KDE Gets Digital Camera Support

Thursday, 14 December 2000 | Dre

theKompany.com has just released a patch to the well known digital camera application gPhoto2, which allows it to integrate seemlessly with KDE 2. This means you can now access the wide range of supported cameras (over 100 models) from any KDE 2 application. Now I may finally be ready to buy a digital camera! Update: 12/14 10:46 AM. TheKompany.com has posted a screenshot of the KControl module and of Konqueror browsing pictures.

The patch makes gphoto available as a kio_slave, which means that any KDE 2 application which makes use of the kio architecture can (without any modification) access the images stored on a supported camera. For example, you can preview browse the images in Konqueror and even see thumbnails. The patch also adds a new KControl module allowing you to configure the camera.

According to theKompany.com's website, if you have a supported camera, you can start using it with most KDE applications in two easy steps: simply configure your camera model and port type from a list in the KControl module, then start accessing the camera contents with a gphoto:/ URL. It's a bit hard to set up right now -- you need to download the CVS version of gphoto -- but this should be sorted out Real Soon Now(tm). More information on the patch is available at theKompany's website, and you can find a list of supported cameras on the gphoto website.

Comments:

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Wickyd - 2000-12-13

This is an excellent example of how the architecture of KDE will accelerate the inclusion of new and diverse technologies, without having to recompile or patch existing applications to take advantage of it. KDE, showing the rest of the programming world how it can be done.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Anonymous - 2000-12-13

Without having to patch? "theKompany has just released a PATCH to the well known digital camera application gPhoto2"

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Greg Smethells - 2000-12-13

Without having to patch *KDE 2* apps which use kio_slave.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Shawn Gordon - 2000-12-13

Patch is the wrong word. We didn't do anything to the libraries, we added the front end to the libraries. Thanks to the fine work of the gPhoto folks, the new gPhoto2 makes this very easy. Keep in mind that gPhoto2 is still not production release and we have no control over that, but at least it's available and we have been having good luck with it internally.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Jason Katz-Brown - 2000-12-13

Wowo! theKompany.com is super :) kivio also looks very nice, I compiled it... Can anyone recommend a good digital camera that is cheap? Thanks. Jason PS: Go to <a href="http://borgtheme.katzbrown.com/">borgtheme.katzbrown.com</a> for a new KDE2 theme I made!

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Shawn Gordon - 2000-12-13

For a great site on unbiased reviews take a look at http://www.steves-digicams.com/. Also check http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1078.html?tag=st.ce.1629008.more.1078 for reviews and good comparitive pricing. I really like http://www.compdirect.com/ for good bargains on cameras. Probably one of the best for the money is the Olympus D-360L.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Lee Wee Tiong - 2000-12-13

for a start, go browse the ng rec.photo.digital.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Murray - 2000-12-14

<disclaimer>I have no connection with this company, other than being a customer</disclaimer>   For those in the UK, you might like to try:   <a href="http://www.scan.co.uk/">scan.co.uk</a>   I recently bought the e-Studio camera for about 40 quid. You aren't going to be using it to take wedding pictures or anything, but it is a great little toy and doubles as a web cam too.   <a href="http://www.scan.co.uk/today.htm">scan.co.uk/today.htm</a>   lists daily "specials"...   Enjoy, Murray.   ps. rock on KDE, gphoto, theKompany, et al

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - raj - 2001-11-24

scan e studio digital camera i bought the following model however i have miss laid the drivers if anyone out there has them please sent them to me thank you

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Ad - 2002-11-13

can someone pls let me know where I can get the drivers as well - pls email me with the info

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Diedrich Vorberg - 2000-12-13

Good Job! I think it is about time to forget the animosities between GNOME and KDE and start working together, each project in its own unique style, to gain from one another's work!

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Anonymous - 2000-12-13

Now wait for the Gnome guys to send a patch to gPhoto for use with gnome-vfs and the ring is complete :)

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - steve - 2000-12-13

Gnome will lose this game.... not enough manpower to do the same in 5 days from now. wait for gnome 2... than they will have a small chance to get closer to kde... it seems europe's kde-desktop is winning the contest over gnomes usa-team europe goes on top

Hello troll. - Anonymous Coward - 2000-12-13

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Anonymous - 2000-12-14

Looks like the trolls have found dot.kde.org...

Yet another ignorant troll... - TrollKiller - 2000-12-14

It has already been done a month ago! Now what did you say about "not enough manpower"?

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Anonymous - 2000-12-14

Acutally, this has already been done: <A HREF="http://lists.helixcode.com/archives/public/gnome-vfs/2000-November/000169.html">http://lists.helixcode.com/archives/public/gnome-vfs/2000-November/000169.html</A>

What about a Gimp Patch? - t0m_dR - 2000-12-13

Great!, now just only if someone made a patch, which makes Gimp 100% intergrated with Koffice and KDE2...KDE would seriously ROCK!

Re: What about a Gimp Patch? - Shawn Gordon - 2000-12-13

You should look at the work that John Califf is doing with Krayon, it is really looking good and is much more user friendly than GIMP IMHO. For those of you who aren't aware, Krayon was formerly KImageShop and is part of KOffice.

Re: What about a Gimp Patch? - Xiang - 2000-12-14

Krayon sounds good, but where can I get it?

Re: What about a Gimp Patch? - Karl-Heinz Zimmer - 2000-12-14

Krayon (the former KImageShop) is documented and may be downloaded here:  <a href="http://www.koffice.org/kimageshop/">http://www.koffice.org/kimageshop/</a> Perhaps you also might want to read this interview (October 2000):  <a href="http://www.linux.org/people/gordon.html">http://www.linux.org/people/gordon.html</a> And as allways: Just in case you happen to consider starting a nice little flame war, please be a good (boy|girl) and look at this text first. <a href="http://home.snafu.de/khz/Sonne/A_contra_B.html">http://home.snafu.de/khz/Sonne/A_contra_B.html</a><tt> ;-)</tt> Karl-Heinz

Re: What about a Gimp Patch? - Xiang - 2000-12-14

On that page is no download, there only are documentation and screenshots. And in my last KOffice-download, there was no Krayon. So, how exactly is it done?

Re: What about a Gimp Patch? - Per - 2000-12-14

Check one of the links under "Installing KOffice"

Hot to get Krayon! (was: What about a Gimp Patch?) - Karl-Heinz Zimmer - 2000-12-14

Krayon (the former KImageShop) is part of KOffice. It is contained e.g. in <tt>[...]/kde/snapshots/current/koffice-20001211.tar.bz2</tt> but the name of the directory is still <tt>kimageshop</tt> so that might be the reason why you did not find it.

where to get Krayon - kidcat - 2000-12-14

Since it is still alpha-alpha-alpha, and tons of code still need to be produced to make it official you will have to get it from CVS. /kidcat

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - chris - 2000-12-14

Why hasn't anyone thanked the gPhoto crew for doing the work of splitting the frontend and backend software for use in other projects such as KDE? Thank you gPhoto.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - SteveH - 2000-12-14

Yes, someone from gphoto was actively encouraging a KDE port over the summer on the kde-devel list. It generated a lot of interest but then things got quiet. Does anyone know if there was another effort to do this? Anyway, your point is a good one. Thanks to both the Kompany and gPhoto for another big piece of the Unix desktop!

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Shawn Gordon - 2000-12-14

We picked up on it from that thread and had some very positive conversation with the gPhoto crew at the time. They have really done a great job on these libraries. What was a bit disappointing was when we decided to start on this about a month ago we tried talking to them again and every single email to every single person has gone unanswered in all that time. It's a testament to the quality of their code that we were able to find everything and pull this off as quickly as we did.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Carlos Miguel - 2000-12-14

Hi Shawn Congratulations and Thanks for yet another piece of the desktop puzzle. I was wondering, when will Aethera hit the street? Bye

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Shawn Gordon - 2000-12-14

Well I just saw some of the latest screenshots from our engineers yesterday and Aethera is looking very good. I would say 2 weeks is a safe bet at this point. We have some UI things to resolve, but overall I'm very happy with how it's coming along.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Scott Fritzinger - 2000-12-14

Wow, this is cool! One of the main things we wanted to do in designing gPhoto2 was to allow people to use it in different environments are architectures. It is great to see that people are taking advantage of it, especially under KDE2 since that is what I'm running ;) Many thanks to Shawn Gordon and the Kompany for putting the time and effort into making it work. This is something else exciting to celebrate at the local Reno LUG christmas party! -=Scott the gPhoto project

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - BigNick - 2000-12-15

Guys, get Krayon working well, and I'll have my Dad converted to Linux + KDE2 in no time !!! He needs tools to create HTML-Files <blockquote>=>Quanta</blockquote>to get images from his digital camera <blockquote>=> gphoto2</blockquote>and to edit these images. Well, he sure could do the latter with GIMP, but, seriously, the GIMP UI isn't the most intuitive one, at least for longtime WIN-Users. Keep up the good work !!!

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Vivek Khera - 2000-12-15

I just installed this on a kde-2.0.1 FreeBSD desktop. It went in smoothly and I can get a basic file view of the files on the camera. However, downloading any of the images doesn't work. The downloading dialog box just sits at 0%. If I kill it and then try another, I get one of those "the process implementing the protocol died" messages pop up. The command line gphoto2 utility reads the images quite well from my PowerShot S100 usb camera... Any ideas on how to track down this thing?

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Shawn Gordon - 2000-12-15

The proper place to ask is gphoto@thekompany.com. The Engineer is gone for a few days right now. We will be releasing the code to KDE CVS as soon as everything is set up. The project will be renamed kio_kamera at that time.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Vivek Khera - 2000-12-18

Thanks. I didn't find any kind of bug reporting address on the kio_kamera site. All I could find were the info@ and jobs@ addresses, which didn't seem appropriate.

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - Alex - 2000-12-16

Good!! Now, I wait for a support of video4linux as a kio_slave. So, as photocameras, we can access to webcams, tv-cards...

Re: KDE Gets Digital Camera Support - David - 2000-12-21

I've played with this a bit tonight with a Canon digital ixus and it needs more polish yet. On the other hand it could be gphoto, as I can download files with the gphoto command line but nothing can read the jpgs produced. The kamera page mentions that gphoto needs a patch applied but its not in the sources as, the latest CVS of Gphoto2 has the lib update applied.

This is great! - Starbuck Zero - 2000-12-21

I got one of my friends that Mandrake Linux for Windows(You know the Red Box)for X-mas and he have a digital camera too. I guess if he figure out how to work with GIMP he'll be good to go.

Kamera - Scott - 2001-12-02

Where can I get Kamera? According to TheKompany.com, it _should_ be a part of KDE 2.2.2. I have KDE 2.2.2-1 on RedHat 7.2. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place? Again, according to TheKompany.com, it should be in Control Center -> Peripherals. I only have mouse and keyboard. Am I missing a step? thanks