Simon Edwards 

For anyone who has been paying any attention of PyKDE5 over the last year or so, it is no secret that development and maintenance has been at a standstill. I've been very busy with a family and small children, and that eats time like you wouldn't believe. (Unit number 2 is almost 6 months now, healthy and happy I can report.) But another important factor is that my interests have shifted towards web related technologies over the last few years. Read More

I've been steadily chipping away at creating Python bindings for the many libraries which make up KF5. The current list of KF5 libraries which have bindings is: karchive kcoreaddons kguiaddons kitemmodels kitemviews kplotting kwidgetsaddons solid sonnet This is most of tier 1. The biggest omission at the moment is kconfig. Some small libraries like kcodecs and kwindowsystem don't have bindings because the functionality is either not applicable or already present in Python's standard library. As I mentioned at the start, I'm 'chipping' away at the big pile of KF5 libraries. There are still many left. If you see a library in KF5 which you really want bindings for before the rest of KF5, then you can email me and I'll try to give it high priority. Read More

It was good to make it to the Desktop Summit in Berlin this year and to see some familiar KDE faces again. I feel that I've been able to catch up a bit on news about many of the interesting projects that are happening in our KDE community and also in the greater FOSS desktop community. Read More

This news is perhaps a little bit late, but I can assure you I've been very busy in the meantime. The first day of November Debbie and I were able to welcome our first child to the world, Toby Edwards. We are all very happy. It was a pretty tough labour and result was a health boy who has since been busy growing and stacking on weight. The parenting learning curve is quite steep at the start but I think we're finally getting the hang of managing the baby and sleeping enough. Read More

KDE 4.3 is out, I'm vacationed, and now is a good time to explain share same of the things I would like to get done in PyKDE for KDE 4.4. Read More

To be honest I'm not all that happy with the current situation. Riverbank Computing, basically Phil Thompson, has done an excellent job developing SIP and PyQt over the last 10 years and providing a Free Software (GPL) version which PyKDE is built on. Phil has also done an excellent job of providing answers to my queries, basically as a free service to KDE and the FOSS community. Having two competing Python bindings for Qt is a waste of resources and is generally disruptive to the community at large. Seeing the future of Riverbank and the good working relationship between it and KDE jeopardised is not something that appeals to me. I am disappointed that no kind of cooperative agreement could be reached between Nokia and Riverbank Computing. Read More

This year at GCDS I had the pleasure of meeting Gökmen and Gökçen (pronounced “Gerkman” and “Gerkchan” with hard Gees not Jays). They are part of a relatively small team of around 15 developers who are sponsored by the Turkish government work on a Turkish Linux distribution called Pardus. It is a KDE focused distribution which has been around since the end of 2005. What makes this distribution so interesting is the system tools and configuration tools which they've developed based heavily on Python, PyQt and PyKDE. Read More

A small status report about the Python bindings and support in the almost arrived, KDE 4.3. All of the APIs have been updated of course and I've added support for polkit-qt. This makes it possible to write applications and configuration tools which feature the much needed (and working) "Administrator" button. Read More

I'm about 18 months behind the curve here compared to you trend-setters in KDE-land, but I think I now actually "get" git. Meaning that I now have a mental model of git which makes sense and I can use to make sense of the numerous "Git $X seconds" blog posts hanging around on the web (where the number $X is always smaller than the last blogger). I remember sebas having a go at explaining it to me and me not understanding what the big deal was or what it really was about. Read More

Roberto Alsina recently posted a series of tutorials about Python and PyQt on his blog. I don't think they appeared on Planet KDE, so I'm forwarding them on. ;-) It covers typical Qt GUI programming using Qt Designer. Read More

In a great demonstration that not only do great minds think alike, they can also subconsciously syncronise to attack the same problem, Luca Beltrame and I started work on our own tutorials about writing Plasma applets using Python at exactly the same time and day this weekend. We've coordinated ourselves and now there are 3 new tutorials about programming Plasma applets with Python up on techbase. The first tutorial by myself is an introduction to the whole work cycle of creating an applet. Luca continues in the second tutorial with how to use Plasma widgets in an applet. And today I've written another tutorial about how to use DataEngines in an applet. Read More

I landed the Python script engine for Plasma in KDE trunk about a week ago and already and the keen and excitable among us have been franticly trying to get it all set up and installed. rgreening said it best on IRC "I've been wanting this sooooooooooooooooooooooooo bad". Now that's what I call an endorsement. ;-) So if you are running KDE trunk out of subversion and you want to have a go at the Python support then you can have a look at this wiki page which I hastily wrote which describes what needs to be installed and in which order: Read More

(Warning, rant ahead) There has been a lot of excitement on the web about Google's new browser Chrome. So much excitement that it has been spilling over into the free desktop blog world. Excitement is good in general, but I think many people are missing the point of Chrome and what Google is trying to achieve here. Chrome is not about building a better browser or winning the browser wars. It's about building a better platform for running web applications. It's about winning the internet operating system war. It's about determining what the "operating system" for running internet applications will look like in the future. It's about platforms, APIs and VMs, not web pages. Read More

Just a small announcement. Development version 1.1 of my little network routing configuration utility is up on my website for your testing pleasure. There is no new functionality. I've just ported it from KDE 3 and C++ to KDE4 and Python, saving it from ravages of bit-rot. It's a neat little utility and it would be a shame to let it get lost on the migration to KDE 4. It is also in Python now which should make the code a lot more accessible for contributors. If you've written a few shell scripts in the past, then your skills a probably high enough to hack on Guidedog and fix any bugs which show up. Read More

After the kdebindings meeting about a month ago in Berlin, I had a 8-ish hour long trip back on the train from Berlin to Nijmegen. Deutsche Bahn's trains are rather civilised and have power on board for all your laptop charging needs (provided you can get close enough to the seats with the tables and the power outlets). Anyway, after getting some preliminary Python coding working inside KDE 4's systemsettings (thanks go to rdale for his help), I had a go at trying to fix up the PyKDE class documentation to more closely match the C++ KDE API docs. About 5 weeks of hack time later I now have something which is ready enough for the public. The formatting is much more in line with the C++ docs and the pages are laid out and cross linked much better than the previous class reference for PyKDE. It is still not perfect (code fragments are not translated to Python), but it should be perfectly usable 98% of the time. Give it a try. Read More

Thank $DEITY for feature freezes. It's only after the bulk of the KDE libraries are frozen that bindings people can come into action and franticly update everything before the RCs and the final release of a shiny new version of KDE. It's not much time and it only takes a last minute update to one of the C++ headers in the KDE break the bindings build. (That is the risk you run when you use almost every part of an API). But I can report that Python support is ready for 4.1. yippie! \o/ Read More

Jim Bublitz has been industriously working on getting the Python bindings for KDE 4 into shape. Part of that work is documentation of course and for that Jim has put together a very handy documentation viewer which combines reference docs with code samples and example code all in one easy to navigate package. One of the classic documentation problems for GUIs which are as customisable as Qt/KDE, is that everyone can, and often does, have their own visual style configured for their desktop. This of course means that any screenshots accompanying documentation simply don't match what is in front of the user most of the time. Having real widgets displayed and operational in the reference docs themselves solves this problem for Python developers at least. I think it's real neat. Read More

Python language bindings for KDE's libraries, PyKDE4, has landed in KDE's subversion repository. Jim Bublitz has been working behind the behind the scenes on PyKDE4 for quite some time, and now PyKDE4 is stable enough to enter its new home in subversion. The last of big sweeping changes to the code, like licensing notices and module layout for example, have been done and PyKDE4 is in good shape for those who want to get in there, port their applications or create new ones and help shake any bugs out. Now that KDE's libraries are mostly settled, changes and improvements to the bindings will be incremental in nature and not too disruptive for Python developers. Read More

In between porting some of my older KDE 3 C++ over to Python and Qt/KDE 4, and also fixing some bugs in Guidance, I've had a little play around with QtJambi. QtJambi is Trolltech's new bindings generator and bindings for using Qt4 on Java. Or to be more accurate I should say that the bindings are for the Java Virtual Machine, and not just for programs written in the Java language. One of the interesting features about VMs is that they don't have to be tied to a single programming language. You can run all sorts of different languages on the Java VM or the .NET / Mono VM. Now, one of the not just interesting, but really /cool/ features of VMs is you usually don't need huge slabs of binding code if you want one language to call code written in another, provide both languages are running on the VM itself. To put it simply: you can use QtJambi with a whole swag of different languages that run on the Java VM. Here is a little example of the Qt analog clock example written some other weird and wacky language: (anyone know which?) Read More

So some money come my way and I finally caved in and bought myself a laptop, after having talked on and off about the idea to Deb for the last couple of years. I bought an Acer Aspire 5612, which is to say 15.4" widescreen, 1Gb ram, 120Gb HDD, Intel Duo Core with the matching set of Intel chips and Intel 945 graphics. All for about 850 euro. The price was right, the specs were right, and best of all is that the drivers for everything are good and FOSS. Being able to buy it off the shelf, literally, in a real shop, is also handy, especially if you are impatient. I've got Kubuntu Edgy running on it plus that other OS that came with it, (for Deb who wants it for her work). Read More

This started as reply to Richard's post, but it got too big so I've supersized it. :-) You would think that Eric would know his computer industry history a little bit better. The transition from 32 bit to 64 bit won't resemble the past. Even Eric's account of the past doesn't resemble the past. Read More

In this fairly long article I discuss my attempt to simplify file and device management in KDE, while avoiding some of the draw backs of the current media:/ io-slave. The Challenge Read More

One of the more unique features of Kubuntu is that it ships with a replacement for the standard KDE Control Center program, called systemsettings. Instead of using a tree in a sidebar on the left hand side of the window, systemsettings shows a large menu of grouped icons for the user to choose from. A lot of people like it (and some people don't), but pretty much everyone agrees that it can be improved even more. Read More

I'm a glutton when it comes to radio shows. I just can't get enough. And thankfully there is a lot of high quality and entertaining radio being produced out there in internetland. So in this post I want to talk about and give some links to some of my favourites and some of the more interesting episodes. Read More

I've been meaning to post about this for literally half a year now. But a recent thread on kde-core about improving the GUI for searching in KDE applications has finally pushed me into action. Read More

This was my Wednesday. 5 in the afternoon GF phones me. GF: "Your computer isn't working? It is not turning on. It is acting weird. What's wrong?" ME: "How the **** should I know." Read More

It has been a long time since I've posted something here. I've had things that I've wanted to post but pretty much all of my time has gone to working on the Guidance tools for the coming Dapper release of Kubuntu. Thank gawd Dapper has been delayed. I can (am!) really use the extra time for polishing and debugging. It looks like Dapper is going to be an awesome release and will work a lot smoother than the current release (Breezy). Read More

Work was having a clean up and I got my hands on a bunch of old videocards: 2x nVidia TNT2 (one with TV out, with is handy), 2x S3 (old school AGP, so I'll have to reassemble my old Pentium 2), 1x Diamond something (AGP 1.5v & 3.3v) and a Rendition chipset based Diamond card (PCI!). This expands the number of chipsets and configurations that I can use to test the displayconfig part of Guidance. I whacked the PCI card into my other computer along side the AGP card that was already in there and it quickly exposed a problem in displayconfig. (Only one card appeared on the hardware tab). Another interesting thing was that the BIOS chose the PCI card to use during boot. While the existing xorg.conf file still worked fine and used the AGP card. Maybe displayconfig also needs a way of choosing between two cards, even for singlehead configurations. Read More

GUI updates in Guidance I was going through the usability report about Guidance a month ago and saw this comment at the end of the report: 4.3 Checkbox feedback When the user checks or unchecks the checkbox "Start during boot", the corresponding entry in the list on the left side is updated (e.g. from "yes" to "no"). This is hard to notice, since the mental focus is on the checkbox, not on the list. Therefore, a stronger visual indication about the change is helpful. Read More

Jan Muhelig from OpenUsability.org did a usability review of Guidance with Sebas back at Malaga. The report is now up at OpenUsability for those who are interested. I like to think that I know something about usability. I've been studying/reading about it since the mid-90s and applying it to the software that I design and construct. I thought Jan had some very good comments that we'll be soon putting into a future version of Guidance. After working with the code for so long you get blind to its usability faults. :-) It is really good to have someone who is still "fresh" go in and have a good look at what can be made better. Read More

I let on somewhere that I'll like to see keyboard configuration in KDE be greatly improved, and since then a few people have been trying to catch me, hold me down and get me to elaborate. So I'm going to shotgun this one out into blogsphere(?) and see what happens. Read More

I've finally been able to put some much needed time in displayconfig, the screen/monitor/X11 configuration part of Guidance. Other things like writing a paper about Python, Qt and KDE for this NLUUG conference next month kept me distracted. I've now got some eye candy that I can show-and-tell at the end of this post. Read More

Malaga has naturally fired supertankers worth of discussion about what we want to do for KDE 4. I want to add some more fuel, this time about application scripting and bindings. :-) Read More

I recently moved into my new house, which also means that I have to pay for electricity directly. Wanting to do know how much power things are really using in the computer room, I went out and bought a wattmeter. It measure power use at the wall. I thought that other people might be interested in seeing some "real world" measured values. Read More

It appears that at least one person (Hi Peter!) seems to have misunderstood what I was saying at the end of my last post. I'm not saying that a new hierarchy should be thought up to supplement (read: in addition to) the current unix filesystem layout. I'm saying that a new hierarchy should completely replace the current unix filesystem layout. This is what GoboLinux and OS X have done. This is also not the same as what system: does. system: is another layer on top of the underlying filesystem layout, which leaves you with a system with a split personality. The GUI presents one version of what the system looks like, while everything below the GUI, such as console programs, uses something completely different. Read More

There is a really good series of articles on hierarchies and usability at the SAP Design Guild site which ever developer should read: http://www.sapdesignguild.org/community/design/design.asp (look in the left side menu for the hierarchy articles) Read More

So finally after 4 weeks without having any kind of internet connection at home, I'm back. Sure, I could browse the web and download my mail at work, but it wasn't really possible to change what was happening "out there" on the net. Kind of like TV. You could watch, but not interact. Rather irritating. Read More

Setting up my Athlon64 mobile I realised why I should stick to software: hardware is frustrating, and I'm just not particularily good at it. Here is the short list of problems I've come up against getting all this to work. Read More

I figured that now was as good a time as any to jump on the blogwagon. My timing couldn't be worse though, everything is happening at the same time: New house! Got the keys this week. It's new as in "just been built" and hence is certainly not ready to move into. The whole inside needs to be finished off over the course of the next month (read: painting, light fittings etc and most importantly: deciding network topology and pulling Cat5 through walls :-) ). oh, something also needs to be done with the matching sandpits at the front and back of the house. Bought an Athlon64 3000+ CPU, motherboard and 512Mb RAM for €229, new of course. An impulse buy really. I was kind of planning to buy some hardware after house was ready but just couldn't help myself when I saw this advertised. Mind you I'm now running on an underclocked Athlon 1600 (~1300 stooopid motherboard) which I got off e-bay. Don't really know when I'm going to get a chance to install it in place of the P2. Pushed out version 0.3.0 of PyKDE Extensions. It is software for supporting the creation of KDE programs using Python. Adds things like build and installation system, i18n support, application templates, better Qt-Designer integration and now support for writing KControl modules. (Just added in 0.2.0). Trying to work on Guidance when I can, or at least trying to make sure that Sebas can work on it, since he's got the time right now. The good news is that in July I should have plenty of time for things.