KDE Commit Digest for August 5, 2005

Some highlights from this week's KDE Commit-Digest (all in one page):

KSpread improves range functions.
KMobileTools adds addressbook import and export to VCard and KAddressBook.
Umbrello adds Tcl code generator.
KMail now has full text indexing.
Kontact scripting (a Summer of Code project).
And the first (somewhat) working KDEMM backend based on aRts.

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Comments

by Jim (not verified)

From one of the check-ins, it looks like Konqueror now has CSS 3 multiple background images courtesy of Safari. Read more here:

http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/?p=15

A pretty cool test page here:

http://decaffeinated.org/archives/2005/08/03/background-image

by ltmon (not verified)

I just tried that out on latest Safari. It really is pretty cool. Good work for getting it into Konq :)

L.

by drizek (not verified)

can you post a screenshot of it? im still running kde 3.4.

by *nix (not verified)

Just install the latest Konqueror...

It should not be to hard to install an additional webbrowser or am I wrong?...

Uh oh it's the Konqueror - then forget it to "just install" an newer version.

by mhn (not verified)

Shouldn't you go back to windows?

Uh, oh, and the 'new konqueror' is pre-alpha software. Should be obvious how to 'just install it', no?

by Bram Schoenmakers (not verified)

I assume that posting a screenshot is quicker than make everybody 'just' build a new Konqueror (and don't mention a new kdelibs).

by Derek Kite (not verified)

I have the latest Konqueror.

This code went in a few days ago. If someone wants to try it out they need to install a development version which is in constant flux. There are tools to do that such as kdesvn-build.

Everyone will be able to run this in a short while when 3.5 is released.

Derek

by Morty (not verified)

Here's screenshot of the window at two different sizes. When you resize it and make it smaller the outer pictures slides under the central one, and they move away when making the window bigger. All wery smoothly, with only a little bit of flicker on fast resizing.

by drizek (not verified)

thanks. thats pretty cool.

by Denis Defreyne (not verified)

Another example of multiple backgrounds:

http://amonre.org/pub/multiplebackgrounds/

by cb (not verified)

I thought anything aRts was on its death bed. Personally, I found aRts way too slow with Amarok. Others found bigger problems and in fact, there was talk of replacing it with something better...now, in front of my eyes, I read something that sounds important that is going to be based on aRts? What's going on?

by Anonymous (not verified)

What speaks against aRts as one possible backend? You don't have to use it...

by Sam Weber (not verified)

I've had a pretty good experience with arts, and use it as my engine in amarok, rather than gstreamer or xine.

-Sam

by Nicolas Goutte (not verified)

The commit is in kdemm, so it is not that Arts has become maintained again. As far as I understand, it seems to be more opening a path for a migration away from Arts.

Have a nice day!

by Antonio Salazar (not verified)

The commit log gives some insight:
"The first (somewhat) working KDEMM backend based on aRts. I used aRts for a few reasons:
1. It's the framework I know best and I can rather easily write a backend for
2. The features and problems are known to me, so I know what is a KDEMM problem and what is a backend problem.
3. We need it anyway for the poor people who need it for compatibility in KDE4."

Sounds perfectly sensible to me.

by Matt T. Proud (not verified)

I read that akode was to be a replacement sound engine somewhere. Is there any truth in this; and if this is correct, what necessitated the change?

by ltmon (not verified)

I think that I read that KDEMM will be an API abstracting away the sound engine (video also?) and that any one of a number of backends could be used. E.g. Use aRts, gstreamer, Xine, whatever. New backend plugins are meant to be easy to write, so if one particular backend becomes absolutely the best, or if a new one appears it won't be hard to migrate.

L.

by cies breijs (not verified)

I suppose this will also help connecting KDE to the native 'soundengines' of other platforms?

_c.

by Dominic (not verified)

Thank you Derek for the great work with the commit digest.

I have noticed a minor bug in the diff view with regards to images: http://tinyurl.com/abuyu for example shows only the new version of images, not the old version on the left hand side.

by fyanardi (not verified)

Just wondering, why almost all KOffice components' screenshots haven't been updated for long time? Some of them (e.g: KPresenter) even still show very old screenshots. Krita seems to update their screenshots regularly. I just think that screenshots can help to attract more people to try KOffice and give good impressions.

by rinse (not verified)

Well, go ahead, make some cool screenshots of koffice and submit them to the koffice maintainers ;o)

Rinse

by Nicolas Goutte (not verified)

There was already more than a year ago (if not two) that there was a call for volunteers. A part a few screenshots of KWord (1.3.x at that time) I had not received anything.

So many pictures are still outdated, even more outdated than they were at that time.

Have a nice day!

Embedding a single language (in this case javascript) as standard scripting language inside kontact sounds a bit strange to me.
Before you know it everyone will implement their pet scripting language inside the core KDE components, duplicating work and bloating the code.

Wouldn't it be more efficient to enhance the DCOP hooks in Kontact and make use of standard DCOP scripting tools (Kommander, maybe some language bindings?).

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for GTD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gtd) enhancements to Kontact so I wish the author success.

by arequipa (not verified)

http://www.wengofiles.teaser-hosting.com/wengophone/beta/wengophone_0.95... hey all this is wengo kubuntu´s deb and this is fedora core4 rpm:
http://www.wengofiles.teaser-hosting.com/wengophone/beta/Wengophone-0.95...

Wengo is a kde based SIP phone that allow free call around the world on real phones and on any other SIP phone.

Screenshots:
http://dev.openwengo.com/trac/openwengo/trac.cgi/wiki/WengoPhoneSnapshot...

more info can be find here:

http://dev.openwengo.com/