easier. So now stable points to 4.7 and unstable points to 4.8. Read More

KDEPIM 4.6.1 is hereby released. You can find it in ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/kdepim-4.6.1/src You'll need both kdepim and kdepim-runtime, and please make sure to have the most recent Akonadi, Soprano, kdelibs4, kdepimlibs4.6 and friends. Also shared-desktop-ontologies (SDO) 0.6.x is required -- kdepim 4.6.1 will not build against newer versions of SDO. See the list of bugs we fixed since 4.6.0. I don't know yet if we'll make 4.6.2 release, as KDE SC 4.7 is fast approaching.

Today KDEPIM 4.6 Beta5 is tagged and released. Once the mirrors catch-up you should find the source code in ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/kdepim/4.5.95. Also, I know some distros will be providing their users access to this new release for your testing pleasure. Read More

A couple of newsworthy items regarding The English Breakfast Network Thanks to our awesome admins, we now have 2 aliai (ebn.kde.org and quality.kde.org) that redirect to our classic web address... certainly much easier to type. The Krazy checks are operational again. Our API Documentation site is now providing tarballs containing kdelibs and kdepimlibs man pages generated using doxygen. This is a nice companion to the Qt Assistant version of the same content. Look for the "[man]" links on the top-level page. As an extra bonus, we also have man pages being generated for kde-qt (our KDE tweaks for Qt). Searching on api.kde.org should be improved a bit now. We added search capabilities for namespaces and projects recently. And now search is case-insensitive. Thanks all I can remember at the moment. Read More

Today KDEPIM 4.6 Beta3 is tagged and released. This is the first release in our departure from the normal KDE SC 4.6 cycle, but you should be able to build against kdelibs and kdepimlibs from either the beta2 or the upcoming first release candidate UPDATE: building against the KDE SC 4.6RC1 kdepimlibs is required -- which should be available soon. Read More

I just finished tagging and releasing KDEPIM 4.4.8. Should be showing up in the usual place on ftp.kde.org soonish. Here's the Changelog: 2010-12-02 20:26 djarvie * [r1202940] Make disabled icon more distinguishable for colour blind users 2010-11-30 22:41 tmcguire Read More

Well, the ramp-up for KDE SC 4.6 has begun now, with soft freezes taking effect yesterday and the first beta due in about 1 week. So... we have decided that there is no point to putting any more effort into the long-awaited KDEPIM 4.5. Read More

You won't find any (obvious) link on Gitorious, but if you want to enable email notifications you need to go to http://gitorious.org/favorites. Thanks to Mike McQuaid for telling me about this hard-to-find feature of Gitorious. Read More

I just finished moving the Krazy repository from KDE SVN trunk/quality to Gitorious. Seems to work ok. For the record, here's how I did it: % git svn clone svn+ssh://winterz@svn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/quality/krazy2 % cd krazy2 % git remote add origin git@gitorious.org:krazy/krazy.git % git push origin master Read More

KDEPIM 4.4 lives. I tagged and released version 4.4.7 last night. You should see it in a KDE FTP mirror near you in /pub/kde/stable/kdepim-4.4.7/src Bonus: I used svn2cl to make a ChangeLog. And here it is: Read More

Bug fixes are still coming into the KDEPIM 4.4 branch, so I'm planning to make a 4.4.7 release. Tagging in a week or two -- current estimate is 21 October. Read More

Tarballs for kdepim-4.4.6 and kdepim-runtime-4.4.6 are now available from a mirror near you. ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/kdepim-4.4.6/src There is no associated kdepim-l10n-4.4.6 tarball since I don't know how to make one -- but there are also no new messages strings so the existing 4.4.5 translations should work. Read More

The KDE API Reference (api.kde.org) web site is now providing ".qch" files suitable for loading into Nokia's Qt Assistant. Look for the "[qt]" links. Currently, auto-regeneration of these files happens on a nightly basis for kdelibs and kdepimlibs trunk, and for kdelibs and kdepimlibs 4.5. More can be added, upon request. Read More

Looks like we'll be creating a kdepim-4.4.6 tarball, with tagging expected this Thursday 9 September. So PIMsters, get your bug fixes into the 4.4 branch as soon as possible. No regressions please. :) And no new i18n strings either. Read More

A friendly note that KDE SC 4.5.1 will be tagged on 26 August. So keep those bug fixes coming.

api.kde.org is operational again. I can help fix problems you might notice on the site (bad-links, etc), but please don't bother me about content -- contact the project authors, maintainers, module coordinators if you encounter missing/outdated/broken/wrong API documentation. Read More

A short note. The KDE Release Team has decided to make a KDE SC 4.4.5 release. So please remember to continue backporting your bug fixes into the 4.4 branch. The Schedule June 24th, 2010: Tag KDE 4.4.5 June 29th, 2010: Release KDE 4.4.5 Read More

I added some new options to Krazy in the past few days. Hope folks find them useful. You can now control the types of files to process with the new --types and --exclude-types options. Use the --list-types option to see what file types are supported. Read More

While most core kdepim folks are knee-deep (neck-deep?) working on Akonadi and Akonadi migration issues, the bug reports and feature requests continue rolling-in at brisk pace for Kontact, KMail, KOrganizer, KAddressbook, Akregator, KTimeTracker, KJots and friends. Read More

Szymon Stefanek's KMail GSoC project was merged into trunk today. Stunning. You've got to try it. KMail has been re-launched! r881321 To quote the commit message: "... New features include grouping, multiline items and the ability to customize just about everything of the look of the message list. Also, we have a tabbed interface for opening more than one folder at once now..." Read More

Printing in KOrganizer is really in need of some attention. Especially now that we are providing RichText capabilities in calendar descriptions and elsewhere. You can even write journal entries entirely in RichText. But the printing system doesn't know anything about RichText. Read More

The eGroupWare resource in KDE-PIM hasn't gotten much love and attention in a long time. It compiles, but we have no idea if it really works, nor do we have anyone on the PIM team who uses it. Read More

As we near the first release ever of KDE-PIM for KDE4, I want to take this opportunity to thank the many folks who helped the kdepim team move to a stable release in a short 6 months. Read More

We now have documentation for our custom KDE CMake Modules, brought to you by the EBN. I have a little script that runs every night to re-generate this page, just in case we changes things as time goes by. Read More

A list of good stuff that I was involved with in the past week: The PIM team (mostly Till) posted the KDE PIM 3.5.9 Features List. A huge list of exciting, new features that will be released with KDE 3.5.9 resulting from the merge of the enterprise branch. Read More

Thanks to Marc Mutz's idea, one can now set their application debug area by telling the C++ compiler about it and then never having to remember that debug area again. "Set it and forget it" Read More

Lazy Web warning: I looked and looked.. I even tried to figure out qdoc3. No joy. Anyone know how to generate the man pages for Qt4? Or where I can get a tarball with the man pages? Read More

A running list of stuff about the KDE4 desktop -- typed in from little slips of paper I have laying around on my desk: To make the desktop run faster, compile qt-copy without the -debug option My computer has a Radeon video card and the X server apparently uses an ATI driver. This driver seems have to problem with compositing. If you see "screen turds" and other strange graphics effects, especially with the menus and icons, try disabling compositing... which seems to be enabled by default on my system. Do this by adding these lines to the end of xorg.conf and reboot: Section "Extensions" Option "Composite" "disable" EndSection Oh, disabling compositing should also fix 'ksnapshot'. If you start a KDE4 application from a command line, you might notice a bunch of messages that indicate this app can't talk to knotify. That's because 'knotify4' probably isn't running. You can remedy this by running 'knotify4' from a command line. Also, I hacked my 'startkde' to run 'knotify4' for me when I login. I plan to commit this to the official 'startkde' tomorrow, unless someone objects on the k-c-d mailing list. BUG: 'kwalletmanager' gives me this message "kwalletmanager(4467) KWalletManager::KWalletManager: kded not running?". Then it displays a closed wallet in the systray. dfaure said he will fix this on Monday -- if I remind him. :) BUG: 'kmail' isn't remembering shortcuts between restarts. BUGLET: hmmm.. seems that instances of 'kded4' continue running after I quit my KDE4 session. BUG: There is no nepomuk D-Bus service file. We need one if we expect nepomukdaemon to start as needed; for example, from 'dolphin'. BUG: Alt-F2 doesn't work. I expect that key sequence to start 'krunner'. WTH? KOrganizer is unbearably slow. I see no reason for this and KOrganizer ran great for me under a KDE3 desktop. This problem needs some serious research. Does KOrganizer work ok for anyone?

I like man pages. So today I wrote a little script called kdedoxyman.sh that uses doxygen to generate API Dox in man page format from our KDE source code. To use: % cd trunk/KDE/kdelibs % ../kdesdk/scripts/kdedoxyman.sh -d /path/to/kde/share [...Wait...] Read More

The first KMail hacking day is coming to a close. It has been a fun time -- working with many oldtime PIMsters and several new contributors as well. I noticed that KOrganizer was getting a little attention too. Read More

This weekend we PIMsters are having a virtual meeting on #kontact; hopefully to give a lot of love to KMail for a potential KDE 4.0 release. Most of the KDE PIM applications are in dire need of attention and, in their current state, have almost no hope of being part of a KDE 4.x release. Read More

In response to the wonderful people who Want to Give Away Some Money, I am now formally announcing that I will gratefully accept donations/compensation to my PayPay account (awinterz AT earthlink DOT net). And I will thank you, even if you don't ask for thanks. Read More

Based on past experience we can project the KDE 3.5.6 tagging about 1 month from now. So, today I put a freeze on any new features in the KDE PIM Features Branch -- the stuff I have been babbling about non-stop of late. We can still test bug fixes in this branch. But we need to put our efforts into finishing off and polishing the existing new goodies (KMail templates, custom tagging, TOFU, HTML signatures, ...). And negotiate with the developers over which of the goodies we will move into the 3.5 branch for the 3.5.6 release. And hope that the translators don't mind the new strings. Read More

Thanks to Christian we have a bunch of clean-ups in the way KMail's addressee and recipient editors work. This new code will probably be fast-tracked[1] into the 3.5 branch, but for now we have it only in the features branch for testing. So, please do test. Read More

Yesterday Pradeepto added the TOFU (an acronym for something in German) feature to KMail in the KDE-PIM Features Branch. TOFU provides top-posting -- see the "Insert signatures above quoted text" option in KMail's Composer configuration -- as well as composer window edit options for: Prepend Signature; Append Signature; and Insert Signature at Cursor Position. Read More

Thanks to Dmitry, the KMail in the $SVN/branches/work/kdepim-3.5.5+ branch now can do Custom Templates. Look in the KMail configuration, under the Composer page where you'll see a "Custom Templates" tab. Read More

I just stood back and watched in awe today. Bug Squashers from all over the world came to the rescue of the PIM developers on #kde-bugs. Over 100 bugs gone. Wow! The Bug Triage Days are a fantastic idea and a wonder to behold. Read More

As we (Dmitry and Johnathan) work out the new templates bugs and use cases, I decided to apply a patch provided by Jason Keirstead from more than 1.5 years ago that would satisfy one of our most requested KMail features: HTML Signatures. Read More

In today's exciting episode of "The KDE-PIM Features Branch" we have Monur's KMail tagging patch that "...introduces custom tagging support for emails..." Johnathan's KMail Templates patch "...There is a new special folder "templates"; messages can be copied into here just like any other, or saved here using the 'Message - Save as Template' menu option in the composer window. This folder works similarly to the "drafts" folder; double-clicking on a message or choosing the "Use Template" option on the popup menu starts the composer on a copy of that message, but does not of course delete the original template message..." From me, in the Kontact Summary: - Appointments RMB menu to Edit and Delete - To-Dos RMB menu to Edit, Delete, or Mark Completed Find all these goodies in $SVN/branches/work/kdepim-3.5.5+. Read More

I just could not stand it anymore. I had to have new features in KDE-PIM. So now we have $SVN/branches/work/kdepim-3.5.5+. For those who want to play/test you'll find that KMail has templates (thanks to Dmitry) and the Kontact summary is getting some love. I hope some proko2 features also make their way into this branch. No telling when these features (and others I hoping to add) will make their way into the official KDE 3.5.x releases.

I spent many hours the past couple months bug fixing two of my favorite KDE PIM applications (KOrganizer and KMail). And I'm not even making a small dent in the bug pile. Read More

The purpose of this blog: Test if the EBN aggregator works That is all. Apparently I need to brush-up on my HTML.

We have a new "pass-by-value" check in Krazy written by Andreas. It is the first plugin written in C++ (and not perl). And it requires Qt4. So, we had to do a bit of tweaking of things on the EBN. Seems to be working well. Read More

I spent quite a bit of time the past couple of days attempting to beautify and fix some minor bugs in the APIDOX generating stuff for KDE trunk. Sure, I should have waited until [ade] returned from vacation. Read More

Progress. The new kdepimlibs module has some real content, finally. I moved the emailfunctions library from kdepim into kdepimlibs this afternoon. This means anyone who is developing for kdepim trunk will need to build kdepimlibs first. So, the order goes like this: build and install kdelibs4_snapshot build and install kdepimlibs build kdepim Tomorrow, unless there are major problems, I plan to start moving some bigger libraries. Starting with libkcal. Aaron, thank you for your inspirational thoughts.

I still haven't managed to get sound working on my new HP Pavilion a1320y desktop with Fedora Core 4. Read a lot of suggestions in Fedora Forum without any luck so far. Read More

My new HP Pavilion desktop system "jiffy" arrived yesterday (exactly as FedEx promised). Fedora Core 4 Linux installed painlessly without even 1 hiccup last night. Today I am putting the finishing touches on the system: installing extra RPMs; configure printing and scanning; etc. Read More

I eagerly await the delivery of my new baby... err... my new desktop system (the system is a "he" and we've already named him jiffy). According to the FedEx tracker, jiffy will be delivered tomorrow. I'm having the heebee-jeebies waiting to do KDE-development again. Sure the computer is good for email and web surfing and keeping your checkbook, but the real fun is using the computer for software development. I'm sure we all agree with that. Read More

Bad News: As mentioned in a previous blog my notebook's harddrive did pass silently yesterday afternoon. This was my main KDE development system. Good News: I decided to use this opportunity to purchase a new HP Pavilion desktop system. Yes, the new system will have lots more processing power and RAM, but I'm really excited about the 19" flat screen. I'll eventually put a new harddrive in the notebook for other purposes. But for now, the tired old-soldier is patiently awaiting further instructions. Bottom Line: No KDE development for a least a week.

Bad News: As mentioned in a previous blog my notebook's harddrive did pass silently yesterday afternoon. This was my main KDE development system. Good News: I decided to use this opportunity to purchase a new HP Pavilion desktop system. Yes, the new system will have lots more processing power and RAM, but I'm really excited about the 19" flat screen. I'll eventually put a new harddrive in the notebook for other purposes. But for now, the tired old-soldier is patiently awaiting further instructions. Bottom Line: No KDE development for a least a week.

My main system is an HP Pavilion laptop. I bought it refurbished a couple years ago, direct from HP. And, since it as a refurb, I figured it would be wise to also get the extended warranty. Read More

And now a message from our sponsor... A special offer for KDE developers! Now you can run the Krazy Code Checker locally on your code! Here's how: % svn TOP_OF_YOUR_KDE_SVN_TREE % svn update -N trunk/playground/devtools % cd trunk/playground/devtools % svn up krazy % cd krazy % ./install # installs into /usr/local. edit $TOP to change the destination dir If all goes well, krazy should be installed, as well as the krazy man page. Example Krazy runs: % krazy *.cpp *.h % find . -name "*.cpp" -o -name "*.h" | xargs krazy Note that I'll continue to add checks, so you might want to 'svn update' regularly. And don't forget to read the krazy man page for more info, including how to write your own checker plugins.

First, if anyone over at planetkde is reading this... I can't seem to get clee's attention. I need him to change the URL of my blog there. Now that I've been mentioned in Aaron's blog I feel like a VIP (Very Important Person/Programmer). Yes, the APIDOX error reporting is now all beautified. I wrote some perl that takes the doxygen error logs and converts into our defacto standard html report format. Hope this helps. And while your over at The EBN, don't forget to check out what the "Krazy Code Checker" thinks about your favorite source code. I wrote the krazy tool too.. with lots of inspiration from Ben Meyer's testscripts. Contact me if you want to help write some krazy code checking plugins (in perl, python, ruby, ...)

This is my first blog entry in a long, long time. And I will use the occassion to praise and thank the digiKam developers for their wonderful application. I hadn't used digiKam for some time, but yesterday several dozen digital pictures I needed to resize, crop, enhance, and email to family. digiKam made the entire process easy and fun to do. A joy. Thanks again digiKam team!