Are you also one of those who find setting up multiple displays in KDE workspace is not as good as it could be. The part that handles this is called Kephal, which provides KDE apps with a unified interface to various display configuration backends. On GNU/Linux this means XRandR and if is not available it uses Qt’s QDesktopWidget as a read-only fallback. Currently Kephal doesn’t support all the latest and greatest features available in XRandR and the graphical configuration tool, available in System Settings, is also not so nice to use. More streamlined integration into KDE workspace would also be nice.

And here is where Google Summer of Code comes in. This year I’ve been selected as one of the 50 students who will be working hard on improving various KDE parts. And as you guessed it, I’ll be working on improving Kephal. The main direction I envisioned is that Kephal should become smarter so that it would be able to configure most of the display related settings on its own, in a way a user would expect. This way the need for user intervention would be reduced to a minimum, and only if there is a special configuration needed, user would open the tool to adjust settings (accessible for example from Devices notification widget, in a similar way as actions for storage media). These settings would be saved and then later loaded as needed automatically, depending on the detected display combinations, or maybe even depending on location/activity other KDE services provide. Details about everything will be decided next week when I’ll have my first meeting with my mentor Will "bille" Stephenson,

At this point I also have to thank Gustavo Pichorin Boiko, who was helping me put my GSoC proposal into shape.

BTW, if you have any comments about multi-display support (what you miss, what you don’t like, any nice ideas about improvements) you’re welcome to add them to this blog post.

In addition to packaging KDE SC 4.4.2 for the just released Mandriva Linux 2010 Spring Beta 1, the hard-working Mandriva KDE Team, lead by Nicolas Lécureuil (neoclust), have also prepared packages for current stable version of the distribution. To get the latest version of your favourite desktop and applications first add the packages repository by issuing this command from Konsole (as root user of course):

If you’re using a 64-bit edition:
urpmi.addmedia KDE-4.4 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.4.2/Mandriva/2010.0/x86_64

If you’re using a 32-bit edition:
urpmi.addmedia KDE-4.4 ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/4.4.2/Mandriva/2010.0/i586

If possible use KDE mirror that is closest to your location. In case you already have a repository for an older KDE SC 4.4 release, you can just edit the URL from Mandriva Control Center. After the repository is configured use the following command to automatically update all repositories, select all updates and perform a test update:

urpmi --auto-update --test

If all goes well the updated packages should get downloaded and you should get a message that the installation of updates is possible. Now run the previous command again. this time without the "–test" switch, wait a few minutes and the latest and greatest of KDE software should be installed. Don’t forget to logout and login and all will be ready. Enjoy!

Just a reminder to everyone from KDE Community (or others interested in or work), who will be around Ljubljana, Slovenia on February 9. Encouraged by the big success of the KDE party last year, and a lot of exciting new features in KDE SC 4.3 and 4.4, we’ve decided to organize another KDE release party this year. It will start at 18:00 local time and you’ll be able to hear about some of the cool new developments that have happend in the KDE land since the last party. So don’t miss this get-together and put this party on your calendars. If you are comming, please add yourself on the list on the KDE SC 4.4 Release parties Wiki and/or party page on Facebook. Invite your friends too. Don’t worry if you are not around Ljubljana on that day and time, we’ll most probably have a live streaming video during presentations (check this blog, or previously mentioned wiki/Facebook page, later for more info). In case you are even further away from Ljubljana (or don’t understand Slovenian) there are 26 other parties in 15 different countries around the world. Get ready to party!

No, včeraj je Nokia končno izdala novo različico svojega odprtokodnega razvojnega ogrodja: Qt 4.6. Istočasno je na dan prišla tudi nova različica preprostega integriranega razvojnega okolja (IDE-ja po domače): Qt Creator 1.3. Poleg veliko novosti, izboljšav in drugih dobrot sta to tudi prvi različici Qt in Qt Creator, ki vsebujeta slovenske prevode. Ni mi sicer uspelo posloveniti povsem vsega in nekaj prevodov je malenkost nerodnih, a mislim, da mi je prvi prevod uspel kar dobro. Ni kaj, novih nizov je bilo pač ogromno in tudi izredno koristen pomnilnik prevodov v Lokalize, napolnjen s prevodi KDE-jevih programov, ni pomagal dovolj.

Za pokušino sta tu dva zaslonska posnetka:

Slovenski Qt Creator

Slovenski Qt Designer

Prenesite si Qt 4.6 in Qt Creator 4.6 (oba skupaj sta zapakirana v novem Qt SDK-ju) in ju preizkusite. Ob tem upam, da boste malo bolj pozorni tudi na slovenske prevode. Če najdete kake napake ali pa imate predlog za izboljšave, pišite na dopisni seznam Lugosovih prevajalcev. Seveda so dobrodošle tudi pohvale. Še najbolj vesel pa bi bil, če bi se mi še kdo pridružil pri prevajanju.

Sedaj pa je čas za prevajanje programov za prihajajoči KDE Software Compilation 4.4 …

It’s the fifth year in a row that Google is running their Summer of Code program, and the third time Thousand Parsec is participating as a mentoring organization. We did great last year and we will sure try to do at least as well this time around.

So, if you are into turn-based 4X space strategy games and would like to help in game development, this is your chance. Take a look at our Google Summer of Code and Ideas for Programmers pages and get involved. There is even US$ 4500 to encourage you to take that step into the world of open source software programming.

Interested students now have a few days to get to know us better. You can chat with us on IRC (Freenode network, #tp channel) or write to our development mailing list. After that, starting from March 23 and ending April 3, student applications must be submitted. I’m looking forward to be a mentor again.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

In the beginning of February Mandriva announced the creation of Mandriva Linux Assembly with aim of improving communication between users, contributors and Mandriva company. All to make Mandriva Linux distribution even better than it already is. I candidated as a representative of translators, although I also try to help as much as I can with testing development versions. Well a few days ago the results of the vote came in and after some shuffling of positions, to better represent different parts of community, I became a Cooker Chef, representing translators. Thanks to all who voted for me and thanks to Fabrice Facorat for transferring his spot to me. I’ll try my very best to do my job well. If any of you have any problem with translating and localising Mandriva Linux or have an idea for improving the process, do not hesitate to get in contact with us. You can find us on translation forum or mailing list.

Since this is my first blog post on Planet Mandriva, let me also say “Hi!” and introduce myself. I’m a 28 years old Free Software enthusiast from Bohinjska Bistrica, Slovenia. As far as Mandriva Linux goes… I’ve started using Mandrake with version 7.0, sometime around the year 2000. I began contributing to Mandriva Linux in 2003 by testing beta versions and reporting bugs. A few years later I also started helping translate it into Slovenian language and in 2008 I became the Slovenian translations coordinator. I’ve also tried to learn some packaging but didn’t have much time yet, maybe sometime later Besides this, I also contribute to two more Free Software projects: Thousand Parsec (a framework for creating space-empire-building 4X strategy games) and KDE. Additionally, I’m an active member of Linux Users Group of Slovenia (LUGOS).

Enough about me. Now let’s get back to making Mandriva Linux the best translated and localised distribution available.

Everyone, at least in the free software world, probably knows by now that KDE 4.2 has been released yesterday. It was released just a few moments after the release party started in Kiberpipa/Cyberpipe multimedia centre here in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Just in case you still don’t know about KDE 4.2 release, you should definitely read KDE 4.2 release announcement and take a look at the excellent visual guide to new features in KDE 4.2. You’ll see that the solid new foundations laid out with KDE 4.0 are really showing through now and the work invested into them is starting to pay off heavily. At this fast rate of development it is hard to imagine what KDE 4.3 will bring us. And it’s only 6 months away.

The party in Kiberpipa was also a similar success. Everything was not perfect, though. Computers that would be used for workshops didn’t have KDE 4 installed on them, but this got solved quickly and after the presentations ended all was ready for participants with most interest into KDE 4. Hopefully some of them become contributors in the future. Oh, talking about attendance… When the idea about the party started to grow inside my head, I was expecting about 20 people coming to the party. Well I was pleasantly surprised in the end. Somewhere between 40 and 50 people joined the party. Maybe the number was exactly 42 Well in the following photo you can see some of us who were partying late into the night:

The presentations were recorded. When videos become available I’ll let you know. The slides will also be published together with videos. In the meantime you can read presentation notes about What’s New in KDE 4.2 and Plasma, which were taken by Jure Čuhalev, one of the participants on the party. Thanks to all who came to the party and thanks to all helping to organise it. Who knows, maybe we meet again in six months. Best wishes to all the KDE 4.2 release parties that are still coming. We’re up to 22 party locations now. Also twice as much as I expected when I started pushing for parties. And if there is no party near you, join people partying on KDE Forum.

Update 1: Photos from the party are available in Kiberpipa’s KDE 4.2 Release Party Gallery

Update 2: Videos from the party are available: Video 1 (Youtube), Video 2 (Youtube).

Tags: kde, kde4, kde42, desktop, free software, prosto programje, open source, odprta koda, slovenia, slovenija, linux, lugos, cyberpipe, kiberpipa

Who would have thought that my enquiring about the probability of releasing KDE 4.2 on January 27, as scheduled, would lead to 12 registered KDE 4.2 release parties all around the world. It all started just so we could determine the best date for one short KDE 4.2 presentation in Kiberpipa/Cyberpipe, here in Slovenia. With encouragement from KDE Promo team this evolved into a call for organisation of KDE 4.2 release parties and now… well, everyone knows about the parties now.

Regarding the Slovenian party, the one short presentation expanded into a nice event with four presentations (about KDE 4.2, Plasma, Amarok 2 and, D-Bus), three workshops (creating a Plasma theme, creating a Plasma widget, and helping with translation), and after that some free socialising with some snacks and drinks. We tried to get Mr. Lancelot (Ivan Čukić) from Serbia as our guest speaker, but unfortunately there was not enough time to get the visa. Next time we sure have to start getting papers in order earlier.

What follow is the announcement of the party in Slovenian.

Zabava ob izidu KDE 4.2

Kdaj: 27. januarja 2009
Kje: Kiberpipa, Kersnikova 6, Ljubljana - zemljevid

27. januarja bo izšel KDE 4.2, ki je končno primeren tudi za širše občinstvo in ne le za razvijalce in preizkusne uporabnike. KDE 4.2 predstavlja pomemben mejnik v razvoju KDE in skupnost KDE bo pripravila vrsto prireditev in zabav ob izidu te nove različice.

Tudi v Sloveniji bomo organizirali prireditev ob izidu KDE 4.2, in sicer v torek 27. januarja ob 18:00 v okviru Pipinih odprtih terminov.

Program

• 18:00 - Predstavitev KDE 4(.2) (Andrej Vernekar)
• 18:30 - Plasma (Jure Repinc)
• 19:00 - Amarok 2 (Andraž Sraka)
• 19:15 - Adijo, DCOP; zdravo, D-Bus! (Gašper Fele-Žorž)
• 19:30 - Delavnice
  • Izdelava teme za Plazmo (Jure Repinc)
  • Izdelava gradnika za Plazmo (Ambrož Bizjak)
  • Kako pomagati s prevajanjem (Andrej Vernekar)
• 20:30 - Pogostitev/druženje/pijača/zabava

Če nameravate obiskate katero izmed delavnic, se je nanjo potrebno prijaviti na tej strani.

Update 1: Photos from the party are available in Kiberpipa’s KDE 4.2 Release Party Gallery

Update 2: Videos from the party are available: Video 1 (Youtube), Video 2 (Youtube).

Tags: kde, kde4, kde42, desktop, free software, prosto programje, open source, odprta koda, slovenia, slovenija, linux, lugos, cyberpipe, kiberpipa

There’s less than one month left until the beginning of this year’s Akademy conference in Sint-Katelijne-Waver, Belgium. Just a few moments ago I’ve finally arranged everything for the trip. The room at youth hostel Domein Roosendael is paid for and the plane ticket is registered. One more time I have to thank Linux Users Group of Slovenia (Lugos), who are paying for the flight. This will be my second time to Akademy and this time I’m staying for the whole week. The only thing left now is to decide which talks from the two parallel tracks I will be attending. Looking forward to meet cool KDE contributors!

Tags: kde, desktop, akademy, akademy 2008, free software, open source, belgium, linux, lugos

A couple of days have passed since eight students found out they will be hacking on Thousand Parsec as part of Google Summer of Code 2008. All have come to Thousand Parsec IRC channel to say Hi in and all of them posted their introductions to Thousand Parsec Development mailing list. Each and every student now also has a spot on the web where they will blog about their experiences and progress.

I’ve created a Thousand Parsec Blog on Blogger which links to all the blogs of our students. The page will also serve as the blog for everyone who would like to write about Thousand Parsec but doesn’t feel like setting up his or her own blog just for that. So, if you are interested to see what we at Thousand Parsec are up to this summer, this is the place to start. Of course we will also make sure that feeds from our blogs are aggregated on Planet SoC. You will then be able to see all GSoC posts from our blogs in one place and add the feed to your favourite feed reader.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

A couple of hours ago Google published the final list of 1125 students who will be working on free and open source projects as part of Google Summer of Code 2008 program. This year 8 students will work with us at Thousand Parsec project. This is twice the number of students we had last year. Here’s what they will be working on this summer:

• 3D Client for Thousand Parsec - Blog - Eugene Tan Jie Ming
• Tigris and Euprhates Ruleset Adaptation - Blog - Dustin E. White
• Genetic Conquest: An AI Client for Thousand Parsec (RFTS ruleset) - Blog - Victor Ivri
• DroneSec: A simple, one hour game for tpserver-py - Blog - Juan Lafont
• A Modified Risk ruleset for the Thousand Parsec C++ server - Blog - Ryan Neufeld
• Remote Server Configuration Protocol and Single-Player Mode - Blog - Aaron Mavrinac
• AI for RFTS - Blog - Vincent Verhoeven
• Schemepy - Blog - Chiyuan Zhang

You can be sure that all of us, students and mentors, will do our very best to complete these projects successfully. Exciting months for open source 4X games are ahead of us. I hope you look forward to the results as much as we at Thousand Parsec do.

Tags: games, game, gaming, gamedev, 4x, strategy, turn-based, strategies, tbs, programming, google, summer of code, soc, gsoc, open source, free software

During the past two days I’ve been at this year’s conference of TransAlpine Chapter (TAC) of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). It was hosted by HERMES SoftLab here in Ljubljana. Since I work quite a lot on translating KDE and other open source software and sometimes also help with documentation I sure thought it would be interesting to attend the conference. One other reason for me to be there is that, as of late, I’m more and more thinking about how it would be to have a career in technical communication (translating, writing documentation and all things related). At first it looked like I wouldn’t be able to be at the conference because the attendance fee (195€) was quite high for a student. Luckily Linux Users Group of Slovenia (Lugos) stepped in and sponsored me.

The conference itself was well above my expectations. I anticipated to meet more or less older and more reserved people, but it turned out they are relaxed, fun, overall cool and in average younger than expected. The talks were also very interesting and they covered a broad range of subjects. Just goes to show how wide the spectre of technical communicators’ knowledge can be. To me the three most interesting presentations were:

Pictures and profits: how visual information design and simple usability studies can save your company millions by Patrick Hofmann

Very interesting how creative you often must be to convey some mesage or concept in a graphical way. A lot also depends on culture an end user comes from. In the end all makes users of documentation happier, because it is easier to understand. This, together with reduction of messages to translate, can save companies a lot of money.

Brave new world: How one writing team moved to DITA-based authoring by Helen O’Shea

DITA is not only a new XML format for technical documentation. It also brings a new way of thinking in topics as basic and complete chunks of information. Topics can later be assembled into different deliverables like books and online help. During this presentation I was constantly thinking how DITA could be used for documentation in KDE. Is there need (and will) for another conversion?

Improving the quality and usability of error messages by Katarzyna Kostorz

Yet another presentation where I was thinking about how all that was said could apply to KDE. First we were shown some examples of bad and good error messages and what are the properties that make them bad or good. Next we could see how error messages are handled by IBM. Not only is the short version shown in GUI, the longer explanation and possible further actions to be taken (by different type of users) are all part of the documentation.

At the end of the conference I was asked if all that I’ve learnt has scared me away from thinking about being a technical writer. I answered that I don’t get scared so easily. Quite the opposite, I can now say that I’m interested in a technical communication career even more. STC membership application is already filled out and ready to be sent across the Atlantic Ocean.

Congrats to the organisers for such a great conference. Hopefully I will be able to meet all the people once again next year.

Tags: transalpine chapter, tac, society for technical communication, stc, technical communication, technical writing, documentation, translation, dita, kde

A new version of one of the most user-friendly distributions of free and open source operating system Linux has just been released. Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring (or 2008.1 if you wish) packs quite a lot of goodies. It brings official full support for the highly popular ASUS Eee PC laptop, has easier synchronisation with various mobile devices, a new parental control utility, Elisa multimedia centre is there, so is Codeina for easy multimedia codecs installation. They have also switched to PulseAudio sound server, updated software to latest versions (yes even KDE 4.0.3 is available) and given the distribution a fresh new look. Go download it from here (or via BitTorrent) and while downloading be sure to check out a visual guide to what’s new in Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring.

As with previous releases I also did my fair share of beta testing and bug reporting this time. In addition this is also the first release where I have been the coordinator of Slovenian translation team. We did a great job and almost everything is translated. The only thing left are initscript messages (which are hidden most of the time).

Even during beta testing this release proved to be of very high quality. Looks like after some hiccups a year or two ago Mandriva have put their act together and the quality of releases is increasing every year now. They are also doing a great job with improving their relationship and interaction with community. If they continue in this direction they can soon be back at the top, although it will be hard since unfortunately there is not so much hype surrounding Mandriva as there is around some other very popular Linux distribution.

Tags: mandriva, linux, distributions, eee pc, eeepc, free software, open source, operating systems

Parsek is a KDE 4 client for turn-based strategy games where your goal is to build a space empire. These games are known as 4X games (from four primary goals: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate). Specifically, Parsek is a client for games created using Thousand Parsec framework.

I’ve started working on Parsek a little more then a year ago. It was one of my ways of learning Qt and KDE programming. Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to work on Parsek since then. Well yesterday I’ve imported Parsek into KDE’s Subversion repository, into playground/games/parsek.

Parsek can’t be used to actually play games yet. It can connect to the server, download properties of objects in a Universe and display objects in a simple tree and it can download the messages and display them in a simple table. Two of the main things to be done before Parsek is usable is to make it possible to view and add orders to objects and to display a nice map of the Universe. Anyways, here is how Parsek currently looks like:

If you find this interesting and would like to help in any way, you are more than welcome. The basic instructions on how to compile Parsek are on its Wiki page.

Yesterday I have also been browsing through the history of posts on Planet KDE and I found a post about lack of user research by Celeste Paul. She also put together a user research template which I will try to fill out as soon as possible and will then put it into Wiki and in plain text form also into the Parsek’s source code folder.

Tags: games, gaming, strategy games, 4x games, kde, kde4, free software, open source

I’ve been to Maribor last Thursday where the 1st Day of Open Source event was organised at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. This was my first time visiting Maribor and my first impression was that it is a very nice, clean and lively city.

At the event itself you could attend various interesting talks about Linux and Open Source Software in general. I even had the honor to be the very first speaker. I presented FLOSS, it’s history, licensing and after that talked a bit about Lugos, the Linux User Group of Slovenia. Too bad I missed the talks at the end of the day but I had to catch the last train back to Ljubljana.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the number of attendance. A quick count showed that there were constantly at least 150 people in the room. By comparison, the day before this event Microsoft organised a similar event, where there were only 30-50 people. Despite Microsoft having better promotion and they even tried to bribe students by some expensive prizes.

Anyways, hats off to Oto Brglez jr. and the Students Group. They did an excellent job organizing the event and I sure look forward to the 2nd Day of Open Source.

Tags: open source, free software, floss, linux, lugos, maribor, slovenia