Krita (click to enlarge)

The Calligra and KDE on Windows teams are proud to announce the first testing version of the Calligra Suite Windows installer. Yes, Windows users, you can now use and help test the Calligra from the comfort of your own operating system with a single installer.

Today KDE released the second release candidate for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality. Please give this release another good round of testing to help us release a rock-solid 4.8 later this month.

Some 4.8 highlights are:

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Better support of wildcards in the directory path field and improved menu key functionality in Dolphin
• Interface for pictureshape cropping, cache rendering in assistants, numbered bibliography entries, improved DOCX, OOXML support in Calligra
• Memorize expanded groups in bookmarks in Skrooge

KDE España has started planning Akademy-es 2012—the most important KDE-related event in Spain. The conference is an opportunity for Spanish KDE users and developers to meet, share experiences, catch up on KDE news, and plan for the future. Akademy-es includes a range of presentations, workshops, hacking sessions, informal get-togethers and an assembly of KDE España members. KDE members and supporters will be coming from other countries to enjoy famous Spanish hospitality and meet up with KDE friends.

Developers, testers, bug chasers and many more people are putting in a major effort on KDE's next major release. It will soon be time to appreciate the result, sit back and relax! The occasion calls for commemoration of KDE’s recent accomplishments.

A wiki page for the 4.8 parties has been created. If you want, please organize a party. But first add your name to the list and start getting the word out.

What is the party all about?

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Embedded mode for TabBox in KWin
• Reimplemented name filtering in Dolphin
• Initial support for resource events in read-only kparts in kdelibs

Today KDE released the first release candidate for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing. Compared to Beta2, RC1 contains hundreds of fixes. Please give this release another good round of testing to help us release a rock-solid 4.8 in January.

Highlights of 4.8 include:

Plasma Active Two has been released. In just two months, the Plasma Active development team has made significant improvements over Plasma Active One. The release announcement has more information, including a video and sites for downloading and installation instructions.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest Andrew Lake writes about the Bangarang project and recent improvements. As usual there is also a list of updates:

• Kdelibs change that improves storage of passwords in a webdav share
• Folders panel fixes in Dolphin
• Calligra sees updated support for DOCX and PPT and many bugfixes

Today, KDE makes available two new releases of its Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. 4.7.4 provides bugfix updates, new translations and performance improvments on top of the stable 4.7 series, while 4.8 Beta2 gives a glimpse at what is coming in 4.8, to be released next month.