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Don't worry annma, your not the only one missing the conference. I'm going to be stuck enjoying the thunderstorms here in Manchester.

Just came across this article via msdn, C++: The Most Powerful Language for .NET Framework Programming. Microsoft seems especially pleased with their new version of Managed C++. They've done a complete revamp of their previous .NET support for C++ and submitted it to ECMA and ISO as a standard. This brings C++ inline with C# as far as first class support for the Common Language Runtime. I really like what they've done to improve the C++ experience for .NET, but still think it will be incredibly hard to adapt the Qt/KDE libraries to fit into this framework. Consider this annoyance, the new proposed standard mandates PascalCase be used for the core API. For a technical challenge you'd have to consider how to integrate MOC and the new C++.NET properties. Read on. C++.NET properties: property String^ Name { String^ get() { return m_value; } void set( String^ value ) { m_value = value; } } Q_PROPERTY: Q_PROPERTY( QString name READ name WRITE setName ) void setName( QString name ); QString name() const; Read More

Heya, so I'm looking forward to aKademy, as it will be first real life meeting of the amaroK development squad. When you spend years developing stuff together in open source fashion, talking over IRC pretty much every day, it is kinda cool to meet up with your folks, exchange coding lore at the campfire, snatch some beer from the JuK developers, that sort of stuff. Read More

So i was trying to figure out how to copy songs from my favorite Juk play lists onto my mp3 player most efficiently. So I hit up wheels about Juk's dcop interface. One word "Wow". Read More

Vacations lead you to do strange things... I waked up this morning and strangely aim my eyes to the huge closet barely opened in last three years at my apartment.. So, i decided that it's time to throw out almost everything in there, since i really didn't need this stuff. And in this times you see things that did your past and probably meant a lot for you. From letter of ex-girlfriends to friends cards. From a full collection of Wired magazines ( in their good times ) to a Dr. Dobbs and C++ Journal editions ( you need been a brazilan to know how expensive and hard was to buy such magazines, life used to be a lot hard here in those times ). From a X-Men collection to a university notes and old computer books. It's misterious how mind's work, bringing missing feelings, and histories with this inanimated objects, and causing some affection to then, trying to keep you away from the "throw away" idea. But i decided that's time to move on on this things. Among things, i decided give my fully working old Super Nintendo to the son of one of securty persons of my building, give another Board game to another son of other security guy and the full x-men collection to the son of the third security guy ( they are four at all ). I made this to assure that this things will give same fun i had on the past for new children. From magazines, i decided keep three Wired editions that marked me a lot, specially the one showing the dawn of Atari and how this technicias become half of entire Silicon Valley companies. From ex-girlfriends things ? Garbage. Good and bad memories, but must go. I keep special pictures. From Comics, just the Graphic Novels that i re-read from time to time, mainly the Sandman ones. And the university notes, i kept just the conclusion work. I really wanted save old work, but it's interesting how's Internet provides everything that i use to have in paper. Not that is a good thng, is dangerous. We are becoming too dependant. But even with this, i decided throw away everything. As everything have the good and the bad side, the bad side was throw my notes where i can saw that truly grow up and did a lot of mistakes, but the good is that i'm opening space for growing more ( and make new mistakes )... Anyway, life's going on Read More

When going to Boston for the USENIX conference I started to read Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson in the plane from Frankfurt to Boston. I didn't know much about about the setting of the book, so it came as a surprise that the book starts with the execution of a woman at the Boston Common. Ten hours later I was standing at the place where Enoch the Red watches Jack Ketch doing his job. Read More

It seems Trolltech is continuing to wrestle with the problem of pesky developers clamoring for bytecode based (read: higher level) languages. I talked with him quite a bit about this at the recent LinuxWorld in New York, so I know it is on his mind. In his recent interview at aKademy, Matthias even identified this as the "next big thing" for KDE. But, is bytecode really the question? Read on. Q: What do you think the "next big thing" in KDE will be? MATTHIAS: There is one thing that will become increasingly important in the future, not just for KDE, but for all of Linux: a convincing answer to Microsoft's .Net. I'm not concerned about the server, I'm concerned about the client... Still it would be nice to take advantage of JIT-compiled bytecode where it makes sense, and have the two worlds interoperate. Currently there are two technical options: integrating Mono and the CLR, or going for a Java Virtual Machine. Mono at present has several advantages: First, there is no free JIT-compiling JVM that is equally actively developed and it doesn't look like there will be one. Second, cooperating with Miguel and the Ximian group at Novell is probably a lot easier than cooperating with Sun. And third, it is easier to integrate native C++ code with the CLR than going through the JNI. To me, the real thing TT should be concerned about isn't so much nativecode VS bytecode... it is how to satisfy those pesky developers clamoring for higher level language access to Qt/KDE API's. I think this is what TT had in mind creating QSA, but that is only a scripting language. Ultimately, there are three niches of development I think TT needs to cater to: Read More

This blog entry is just to make clee happy ... he should be now ...

The last months have been a busy time. Some special things like the USENIX conference, the KDE Free Qt Foundation agreement, the final phase of the KDE 3.3 release cycle or the preparations for the upcoming KDE conference aKademy took a considerable amount of my time in addition to the usual having a job and a family. But it was fun and still is. Read More

Ok, so Qt 4's listview / table / iconview / listbox replacement is called "Interview" collectively. I started playing around with it last weekend and well, there's some good and some bad. The good is that at least from an initial take on things the performance seems much better. This could just be the double buffering tricking me and making it look smooth since I haven't actually done any really intensive tests on it, but it certainly feels more responsive. Read More