This weekend I spent time on preparing for the ODF Plugfest again. The test software ODFAutoTests now has many more tests. Most new tests are for text styles. I've created tests for each of the possible attributes in <style:text-properties/>.

Kexi has improved quite a bit since the last time, especially in Reports. We're close to supplementary 2.8.7 release within Calligra, then 2.9 will follow and Qt5/KF5-based 3.0 with a shiny mask.

We're about to reach the point where it's very very hard to find comparable Free Software reporting tool in terms of usability. If you don't know why reporting software may be useful, try to generate 50 or 500 pages PDF out of structured data with just mouse clicks and no programming. Get the report file generated in 2 seconds or less. Or print the report directly without creating intermediate PDF or ODF or HTML files that will pollute your computer... It's data that matters.

In two weeks time, users and developers of OpenDocument Format software will meet up for a two day ODF plugfest in London. In preparation of the plugfest, I have spent last weekend, refreshing ODFAutoTests. ODFAutoTests is a tool for creating test documents for ODF software and running these documents through the different implementations.

I've moved my developer blog to my vanity domain jriddell.org, which has hosted my personal blog since 1999 (before the word existed). Tags used are Planet KDE and Planet Ubuntu for the developer feeds.

Sorry no DCOP news on jriddell.org.

[thanks to jens for the lovely logo]

Today there are only six days left until I vote in the independence referendum. I usually use my personal blog for non technical bits but I thought some readers of my KDE Blog might be interested in this as it does affect the geopolitics of pretty much the whole world.

What's going on?

Kubuntu Vivid is the development name for what will be released in April next year as Kubuntu 15.04.

The exiting news is that following some discussion and some wavering we will be switching to Plasma 5 by default. It has shown itself as a solid and reliable platform and it's time to show it off to the world.

Andy, thanks so much for picking up the topic of color pickers (pun intended).

I'd like to discuss cases when accuracy is not as important at results. In this case there's a problem of abundance of choice. You don't have time to quickly and correctly pick one from the 16777216 colors. Plus alpha value? Come on! Whenever you're confronted with a photoshop/gimp-like color picker you either choose random color, or single color that's globally predefined in a palette. I also understand that very few 'casual' users maintain own palettes for consistency.

Last month I posted about packaging and why it takes time. I commented that the Stable Release Update process could not be rushed because a regression is worse than a known bug. Then last week I was pointed to a problem where Baloo was causing a user's system to run slow. Baloo is the new indexer from KDE and will store all your files in a way you can easily search for them and was a faster replacement for Nepomuk.

That was my first Akademy after a while, I've been following previous two with kids on my lap. I think Brno turned out to be both a pretty destination and decent host for all KDErs.
A new Kexi contributor Wojtek Kosowicz came with me. You can read about him here and his recent story here. Recently in Kexi there is a trend of new contributors coming from Poland, and specifically from Warsaw. I've heard they're a bit regretting afterwards they didn't join the Akademy too but I trust that will improve next year :)