Posts 

Finally got around to fixing some issue with Konsole with the latest kdelibs4_snapshot. The menus work and you can create multiple sessions/tabs again. The actual terminal widget still needs some TLC. Anyway, Konsole is at least useable. I haven't really looked at Qt4/KDE4 much. Read More

One of the improvements to klik that has taken substance over the weekend is this: each future .cmg created on the client side by executing the klik recipe for the bundle now includes "file.list". This enumerates the input files and their URL source that where used to cook up the final .cmg dish (hrmm..., maybe we should have named it "ingredients.list" to stay in tune with the recipe theme). This is in the interest of making it easier, even months after using a .cmg for the first time, to track where the files came from. It will also enable current and future klik recipe maintainers to get their job done more easily. Read More

This weekend saw some more progress in klik development. Before I write about the details involved, let me first re-iterate some very simple facts about how klik works. I think it is required, given some of the emails I received, and some of the questions asked in IRC. Read More

[21:25] <uga> chouimat|laptop: shame to know antonio larrosa went closed source =( [21:25] <uga> antlr-2.7.4-8.noarch.rpm [21:26] <chouimat|laptop> uga: ROFL!!!!!!! [21:26] <thiago> lol

I haven't been blogging for a while. Mainly because I simply haven't felt like it and I've been going through some things lately. But I promised that I'm going to show some movies of things I've been doing. There's really no good way of showing OpenGL effects, vns2swf just doesn't handle it. So those will come later. Read More

Aaron writes: haavard announced that by Q1-06 they'll be releasing a tech preview of java bindings for qt4 that will be officially supported. wow. I'll be interested in how the java bindings are implemented, and whether they are auto-generated or not. Will it be easy to extend them to wrap the kde libs? I hope they are successful. I think it needs a big company like Trolltech to do the marketing to make a java binding a success - I never managed to make my version very popular. The QtRuby ones seem to be getting more traction than I ever got with QtJava. Read More

This weekend I finally finished writing my review for KBruch. KBruch is an Edutainment application which allows students to practice fractions. It has several modes of operation: Evaluation of multiple terms, Factorization of numbers, Comparison between two terms, and Conversion to decimal. Read More

No matter whether it's Tango or Salsa (I'm addicted to Salsa dancing) there are some important things to know about dancing: Of course your attention needs to be 100% on your partner and the enjoyment of dancing that song together. But to be a successful leader it takes more than just trying to force her into something that the "leader" had his heart set on. To make the lady truely shine on the dance-floor a good leader will allow her these essential playful moments of creativity and give her the freedom of expression. - The same is true for icons! ... And leads us directly to the pros & cons of the Tango Project: The good thing about the Tango-specification is that it already uses the common icon names from freedesktop.org which can be shared across desktops. This is a concept which will certainly be shared by all future iconthemes as well (including KDE 4's default iconset Oxygen). The result is a desktop which gives a much more consistent look and feel for the user and iconthemes that are easier to develop. Now we only need to manage to create suggestions for common metaphors for all the iconnames. That way we can pull the whole icontheme thing to enterprise level. People who offer support or write documentation will be able to say stuff like: "To select this part of the screen press the select-icon -- the one with the LASSO depicted" .. and they can be 100% sure that as long as the icontheme is an "enterprise icontheme" (opposed to a fun theme) it will depict a lasso -- no matter which icontheme is chosen. There will always be different iconthemes around as many projects, many distributors and even many free and commercial applications are promoting their own default iconset (think of Linspire's Clear-e, Redhat's Bluecurve, etc. who try to promote their own Visual / Corporate Identity). As mentioned in my introduction: For us leaders there's an important part to make the Tango-specification successful! Let's drop the suggestion for the colorpalette and style! Otherwise all "Tango"-spec-compatible iconthemes will just look like one single icontheme and the freedom of expression for the artists who might want to start a completely new innovative icontheme (maybe based on the visual identity of the respective project) will be close to zero! These days innovation and diversity is the motivation that makes people buy new products and try new stuff. So the way too restrictive rules for colors and styles in Tango would definetely hinder adoptance and would just weaken it as a standard. The whole topic was already covered on freedesktop.org as well as the Appeal-mailinglist. Ideally the Tango-specification will just consist of two requirements that iconthemes will need to fullfill to be a good choice for the default/enterprise: The freedesktop.org common iconname standard and the yet-to-create standard for common metaphors. If we keep this in mind then watching the dancefloor of different iconthemes on kde-look.org will be a joyful experience: diversity will be preserved and a smooth, consistent and beautiful appearance of the desktop will be guaranteed.

Ricoh USA just delivered to me (as representing KDE) a nice color laser printer (CL4000DN). It looks very impressive and it prints like a fairy tale charm. The hero in this is George Liu, Linux engineer at Ricoh, believes in KDE's technologies and wants Linux to succeed (printing aspects withstanding). He energically advocates Linux at Ricoh. Read More

Featuritis is a condition in which the functionality of an application increases with each revision (and such, complexity increases). The functionality that aggravates this condition is usually that which a single user (or group) requests (or is given) without consideration of the implications it has on the rest of the users, interface, and experience the application is meant to address. Read More