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 …

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

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

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

One of the items from the KDE swag I got at aKademy 2007 in Glasgow was a large KDE logo sticker. Since I don’t have my own car and I couldn’t convince my father to put it on his car the sticker was just laying somewhere around the house. Until this day… Today I gave the sticker to my cousin Matej and a few moments ago he proudly put it onto his snowboard (Elan Prodigy 152). I hope the sticker is snow-resistant enough to stay on the snowboard for as long as possible. Can’t compare with Mark Kretschmann getting an Amarok tattto, but it is still a great way of promoting KDE on sunny Vogel and at other Slovenian ski centres. Anyway, you can see the pictures on KDE-Look.org.

Tags: kde, community, promotion, snowboarding, snowboard, elan

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been very busy. Like many other people all around the world I’ve also been working hard to make the first release of KDE 4 series as good as possible. About three hours ago KDE 4.0.0 has finally been tagged and is now getting ready to be officially released on January 11th.

In addition to occasional bug fix here and there I’ve mostly been testing and reporting bugs. But by far the largest part of my contribution to this release is translation into Slovenian language. Our team managed to get 63% of KDE 4.0.0 translated into Slovenian. Not bad at all for our small country and small team. We currently hold 23rd place on the list of top translation teams.

I’ve been using pre-4.0.0 KDE as my main desktop ever since our KDE Education metting in Pariz in the beginning of December. During this past month it was improving very fast and was usable just fine. Sure there were a few features and settings missing (and still are in the final version), but nothing that big. There are also some rough edges and a few bugs left, either known or still hidding, but that can be expected for a release with so many changes all around. There is already a lot to like about this new series of KDE 4 and what I like the most in KDE 4.0 is the new gorgeous artwork (icons, widget style, sounds), the idea behind Plasma desktop shell and the cool new applications (like Okular, Gwenview, new games, new educational applications). And with such a solid foundation in place we can expect a lot more cool stuff in the future.

While you are waiting for your favourite distribution to provide packages of KDE 4.0.0 and before you go writing a review about it, be sure to read these two blog posts: talking bluntly, KDE 4.0 Review Reminders and this podcast: The Linux Linux Tech Show - Episode 226. And remember, KDE 4.0.0 is not for everyone. It is for those who like cool new technology and who like living on the bleeding edge. It is also for you if you are an active user of software and not just a passive user. Now is a great time to help change the history and help make the dream become true. In any case KDE 3.5 is still here and it is still an excellent desktop environment and no one will force you to start using KDE 4.0. It’s all your choice.

Tags: kde, kde4, desktop, translation, slovenia, free software, open source, linux

The meeting was in Paris during the past weekend. I’m glad I made it there and back safely, and without any complications. Well I did manage to make a long detour while going from Gare du Nord to La Chapelle métro station. Two streets had a very similar name and I somehow ended up on the wrong one which confused me a bit. Me and my roomies, Aleix Pol and Albert Astals Cid, were the last to arrive at the hotel.

After a nice breakfast the next day we went straight to the Mandriva office where the meeting was actually taking place. First Anne-Marie Mahfouf, who we all have to thank for the organisation, had a short welcome talk and then everyone introduced themselves. We have then set up an Icecream network for speeding up the compilation. My laptop with Gentoo for some reason decided not to cooperate. Maybe because I had the tools compiled with CPU specific optimisations or maybe because I was the only one running in 64-bit mode.

During the first day we had two presentations. Patrick Spendrin told us how and why he is porting KDE applications to Windows. There are so many great free and open-source educational applications in KDE that it would be a shame if people on Windows couldn’t use them. Well with KDE 4 this will finally be possible. Later Vladimir Kuznetsov prepared a demonstration of Step, an amazing interactive physical simulator, a virtual physical laboratory for your computer. He started working on it during Google Summer of Code 2007 and it has come very far. Step has many cool features, even more than some similar expensive commercial applications. Every physics teacher should definitely check out Step.

On the second day we started working later because the security card didn’t work and so we couldn’t enter the office. Lucky those who decided to sleep an hour longer that morning :). We continued our work and then had a presentation about the future of KDE Education project. Later Patrick managed to get Step running on Windows. At 5pm I was sad as I had to leave the meeting and travel back home.

During those two days I was checking out how translations work in educational applications. For that I also needed to update some of the Slovenian translations. While testing I noticed a bug in Kickoff menu which didn’t show search results of entries without GenericName specified in their desktop files. Albert quickly fixed this and while we were debugging I found out about DDD frontend to GDB and learned how to teach GDB so it is able to print Qt data (look into kdesdk/scripts/kde-devel-gdb), for example QString data. Another “important” thing I learned was how to add Plasmoids to the container that replaces kicker. When you have the Add Widget dialog open you have to drag the Plasmoid directly to the panel. Thanks to Benoît Jacob for this, and for the trip around Paris.

I had a really great time in Paris and it was nice to meet all the people and get to know all the faces and voices that are behind IRC nicknames. With face to face meetings like this our community only gets stronger. Can’t wait to meet them all again next year at aKademy 2008 in Belgium.

Tags: kde, community, meeting, education, physics, free software, open source, linux, windows, paris, france

On 1st and 2nd December this year the KDE Education project is preparing its first meeting. I’ve already been to a similar event during aKademy 2007, where one day was dedicated to free and open source software in education and schools. I enjoyed it a lot and was very happy that Anne-Marie invited me to the meeting which will be happening in a little more than a month in Paris. I’ve already booked my flight and I can see that there are currently 10 more people registered at the travel page. Can’t wait to meet them all. Thanks to Anne-Marie for hard organisational work, thanks to KDE e.V. for sponsoring the meeting and thanks to Mandriva for allowing us to use their offices.

As a preparation for the meeting I have started to check out how to use Valgrind which helps you find memory leaks in the code. I used it on KStars and it revealed a problem in constellation boundary highlighting code which leaked about 13 MiB of memory on my short test run. As I had some more free time today, I also updated the Slovenian keyboard layout for KTouch and converted it into the new XML format. Blinken didn’t escape me as well.

These were my little contributions to KDE today. Now I have to prepare for a lot of work that awaits to have as much KDE 4 translated into Slovenian language as possible when it gets released.

Tags: kde, community, meeting, education, free software, open source, paris, france

Alternative operating systems like Linux and Mac OS are getting more and more popular these days. That’s why cross platform technologies and programming are also increasingly popular and important. One of such technologies is a C++ GUI programming library and framework called Qt. Today I’ve just finished reading a book about it, The Book of Qt 4 – The Art of Building Qt Applications. This is my short review of it.

The author of the book is Daniel Molkentin, who is one of the main developers at the KDE project. KDE is an entire desktop environment based on Qt. On more than 400 pages Daniel did a great job of presenting basic concepts and components behind Qt 4. Compared to another Qt book I’ve got, C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4, the introduction to Qt in this book is more smooth and friendlier to readers who are just starting to learn Qt. Examples are simpler and there is a separate example for every topic. So you don’t need to complete something from the beginning of the book to try another thing from the end. It is also nice that there are step by step instructions on how to use Qt’s graphical tool to design the main application window and dialogs. With 48 and 44 pages two of the longest chapters describe model/view programming using Interview framework and Qt’s powerful painting system called Arthur. Like the rest of the chapters these two are also presented in a way that doesn’t overload the reader with too much information. For complete list of topics covered check out the table of contents.

At the end I can say that this is a great book for anyone getting started with Qt 4 programming. By learning Qt 4 you will be able to reach more users, program faster and enjoy more while doing it. Not to mention you will be ready to start developing for KDE 4, which will be released in a few months and is destined to be one of the most exciting desktop environments ever.

Tags: trolltech, qt, programming, development, c++, gui, toolkits, frameworks, cross platform, multi platform, software, linux, mac, windows, kde

I’m now safe at home for about a day and here is my look back at aKadmy 2007.

I’m glad that flights and other travelling went so smoothly. Yeah, it was a bit long and there was a lot of waiting, especially the first day, but that’s about it. Found the bus between Prestwick airport and Glasgow just fine. And the walk in the middle of the night from the bus to Euro Hostel was also fine. We felt lost just for a short moment, but then found the hostel immediately.

The room in the hostel was OK, nice to have your own shower and you got fresh towels every day. There could be more variety when it comes to breakfast and it would be nice if each room had a free wireless internet. Well at least they had internet at the lobby of the hostel.

The aKademy conference itself was great. I expected that there would be around 200 people, but I’ve heard that there were actually about 300 people. The talks and BoFs were interesting. I especially liked the ones about KDE and FLOSS in education. What I did miss is a talk about translation and localisation, which is a very important part of KDE and free software. It was also unfortunate that the wireless internet connection only started to work at the end of the second day. I also expected that they would be selling more KDE merchandise. like plush Konqi, more t-shirts, pins and stuff like that. Other than that it was really nice to meet all the people and I sure hope I will be able to go to aKademy 2008 next year.

About Glasgow. The English accent they use there makes people hard to understand sometimes. The traffic lights work in a strange way, feels almost randomly. With sister we also tried Kebab there and it was put together in a different way than here in Slovenia, didn’t taste very good and it was very expensive (like everything in Glasgow). The weather was depressing a bit. Almost always cloudy and it was raining very often. Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to go sightseeing. The aKademy programme filled almost entire day and at the end of the day I was just so tired that I went back to the hostel and fell asleep.

All in all it was a great week and I recommend to every KDE user to definitely try to visit aKademy at least once. In the end I must thank Linux User Group of Slovenia, who paid for my trip and made this great experience possible. Thank you LUGOS!

Read more:
Ready for aKademy 2007
All packed and ready for aKademy 2007
aKademy 2007, day 0
aKademy 2007, day 0, part 2
aKademy 2007, day 1
aKademy 2007, day 2
aKademy 2007, School and Education day
aKademy 2007, BoFs Day

Tags: kde, akademy, akademy 2007, community, conference, meeting, desktop, free software, open source, glasgow, scotland