Okay so now I have enough to start working on a KJSApplet installer [image:243,middle]. At this point KIconLoader works so we can get standard KDE icons. KIO works so i can download files off the internet, and I can create the files.

On Sunday we held the first Kontact Bug Squashing Day. A couple of core developers met on IRC and tried to fix some Kontact bugs. We started with 431 open bug reports (Summing up the reports of kontact, kaddressbook, kmail, knode, knotes and korganizer) and ended with 419 open bug reports. This doesn't sound too impressive, but we were able to address some of the remaining major problems, so all in all it was a success and not to forget it also was fun.

Yeah, im insane... but you can.

Check out cvs:[kdenonbeta/applets/kjsapplet] from cvs and build/install it. Next comes the fun part.

Did users ask for Expose?

The main problem is to find out what users want. Did you know whether users will like Expose or they will use KXmlRpc before they have been implemented? I don't think so. Did users ask for Expose? Unlikely. Can we know whether WinFS's way of searching files with meta-data queries will replace today's file systems? No. All I know is that it sounds useful, and that if it is a success KDE will look pretty outdated with its file dialogs.

What if, instead of basing our platforms, software and development paradigms upon chasing what we perceive the competition has today, we based our decisions upon user demand.

So when a group of people actualy need something, someone (probably people invovled that group having the need) make it. If nobody needs feature/library/component/technology X, nobody makes it and the platform isn't weighed down by it. If this sounds a lot like how things work in open source, it is.

OSNews has a poll and discussion about integrating Mono into Gnome. As KDE may face a similar decision at some point in the future - what to do when KDE's technology is not competitive anymore - I thought i write my thoughts down in my blog instead of the OSNews forum.

Yes i have implemented it in Kompare and committed it to CVS but unfortunately it is not activated atm. It is not open for discussion before people start begging me about activating it because it is not in the release plan and it is way too late for new features.

I was out having a pint with a fellow when he mentioned he uses (and quite likes) Evolution as his email client. He had a few gripes about it, but then don't we all when it comes to the software we use day-in and day-out? He then mentioned how he was surprised at just how huge a program it was. i asked if he knew how many lines of code went into Evolution, and he guess about right. I then asked him if he could guess how much had gone into Kontact; he though a little less than Evolution, but probably a similar amount. This is, however, far from the truth. Kontact is dramatically smaller that Evolution in terms of code count, even when taking into consideration all the various apps that are associated with it (KMail, KOrganizer, KAddressbook, libkabc, the various kioslaves). Then he asked a very interesting question: if I wanted to make a KDE mail app that was an alternative to KMail, would I be able to, would the KDE project encourage such an effort, and how much work would it be?

Here's a nice piccy of a water colour effect that was created using Javascript. It was originally one of the n7y pics - enjoy!