KDE Blogs 

Shocked by the title? So I am. Would you like to see Qt supported on this platform? Just two days ago the answer was like "But it's close to impossible". Now with NDK 1.6 the "little robot" OS opens more to C/C++ native code. I am eager to read some analysis on the topic. Read More

I recently had a crash that was hard to fix. Well, it IS hard to fix because I am still on it. It is again one of these "from the middle of nowhere" bugs KDE is so good in producing. Read More

Nearly Beta time for Kubuntu. We need testers to grab the ISO images and test them. Also upgrade testing is needed. See the ISO tester for what needs tested and join us on #kubuntu-devel to help out. Read More

While explaining the story behind his great ppttoxml tool, Jos also mentionedSince about a year, Microsoft has, after significant political pressure, put documentation for their file formats on-line. That's fine and solved some issues. But there are MS Access proprietary file formats (mdb, accdb) that remain to be secret. These are not planned to be replaced by XML formats (what would be overkill in databases). I guess there was no pressure to open the formats, what looks like an overlook in EU and the USA (correct me if there's another reason like patents). If you google for that, it is hard to find even a single mention of file format specifications in the above meaning, and even explanations from MS employees or backers show that they do not fully realize one thinf: MSA formats are not covered by the process of said "opening of the legacy formats". Read More

This morning, I thought: why is XMLHttpReq for xml and text but not for binary files? It turns out you can use it for binary files, but not in each browser and only for remote files. I've written a small implementation of hexdump. It loads a binary file like this: Read More

This is what full screen KRDC will look like in KDE SC 4.4: Jam-packed with new features. Hi, now that I have your attention, let me introduce myself. I'm Tony Murray and like many SysAdmins on Linux, I use KRDC on a daily basis and I am often connected to several servers simultaneously. KRDC is one of my most vital tools. I have some form of coding skills, mostly being schooled in Java, but there are many fundamental differences between C++ and Java so it is a hard learning experience. I have contributed some small bits of code to Plasma and the nowplaying applet (which I believe is almost obsolete). Then I finally got up the courage to work on something I've been wanting to tweak for a long time, KRDC. I love it so, but there have been many small pain points in using it to do my SysAdmin duties. Read More

KOffice has the potential to be a widely used office suite. One of the requirements for user adoption is good support for popular file formats and most presentations are available as Powerpoint presentations. KOffice uses ODF as native format. There is an import filter for PowerPoint presentations in KOffice which is currently incomplete. At KO, we are working to improve this situation. Read More

I've been improving the .doc import of KWord over the last couple of months (besides working on tables) I must say it has been quite a dramatic improvement. From having each paragraph being loaded onto each own page with the formatting all wrong, no tables, page size wrong, and many other bugs all over, I'm pleased to say that I'll this weekend give the .doc import a real world test, as I'll be conducting a 2,5 hour lecture using KWord to go through a 40 page document with tables, images inside tables, pagebreaks and lots of formatting. Read More

I'm just back in from the first day the openSUSE conference. The day started badly when I woke up in a cold sweat dreaming that OpenOffice ate my presentation (again), but it was still there when I resumed my laptop and so I biked the 5km into the Berufsförderungswerk Nuernberg, the technical college where the conference is a guest. A good number of people were in for Lenz Grimmer's keynote on virtual development teamwork, which was a relief, then I sat in for a bit of the openSUSE Weekly News talk by Sascha Manns. Running a news magazine is an important and demanding part of a project's internal and external communications and I'm grateful that Sascha and team put in the effort, and hope they get more contributors. Then I earwigged at the back of the GNOME team meeting, while Andy Wafaa demoed me the SUSE Goblin image. It's impressively polished and will give the Plasma netbook interface a tough act to follow. Read More

So, after far too long, TagLib 1.6 is out. I finally asked Lukáš Lalinský, who's been the largest TagLib contributor other than myself and veteran of the MusicBrainz project, to step in and take over maintainership as I've been off doing the whole interwebs startup thing for the last year and change and time is exceedingly scarce of late. Read More