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In KDE Partition Manager there are three dialogs dealing with a partition sizes, all of them using the same code base internally. These dialogs are: the dialog to create a new partition, the one to resize an existing partition and the dialog to insert a copied or imported partition.

One thing that was not really optimal in version 1.0 was that partition alignment (and we all remember from the last installment what an important topic that is) took place outside of those dialogs and therefore after the user had accepted the changes.

Alignment Again

In other words, the user makes a size adjustment in one of the dialogs and only after he has finished doing so is alignment taken into account. In an extreme worst-case scenario the alignment code will have to make the partition smaller than the user intended it to be. In that case a warning will be printed. This is a very unlikely scenario, but it can happen.

So that was the situation in 1.0. What has improved with ...read more...

It's time for Computex! This means loads of gadgets and related stuff to flood the internet, so let's get started by focussing on ASUS.

As in 2008 and 2009, a new digiKam and kipi-plugins developers reunion is planned in Europe. This year, i proud to announce that i will organize the event in south of France, in the nice city of Aix en Provence.

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I have said it over and over again, Linux installations needs a Welcome Screen. This would be a huge help for new users who often are not sure where to turn for help, or what Linux is all about.

First sorry people by my late in report something in GSoC, but now i have some results to show to you.
This is my first post about GSoC with some progress, here i will describe a little of the include system in development.
The idea behind Rocs’ include system is to make the user capable of reuse the algorithms without copy paste (this make a simple algorithm file become huge and is not guaranteed that a method is the most actual).
To over with all this copy/paste and update all the files with some method, we bring to you this feature.

Now just put your algorithms in a directory and tell to Rocs where is it and just:

include ( my_file.js)

and you got it! all that methods and algorithms very useful

Now to the questions:

How Rocs know where is my files?
To make more confortable to user, he/she just say to Rocs to seek in some directories, like /home/homie/JsScripts;/other/path/.
Rocs will search in that two folder. ...read more...

KOffice 2.2 , the office suite for KDE, has been released. New features include import filters for Office 2007 thanks to Nokia, and the return of the Access clone Kexi .

This week on KDEMU we introduce Gabriel Saldana one of the co-hosts of KDEMU, we talk about KDE Mexico, his life as a rock star and emacs identi.ca mode. We also have Listener Submitted Content by Harald & Frederik of KDE Fluffy Pink Desktop fame!

What is KDEMU you ask? It’s an *all* KDE show that will cover a wide range of KDE topics, releases, interviews with developers, etc.

If you are a KDE contributor and want to talk about your work in KDE, want to submit Listener Submitted Content or just want to co-host a show or two, feel free to email me or use the contact form in my website.

Check KDE and the Masters of the Universe – 2010-05-30 out and tell us what you think! COMMENT ON IT. :-)

Also if you didn’t catch Animus Me’s latest episode Animus Me – 2010-05-25 check it out now.

This year I am taking part in the Google Summer of Code program. The project I am going to work on is the improvement of R language support in Cantor mathematical environment written by Alexander Rieder. The project includes both regular fixes aiming to bring the functionality of different Cantor's languages on par, and other more ambitious goals which revolve around upgrading Cantor itself which would allow to turn it into a serious and appealing working environment for R programmers. Following is the list of planned improvements:

• Syntax highlighting and tab-completion — the obvious commodity of many environments still lacks in Cantor for the R language. In the scope of the project it is planned to fully implement the syntax highlighting feature, highlighting of invalid code constructs, symbol completion from the working environment, available commands etc;
• Environment browser. The workplace in R is called an environment, which is composed of object the user has allocated. For the ease of the user a panel ...read more...

Good news, everyone. Cantor's R backend now has gained the same level of tab-completion as the original CLI R does, at least I want to believe in it. Turned out to be much easier than I originally thought as R comes with its own strong core tab-completion infrastructure, isolated from the interface code. So, even though it works, I'm not actually proud of the code and it has lots of stubs for those unlikely-to-happen situations. However those, who are using Cantor with R already are hereby welcomed to grab the r1132179 version of SoC-Cantor directory and play with it around for a while to make sure it works as intended in a regular workflow.

KOffice 2.2 , the office suite for KDE, has been released. New features include import filters for Office 2007 thanks to Nokia, and the return of the Access clone Kexi .

As some of you might have seen, KOffice 2.2.0 was finally released today. Quoting the release announcement:

“There are still areas in the user interface that we want to work on before stating that KOffice is fit for the general public. We are, however, at a stage where we think that KOffice can be used for real work by some users.”

I agree with this statement and it is still to be decided if KOffice 2.2.0 will make it into Squeeze. I am inclined to do so but I would love some well argumented feedback. Take into consideration some applications are more mature than others.

The packages will be uploaded to the official archive soon, but they still need some minor work and given they include new deb files (kformula shape and kexi), they need to go thru the NEW queue, it might take some time.

Meanwhile, you can find packages for amd64 & i386 from the semi-official repository at: http://qt-kde.debian.net/.
You also have available the localization ...read more...

Actually it is impossible to collect all achieved results in one single article. Compared to all other events we went to, this was the most productive one and we will need months to actually work on all that will need to be done. Let's try to point out what interests our users most: language learning.

Up to now we only considered Parley and KHangman, well ... time to broaden our list of “interesting software” with learning Alphabets: Klettres is the new bit we decided to add. But for now let's center on Parley.

During the past months we collected data with means of tables and finally, just a couple of weeks ago Ambaradan went online. Right now we still don't edit there, but it is only a matter of time. What we already can do is provide data. The sprint gave us the possibility to run a test of for applications: Parley and ...read more...

Every once in a while I write a post related to relations between lancelot and kmail or kopete.

This time it is only to notify you that until KMail2 arrives*, the ‘unread mail’ section in Lancelot will not work since L in SC 4.5 switched to Akonadi.

* if PIM devs don’t miss the initial plan, it will be for 4.5.1

I added some new options to Krazy in the past few days. Hope folks find them useful.

1. You can now control the types of files to process with the new --types and --exclude-types options.

   Use the --list-types option to see what file types are supported.

   Examples:
   

   # Run all checks against desktop and designer files in this directory:
% krazy2 --types=desktop,designer  *
   # Run all checks on all file types except C++ files:
% krazy2all --exclude-types=c++

2. Krazy now supports "check-sets" with the new --check-sets option. Check-sets are a collection of checkers with a similar high level purpose in mind.
   Check-sets currently available:
   * c++, pure C++ checks
   * qt4, Qt4 source (C++, QML, Qt Designer files)
   * kde4, everything (the default)
   * foss, checks specific to FOSS (eg. license and copyright)

   Use the --list-sets option to see what check-sets are supported.

   Examples:
   

   # Only check for pure C++ issues:
% krazy2 --check-set=c++ *
   # Only check for pure Qt4 issues:
% krazy2all --check-set=qt4

Wait! There's ...read more...

There were a lot of complaints when we decided to limit the size of icons placed on panels in plasma to 32×32 pixels.

The reasoning behind limiting the size were requests from users who use vertical panels – vertical panels are usually made wider then standard panels, and icons would grow to 300×300 pixels taking up most of the space on the panel.

Putting a maximum size for icons was a good decision generally, but the bad side of it was that the new size was hard-coded. There was an option in the system settings to change sizes of icons, but setting the size for panel icons was disabled.

Now, thanks to a patch by Mike Kasick, this option is enabled and it works. Mike is one of the best types of users – although he isn’t a Plasma contributor (as far as I know – no SVN account) he sent us a patch, and responded to all of our suggestions with revised versions.

In the end, Aaron and myself adapted the proposed patch ...read more...

There were a lot of complaints when we decided to limit the size of icons placed on panels in plasma to 32×32 pixels.

The reasoning behind limiting the size were requests from users who use vertical panels – vertical panels are usually made wider then standard panels, and icons would grow to 300×300 pixels taking up most of the space on the panel.

Putting a maximum size for icons was a good decision generally, but the bad side of it was that the new size was hard-coded. There was an option in the system settings to change sizes of icons, but setting the size for panel icons was disabled.

Now, thanks to a patch by Mike Kasick, this option is enabled and it works. Mike is one of the best types of users – although he isn’t a Plasma contributor (as far as I know – no SVN account) he sent us a patch, and responded to all of our suggestions with revised versions.

In the end, Aaron and myself adapted the proposed patch ...read more...

Since yesterday the KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1 packages are available through the openSUSE OBS. They are available in the KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE:Desktop repository. As announced, this Beta contains the KDEPIM packages from KDE SC 4.4 due to the delay in the conversion to Akonadi. However if you feel really brave, then also the KDEPIM 4.5 packages are available in a subproject (KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE:Desktop:kdepim45).

The kdepim45 packages will receive daily updates from svn, while the KDE SC 4.5 Desktop will receive weekly updates. Once openSUSE 11.3 has been released, KDE SC 4.5 will be moved to the KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop repository.

Enjoy!

This post is actually rather after the fact. I've been super busy, and my blogging tends to fall way, way behind when that happens. But I wanted to tell people about plans for Amarok Mobile, where things stand now, and what needs to be done. (And how you could help!)

First off, I need to give a big shout-out to Nokia. A while back, they donated ten n900 devices to KDE developers who submitted proposals describing what they would work on. I was one of the lucky winners, and this provided both the motivation and means to start working on an Amarok Mobile.

I actually was not initially supposed to use this for Amarok Mobile development -- I had sumitted a proposal to bring functionality similar to the beloved* Popup Dropper into a library for Maemo programs. Problem: having never used Maemo before, I didn't realize it had longpress functionality (my previous phone was an iPhone).

So, not wanting to reinvent the wheel needlessely, I instead decided to start working on exactly what everyone had assumed/thought/wanted me to be working ...read more...

KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1 was released, among it a new Marble version with great new features. Please give it a try; we're looking for testers and appreciate feedback via IRC (#marble), email or Bugzilla.The handbook is not yet updated, so here goes a quick tip for one of the features that may be a bit harder to spot: Exporting a route to .gpx is possible from the routing context menu. Click on any point of the route in the map with the right mouse button and select "Export route..." in the context menu.

If your navigation device (or whichever software you want to use) does not support the .gpx format directly, have a look at gpsbabel as a universal conversion tool.

WebKit, the open-source project behind Apple's Safari browser, is a pretty obscure name to ordinary folks.

I’ve resigned my job at KDAB last month in a swift move towards more KDE-time. This all came pretty suddenly, but it felt like The Right Thing to do for me personally and for KDE, which I care a lot about. Since May, I’ve been working for Open-SLX, a German company that makes and supports the openSUSE boxed version. My focus in that work is the user experience of the product. The idea is to work upstream (in openSUSE and KDE / Plasma) as much as possible. While Open-SLX benefits directly from my work done in KDE, this is also a nice way to give back to the community, by making sure I get to spend enough time on things that are not directly related to the product. So now I’ve settled into my new job, and up until now, it’s been great. I’ve been able to catch up with a couple of areas in KDE, I didn’t get to spend as much time as I wanted in the ...read more...

It is a well known fact that devs hate writing the user documentation (we are not even fond of writing devel documentation), so it was the same case for me and Lancelot’s manual.

But from time to time our conscience tells us that we should do something about it. In this case, the role of my conscience was played by annma

In preparation for KDE SC 4.5, I’ve updated the main userbase page for Lancelot and added two more detailed articles – one to contain the basic instructions and one that compares Lancelot to other launchers.

The comparison is most probably biased (although I tried hard for it not to be), so any help in that department is appreciated. (any help in any department is more than appreciated)

Now, the article that is yet left to be written is the introduction to the Shelf applet (ex Lancelot Part) and I’ll ...read more...

After a few delays, the PR 1.2 firmware for the N900 is finally released with Qt 4.6.2 shipping by default (see maemo.org for all PR 1.2 related info). This means that all the apps that up until now only ran in the SDK can finally be deployed to real devices

The final Qt packages have the version tag 4.6.2~git20100401-0maemo1+0m5 (no April Fool’s, despite the date).

Some useful information:

• A good starting point for developing with Qt for Maemo 5 is the Nokia Qt SDK.
• Here’s the Qt for Maemo 5 documentation, suggested reads are the Maemo 5 introduction page and the Maemo 5 platform notes.
• The Qt for Maemo 5 examples can be found in Maemo’s extras-devel repository. The package is called libqt4-examples-maemo5 and installs to /usr/examples/maemo5. Documentation is here.
• The Qt 4 wiki contains useful information ...read more...

Just a short blog today to announce the immediate availability of rekonq 0.4.90 (0.5 beta) tarballs. As I’m having troubles today with my sf account (rekonq site and tarballs are on sourceforge), you’ll find code just on gitorious (download source from git there) and on kde-apps (the usual tarballs).

If you live under the rocks and you yet don’t know what rekonq is, just let me say that it is a web browser based on (Qt)WebKit that aims to be lightweight and to be well integrated with KDE technologies.

New features for the upcoming 0.5 release are:

• improved adblock, automagically updating filter lists (+abp scheme support)
• RSS support
  
• new urlbar (tech preview): it’s just nice and more will come..
  
• auto-scrolling
• downloads history tracked
• SSL Info support
  
• Bookmarks & history panels improvements
• bugfixing & users wishes

All rekonq screenshots, as usual, are ...read more...