KDE.news 

As always, KDE will have a presence at next year's FOSDEM in Belgium on 7-8 February 2008. This is earlier in the month than usual. We are looking for people to give talks in the KDE or cross-desktop devroom. FOSDEM is the European meeting of free software developers, with over 4000 visitors, 200 lectures and lots of stalls to visit over a 2 day period. You can come and listen to a plethora of interesting talks about anything related to free software, and meet the people behind the nicknames. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Continued post-release polishing of Amarok 2.0. Support for conversion between temperature scales in the "Weather" Plasmoid. Initial import of "System Status" Plasma applet, which is renamed "System Load Viewer" (shows CPU, memory, and swap usage). Support for on-the-fly compilation of Plasma data engines with the C# language bindings. Further development of the "BookmarkSync" Konqueror plugin, including additions of autofetch, autosave, and a settings dialog. More refined integration of Wikipedia "place" information in Marble. A QtScript engine to allow creation of games using QtScript in KGLEngine. An experimental "curve brush" added to Krita. Support for the ext4 filesystem added to PartitionManager. More reorganisation of wallpapers in KDE SVN, with a general kdeartwork module cleanup removing IceWM themes, KWorldClock maps, and unmaintained iconsets. PolicyKit-KDE moves to extragear/base. Eigen 2.0 Beta 3 is tagged for release.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Restoration of basic queue management functionality, support for basic searching and filtering the playlist, work on device handling, and better integration of the Mac OSX "Growl" notification system in Amarok 2.0. The Plasma "Pager" now accepts taskbar entry drops, support for dragging applets between panels, and improvements in setting keyboard shortcuts for Plasmoids. Import of a "BookmarkSync" plugin for Konqueror, allowing storage and retrieval of bookmarks on multiple computers from a central location. Support for full content zoom (instead of text-only zoom) when using WebKit with Qt 4.5, with plugins (eg. Flash) starting to work. Support for nested "for loops" in KTurtle. More work on the rewrite of Kolf. A basic prototype of a MuPDF-based backend (for PDF documents) in Okular. More work on the Windows Live Messenger protocol in Kopete. Support for running programs as other users (using kdesudo) in KDevPlatform (used in KDevelop 4, etc). A new game in development, "FruitWars", is added to KDE SVN. Reorganisation of wallpapers (including the addition of "Air", the default for KDE 4.2) in KDE SVN.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Continued work to make applications usable on smaller screen resolutions, this time with changes to Konqueror, KTorrent, and KMail. Start of a "KuickQuiz" Plasma applet, with initial support for placement in the panel. More new Plasma themes. More development of the "NetworkManager" Plasma applet, including a conversion to the "extenders" paradigm. A "pseudo-working" version of QEdje Plasma wallpaper. Printing fixes in Okular. A SmugMug photo service exporter in kipi-plugins (used by Digikam, etc). Initial version of KMJ, a Mahjongg game for 4 players. Continued work on the KBugBuster and Akonadi/Maemo student projects. Significant refactored changes in the "WebGUI" plugin of KTorrent. Further improvements in the integration of KDE with PolicyKit, including policykit-kde moving to kdereview. Eigen 2.0 Beta 2 and KDE 4.2 Beta 2 are tagged for release.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Various usability improvements and polish in Plasma, with further work on JOLIE integration. Italic font support in the Plasma "Fuzzy Clock" applet. Full support for use-building on signal/slot connections in KDevelop, and the start of a framework for code quality checkers using the KDevelop C++ parser. Addition of VIM-like navigation (HJKL) in Okular. Refactoring in the Kigo game (formerly KGo) with a view to future expansion, including work on undo/redo support. Updated artwork in KTuberling. Support for hiding toolbars in KTimeTracker. More progress in the Skype text chat protocol in Kopete. Continuation of the improvements to Ark seen in recent weeks.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Old-school desktop patterns return as a Plasma wallpaper, along with an interactive Marble-based wallpaper display. A simple video player Plasmoid based on Phonon. Continued optimisations in Plasma and KDevelop. Various new colour schemes for KDE 4 added to KDE SVN. KSysGuard processes can now be "dragged into a text editor, word processor or spreadsheet program". More progress in the functional refactoring of the Kigo game. Support for compiling sources at runtime with the C# language bindings for KDE. Backup functionality added to KJots. Last.fm service converted to use the KDE system-wide proxy settings, and basic filtering capability added to the service browser in Amarok 2.0. Further work on the new DeviceSync application. KConfigEditor begins to be ported to KDE 4. KitchenSync and the Akonadi OpenSync plugin are disabled for the KDE-PIM 4.2 release. kdekiosk becomes officially unmaintained due to a lack of developer interest. Final preparations for release and the tagging of Amarok 2.0 Final.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: KUIServer applet merged into Plasma "System Tray". Wallpaper configuration added to the Plasma screensaver. Support for drag and drop of images onto the new "Pastebin" Plasmoid. Support for unloading/reloading Plasmoids from the Python interpreter. More work on PolicyKit integration in KDE. Hidden panel glow hints when using Plasma with a compositing window manager. Improvements to SQL playlists (incompatible with previous saved playlists), and an importer for iTunes added to Amarok 2. Unfinished Amarok Plasma applets moved to playground in preparation for the release of Amarok 2.0. Sonnet-based spell checking in Mailody. Basic functionality to support collections on network shares, with better interface support for smaller screens in Digikam. Zeroconf support for sending and receiving notes in KNotes. Initial import of MobiPocket format support, and SVG images for PDF stamp annotations added in Okular. Further progress on the reimplementation of the Windows Live Messenger protocol in Kopete, including a merge into trunk. Further student project work on KBugBuster and Akonadi/Maemo. Start of sound support in KBlocks. Meaningful optimisations in Strigi. RAW thumbnail loader for Dolphin moved from playground to kdereview. Kephal screen management library moved from kdereview to kdebase.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Addition of a DNS prefetch mechanism (as seen in Google Chrome) to speed up page loads in KHTML. First base work on kolf-ng, a rewrite which may become Kolf 2.0 in the future. A crude configuration dialog is added to the "NetworkManager" Plasma applet, preliminary support for horizontal and vertical form factors in the "FolderView" Plasmoid. kuiserver is now fully merged into the Plasma "System Tray". Items can now specify their position in the Plasma "System Tray". Support for drag-and-drop re-ordering of the favourites list (and potentially other lists) in the Kickoff menu. Implementation of basic text extraction from file tags in some TIFF images in Okular. Start of a batch queue manager in Digikam. Initial work for a "set-specific preview" for the "Colours" KControl module. Configuration support for the Seeqpod script, and an initial import of a "Danish Radio Stations" service in Amarok 2. New "IceWorld" theme in KBreakOut. Support for enabling/disabling "Rich Text" in the Kopete chat window. Rudimentary integration with ConsoleKit in KDM. Eigen 1 has now been replaced by Eigen 2 across KDE SVN. Guidance removes own implementations of utilities now covered by KDE 4.2 tools. PartitionManager moves from kdereview to extragear/sysadmin. The Falcon-language Kross backend moves to kdebindings in time for KDE 4.2. "Bomber" game moved from kdereview to kdegames for the KDE 4.2 release. The game "KGo" is renamed "Kigo". KPercentage retired as it is unmaintained, with some exercises incorporated into KBruch. Amarok 2 Release Candidate 1 (1.98) is tagged for release.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Merge of the KMail Summer of Code project (including a reworked folder tree and a new message list) to trunk (in time for KDE 4.2). The alternative "QuickSand" interface is integrated into KRunner. Option to enable image support in Klipper, with the start of efforts to convert the utility to KConfigXT. Phonon intuitively responds to removal of internal (non-hotpluggable) sound devices. First version of scripted services for browsing content from BBC (with basic search ability) and NPR, and beginnings of a SongKick applet in Amarok 2. Use of Solid in Digikam to identify pictures already downloaded from cameras. RAW image support added to slideshows in kipi-plugins (used by Digikam, etc). Scripted ability to resume paused torrents after a configurable amount of time in KTorrent. Initial support for extraction of EMF files from the Compound File Binary Format (Microsoft OLE file format) in Okular. Practice start dialog with statistics and settings display in Parley. Simple graphs and multiple graphs working in Rocs. A basic GetHotNewStuff implementation in Palapeli. Further work in KDevelop. New converter between KPIM and KABC distribution lists in KDE-PIM. Support for import of KnowIt files into KJots. "Eyes" applet moves to kdeplasma-addons, while "kbstateapplet" moves to kdereview. Python bindings for the Plasma library move to kdebindings. Plasma moves to from kdebase/workspace to kdelibs.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A collection importer added to Amarok 2, which allows importing statistics from Amarok 1.4 databases (as well as arbitrary external sources). Ability to disable the fullscreen thumbnail bar in Gwenview. Shadow brightness implemented for KWin-Composite effects. Support for animated icons across KDE. Support for output of MathML Presentation Markup in KAlgebra. Python language bindings for the Marble library, whilst creating Plasma DataEngines in Python reaches an almost-working stage. Option to force the number of rows in the Plasma "Taskbar". Start of work on KScoreManager. Import of a minimal KPart for the Palapeli game. Beginnings of filter matching for the syndication plugin (replacement for RSS plugin) in KTorrent. More WebCore-based improvements to KHTML. Initial commit of an "autobrace" KTextEditor extension. Import of KSendEmail, a command-line tool to send email (using D-Bus connectors). The "Bomber" game moves from playground/games to kdereview, whilst Killbots moves out of kdereview into kdegames for KDE 4.2. Kephal (new screen management library) moves to kdereview. The refactored Plasma "System Tray" and "Taskbar" move into trunk in time for KDE 4.2.Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More