KDE Commit-Digest for 23rd September 2007

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A security fix developed for KDM, covering KDE 3.3.0 to 3.5.7. A KioBrowser data engine, HDD monitor applet, and general layout work in Plasma. More refinements in Parley (formerly KVocTrain). GeoData subproject in Marble to support popular geographic data formats. An AI player added to Kombination. Development renewed on the KPicross game. Basic printing support in Gwenview. Improved mimetype detection, as per the cross-desktop specifications. More work on text highlighting in Kate. Continued developments and optimisations in Akonadi, including the OpenChange (Exchange) connector. Further work on the GStreamer Phonon backend. Colourspace work in Krita, greater definition given to KChart2. File management part in Konqueror is replaced by a shared Dolphin part usage. More KDE SVN reorganisations.

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Comments

by kmare (not verified)

..for yet another commit digest. We all truly appreciate it!

by Alan Denton (not verified)

I love all the work done by KDE developers, but certainly the news of supporting Exchange (which has been a bugbear on free systems) is a massive step forward. How will this compare with Evolution's Exchange Connector (that uses the Outlook Web Access method I believe)?

It's great to see KDE continually progressing by leaps and bounds; there's so much to be excited about, from Akonadi to Plasma to Amarok to Okular to Dolphin to Koffice2 to K3b to Kross to all the other projects that make KDE such a fantastic platform.

by Anonymous Braveheart (not verified)

Apparently Evolution's solution is slow because it doesn't use the native MAPI protocol, but uses the web interface to work its magic. This seems like a much better solution.

by Erik (not verified)

Yes, that is great news to me, too. Will there be RPC over https support, too? This is right now the only non-gaming related reason for me to keep a windows installation alive on my private desktop machine...

Regards
Erik

by Birdy (not verified)

But be aware that Akonadi won't show up before KDE 4.1. And the PIM applications may be ported even later (I hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised).

Anyway - this is great news :-)

by yuval (not verified)

I join the excitement from having an fully working Exchange solution in KDE. I'm forced to work with Evolution because of the current luck of such solution. Not fun :(.

by birger (not verified)

Why not use Kontact with Exchange?

We are doing that with our Exchange 2000 server. Mail and calendar on openSUSE 10.2

Now we are moving to Lotus Domino8 , and that will be interesting. Anyone know from the top of their head if ther is support for that in Kontact?

cu

by liquidat (not verified)

Depends on what plugin/protocol Lotus Domino 8 supports. dIMAP, Groupdav should work ok, for example.

by Paul Fee (not verified)

An alternative to Evolution's exchange connector will be very useful.

I've yet to get Evolution to connect to my employer's Exchange server. I'm met with an uninformative error message so I can't tell if it's my fault, Evolution's or the configuration of Exchange.

I've no idea if it really is a NTLMv2 issue or something else. Nor do I know if this affects lots of people or just a handle with unusual Exchange setups.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=323619

Fingers crossed that the OpenChange project will interoperate more easily with Exchange.

by NabLa (not verified)

Not surprising that bug report, the Exchange connector is a piece of crap that never worked properly but only for a subset of Exchange users, and more often than not, it would make Evolution crash big time.

by Patcito (not verified)

does this mean we'll soon switch to Git? :-D

by Diederik van de... (not verified)

No it means applications are moved to the proper modules and therefore packages.

by AC (not verified)

With Samba adopting GPLv3 while KDE is still under v2, wouldn't that be a problem when using OpenChange?

by Matt (not verified)

If you read the article, you would have seen they talked about that. It will only be released as source code for now, and they're hoping that by 4.1 the licensing issues will take care of themselves.

by hmmmm (not verified)

What's the latest from the Trolls on GPLv3? Last I heard they were still considering their options...

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Wait for at least 3 months before asking again ;-)

Lawers need to think about this, not hackers. So it'll take time...

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Not really. The GPL has always been very clear, that when you include GPL code in your project, you need to stick with the GPL.

They are quite adamant that GPLv3 may only be licensed GPLv3 or later.

Honestly, I'm not sure what new code exists in Samba since the Samba GPLv3 split was fairly recent, but if KDE wants to include it and remain GPLv2, the only solution I see is to take a fork of the last GPLv2 Samba, and then rewrite any new code from the GPLv3 branch that they require.

by Debian User (not verified)

But nobody is going to have the time to do such non-sense. I am quite sure, that KDE will simply wait for Trolltech to allow go GPLv3. To them it makes a lot sense, so I bet they are simply currently evaluating how to do it.

Yours, Kay

by Diederik van de... (not verified)

> Aaron J. Seigo committed changes in /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/libs/plasma:
> lock screen and log out ... this makes things slightly more bearable for me
> on a day to day basis ;)

Great to hear. :-) I was missing this already :p

by Chani (not verified)

wait.. what? I've been able to log out for ages, I just hit ctrl-alt-del and the lock/logout thing comes up. ...except when the keyboard shorcuts got broken, that is :)

by Balinares (not verified)

Do we have any news from Jacob Rideout? Has Sonnet been abandoned?

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

no - no.

by Erunno (not verified)

*zzzz* Does not compute.

I thought that Jacob was the main Sonnet developer. Is he still committing without actually commenting on his progress or has somebody else picked up his work?

by Anon (not verified)

I know that Zack Rusin (yep - *that* Zack Rusin!) has been doing some work on it, but I'm not sure to what degree - it could be anywhere from "keeping it compiling" to "actively developing".

by Emil Sedgh (not verified)

personally, im worried about jrideout, not sonnet, sonnet is just a software, somebody will do it, whats important about this issue is Jacob, I hope that we will get some good news from him...

by Hans (not verified)

Well said. (Do I have to mention that I completely agree?)

by Matt (not verified)

I think a lot of people have come to the conclusion that Jacob is dead, as no one can seem to find any trace of him at all even after putting out a plea for help. The other option is that he's just taking a break from all things online, but it's been long enough without any notice that this is whats happened that it seems unlikely.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I've seen people disappear online for literally years at a time. Sometimes people step away from one community simply because they decided to refocus on other areas of their life.

It happens, so I wouldn't assume death.

by anonymous coward (not verified)

m....t

by Emil Sedgh (not verified)

a few weeks ago i searched for dead people named rideout, I even found a Jacob Rideout, but he was dead about one hundred years ago...
i didnt find anything about 'Mountaint Goat Programmer', the KDE Developer, Jacob Rideout...
so i hope that he is just 'Away from our community'

and a little suggestion, its not too bad to ask for a little news in theDot asking for anybody who knows jrideout or has any news about him?
KDE is a community, its members are more important than its technical parts (at least, I think)

by Odysseus (not verified)

I prefer to think of other, less tragic possibilities, such as mental illness, physical disability, financial ruin, on the run from the law, etc, that at least hold some hope for him. But the total lack of contact I think rules out the 'time-out' option, as I think he seem's the sort of guy who would at least have posted a 'sorry, back later' note (he's a member of a lot of online groups like kde and ubuntu).

It's certainly made me wonder, if I was hit by a car if my family would be able to access my digital legacy or at least let my online friends know?

There are options for finding out if he is dead, the obvious being the Colorado vital records registry, but we have no guarantee he was in Colorado at the time (maybe CA). While certificates are only issued to involved parties, it's possible the index is publically accessable. Their web site http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/certs/birth.html is not clear on this, someone local would need to visit or ring to ask. Another option would be to search the newspaper death listings and police reports, again something someone local would have to do at the library.

Someone has previously mentioned he's a member of the Ubuntu Colorado LoCo team (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ColoradoTeam), they might be able to provide the shoe leather.

Basic known facts:
* last blog 10th Feb 2007
* last ubuntu launchpad contribution 14th Feb 2007
* last kde commit 18th Feb 2007
* last kde-devel post 19th Feb 2007
* last digg on 28th Feb 2007
* whois gives details as
PO Box 1760
La Jolla, CA 92037
US
720-252-9928
(was some talk of writing there, not sure if anyone did, but CA adds another place to search)
* www hosted at rimuhosting.com (good sign as still up so still paying bills, or just in advance?)
* his very old stumbleupon page (http://jrideout.stumbleupon.com/) puts him as 20 in about 2004, so would be 22-23 now.(perhaps contact his listed friends?)

He seems to have had a couple of freelance companies, such as R Wilde & Associates (http://www.technical-outsourcing.com/profile.php?id=16948), but in a more recent post mentions a colour-blind secretary complaining about some software their company had written, so employment situation is not clear.

On his last blog, there's a comment in May from a Tim Dinsmore seeking contact, perhaps try drop him a line?

See http://people.fruitsalad.org/adridg/bobulate/index.php?/archives/428-Whe... for a couple more links.

There's a youtube user at http://youtube.com/jrideout who last logged in 1 day ago, but he's a Joe Rideout.

by cupid (not verified)

Perhaps he's found a girlfriend!

by Lee (not verified)

I also want to say thanks for another great digest. I love catching up with it, even though I also hear the main points on planetkde.

BUT... it's occurred to me for a while that there are far too many announcements in Free Software for things like "improved exchange support". Every time I hear somethign like that, i think, "Oh, it must be fairly complete by now." Then, six months later, or more, I see something like "Better exchange support." Not to belittle the improvements, which are great, but... it's a serious feeling of deja vu, and such announcements undermine my confidence in Free Software, rather than boosting it, sometimes.

How about, instead of (or as well as) normal feature announcements, having "progress announcements" and status reports that show how complete the support for something is, and what features have been improved? Then we could just look at apps and see, "OK, this does what I want", or "OK, this doesn't do what i want, but at the current rate, it'll be there by the time my project is launching, and I can always help out..."

by Sebastian Kügler (not verified)

Read the commit-digest, and you'll see the words "There is still a very long way to go, and (as always) more help is needed in many areas", following that up with a TODO list.

So in short, read the article itself before suggesting what's already been thought of by others. :P

by D Kite (not verified)

That is a great idea. Where is your web site with the test results?

Have you ever thought that these announcements are in fact hints that testers and developers are welcome to look at the code, test, add finishing touches, etc?

Free software is a process, not a product.

Derek

by Lee (not verified)

Of course I've thought about contributing to free software. I do it all the time. You could also take my posts here as a contribution to the process --- if you so chose.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

As far as I can tell, Evolution unfortunately doesn't share the exchange stuff by using OpenExchange, but does it all by itself. Not sure, though, can't find clear info about that...

by Alan Denton (not verified)

That is probably changing, as the openexchange people are working on an evolution plugin: http://www.openchange.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65&I...

by Brad Hards (not verified)

This is true. Note that there is a potential issue with GPLv2 (Evolution) and GPLv3 (Samba). I'm not sure how many people have copyrights on Evolution outside of Novell, or how that relicensing is going.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

That's very good, as Evolution is burning through a lot of support from Novell and others to get good Exchange support. If that support would be shared through openExchange, that'd be great.

by Kevin Krammer (not verified)

You are mixing things up, but it's not your fault that these names are almost identical.

OpenExchange is a groupware server product, OpenChange is, right now, a Free Software reimplementation of the Microsoft Exchange protocol and its API (called MAPI).

OpenChange, according to its website, aims at providing a full server replacement at a later stage though.

by Alan Denton (not verified)

yes, you're right. i meant OpenChange, it was a slip of the keys :)

by Brad Hards (not verified)

It is hard to estimate how "complete" it is, or how long it will take to be "done".

We don't really know how hard it is going to be (there might be a lot of problems, or it might be fairly smooth sailing), we don't know if there are going to be major setbacks that require new architecture or rework, and we don't know if anyone is going to lend a hand.

Right now, I'm the only one working on the OpenChange plugin. I'm not especially motivated (I don't need it, I just think it is an important thing for KDE to have), and I'm reliant on work by both the OpenChange developers (actually, most of the work is done by just one person) and Akonadi developers.

I'd say the OpenChange plugin is "maybe 10%" done. Certainly much less than half. I'm not sure how much work is left on OpenChange libraries or Akoandi, but certainly a lot.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

Well open source is inherently openly developed, its kind of hard to avoid this phenomenon.

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Does anyone knows if gwenview will start shipping with a kipi plugin for picasaweb?
I know there is one in development sinse july or early.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

WEll, if the plugin makes it into the kipi plugin suite, gwenview will support it...

by Coward (not verified)

What happened to all those "Road to KDE" articles?
It's been a long time since the last one was published and they we're really interesting...

by Troy Unrau (not verified)

I'm sorry - I've been busy. *sigh* I've had material to write at least two of them, but never got around to actually writing them. (I'm also a full time student, and hold some other jobs on the side, so writing KDE articles isn't always the best way to relax).

by Mythor (not verified)

It is nothing to be sorry about, we really love what you have done already. It's truly amazing that you and all the other KDE guys offer up your free time to help us enjoy KDE even more.

Thanks!

by Derek (not verified)

Don't be sorry. If anything, we're grateful. You're doing a tremendous job. Thank you!