KDE Blogs 

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

Why is it that whenever a Dot story features one of our female contributors, people feel the need to embarass themselves (and the rest of us) with pathetic and demeaning comments? Greg Meyer called it, it's really creepy, anti-social behavior. Read More

Damn, it has been more than 2 years since I wrote an entry here. I simply have too little time to do anything code-wise for KDE. Last week I subscribed again to some lists to see what is happening in KDE land for 4.0 but I dont have the time to code. I've always had this idea to make a electronic schema/layout editor but if things keep going like they have been going then I'll never get around to it. Read More

Lately I was working on an embedded project (about half closed source and half open source) and at one point the "manager" of the project asked me why we choose the road we are on ... and all the answers I was able to gave him was a) because it make sense and b) because we can do it ... it seems those 2 answers are wrong ... so now I have to spend the next 2 weeks roting my brain to find some "intelligent answers" for this question ... The thing is, and I know it, nobody took this path before so my answer are good and fuck them if they don't like them ... they are not paying for the R&D they will only gave a share of the profits so ... if they don't like my answer why they agree on my solution? Read More

Well, i finally had enough time and ideas to add direct support for bluetooth in kmobiletools. It was more tricky than i though anyway.. First i had to update kdebluetooth to make it export some classes, and add a new one, RfcommSocketDevice, which is similar to the existant RfcommSocket, but more usabile on threading. Then.. well, i had only to learn their API, and to find a new good UI for my "New Mobile Phone Wizard". I simply added another page dedicated to bluetooth, which can scan over devices, find names, and services. Later i'll also add an automatic "good service discovery" which will find the best service for KMobileTools. New stuff then.. adding a mobile phone is even easier, since you don't need to run ANOTHER wizard for bluetooth binding, and the rfcommsocket seems a bit faster than the rfcomm binded serial device. Bad news: to use it you have to upgrade kdebluetooth to trunk, of course :P Good news: you don't have to recompile the WHOLE kdebluetooth.. just configure it, then enter in "libkbluetooth" and type "make install". That's all!

One of bugzilla features is displaying various headlines, probably in order to cheer up the poor bugreporter or bughunter. KDE bugzilla actually doesn't seem to have this enabled, but I liked this in the old SUSE bugzilla, it had a nice collection of funny quips for the headlines. Those are gone now though after the switch to Novell bugzilla, which seems to prefer various encouraging quotes from famous people (I can't help it but sometimes they kinda remind me of the old communist times with their slogans). However, looking at the complete list I can see that some funny comments are finding their way even here, so all is not lost :). Read More

It's certainly one of those rare cases many open source geeks are dreaming of: An open source developer finds his other half, who is also a passionate open source developer and they both decide to marry each other. Recently this dream came true for Eva and Matze, who have both been involved with the free software project KDE since many years already. For those who don't know them yet: Our queen of hearts Eva also is the president of the KDE e.V., the non-profit organisation that represents KDE developers in legal and financial matters. And both have a job that involves Qt programming. The wedding took place on July 29th, 2006 in the beautiful St. Pankratius church in Mainz-Hechtsheim near Frankfurt. As our mascot Konqi unfortunately wasn't able to attend I was invited instead. So I had the chance to watch the wedding ceremony together with their family and their friends. Thanks to the organizers (Hi Christian!) and thanks to the weather gods the memorable day became even more memorable due to the stunning party afterwards. Matze and Eva have just returned from their honeymoon which they enjoyed on the the island Bali in Indonesia. There they did not only find some quiet moments without KDE but also an internet cafe which was using KDE on Linux of course. The KDE team would like to offer Congratulations and Very Best Wishes on their Marriage.

Yeah, I fell into the trap too. It's a toy, just a toy. But I can't ignore eyecandy =) There's some annoying 'g' dependancy on it for now, but I couldn't resist. Most of you will also have experimented with it, and possibly found that your dear minicli is no more accessible through Alt+F2 shortcut. Of course, this is unacceptable for me, given I use it at least 99 times a day. And possibly annoying for you too, right? Read More

Krita participated through KDE with the 2006 Summer of Code by Google. I think the result turned out to be quite impressive and usable. Basically, there were 2 big objectives: create a Bézier tool, and create an 'intelligent scissors' tool, through a common, to-be-created framework. The student that did the programming for this, was Emanuele Tamponi. He completed the project nicely on time, so that the new features can be admired in the upcoming 1.6 release of Krita. First, there was the Bézier tool. This now (finally) allows us to draw an arbitrary and potentially nicely flowing (or is it derivable?) curves on the screen, edit them, and then decide to stroke (draw them with the current brush and color), or convert it to a selection. The basic interface looks like this. Which gives you the ability to move points, control points, add points, etc. In my opinion it's very usable and gives a pretty result (but then, I'm not an artist). There's quite a chance that this tool will get superseded in Krita 2 with the flake bézier tool, which is quite a shame. The far future might look bleak, but at least now we have a working implementation, that will probably get used for the year(s?) to come, until KDE4 and Krita 2 actually get to the users. The other big thing that got done, is the scissors tool. Or, MOS, as we call it now (stands for Magnetic Outline Selection). The tool does a pretty neat thing: you move your mouse around an object (preferably one with well-defined contours), and the tool will try to follow the outline, drawing a curve around it. When you're finished, you can go and modify it a bit, or just convert the outline to a selection. It's a bit like the regular selection tool, but with the very cool effect that you can shake your hands with the mouse, and the tool will actually try to follow the mind, not the hand ;-) In the picture, I moved my mouse around the rose, and the tool automatically added intermediate points. Those points are everything it needs; the lines in between are automatically calculated from the image itself. Pretty cool and useful, I'd say. If you'd like to have a look at the features, you can either wait for the 1.6 version of Krita and KOffice (scheduled for October 10th), the first beta (September 8th), or just check out the svn version from the 1.6 branch (but as with all code, no guarantees it will work).

I created KDE4.x/ application directories in ftp://upload.kde.org's incoming/ directory. The first application it was used for was okular, an universal document viewer for KDE 4 based on KPDF, with a snapshot preview requiring the recent Krash release. Read More