KDE.news 

After last week's update to the KDE 3.5 series, today's KDE release updates the stable KDE 4.1 branch to KDE 4.1.1. It bears the codename "Cebidae" referring to an in-joke often made during Akademy 2008. With only a good month of development time -- and Akademy in between -- the changelog is still impressively long. Pretty much all applications have received the developers' attention, resulting in a long list of bugfixes and improvements. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: First steps towards autohide and windows-cover-panel in Plasma, and support for auto creation of Plasmoids based on the type of file dropped on the desktop. "Konsolator", a new Konsole Plasma applet, and "Unit Converter" and "QEdje" Plasmoids. A runner for searching in the "Recent Documents" history. Initial attempt at previews-in-tooltip for Konqueror and Dolphin. Configurable support for size limits in the Trashcan (and trash:// KIO slave). More bug fixes for Kicker on KDE 3.5. More work on version control interfaces in kdevplatform (the basis for KDevelop 4). Ability to save as a PNG image in KTurtle. Jigsaw patterns in Palapeli, start of a new skin editor in KSirK. Sound effects (using Phonon) and a new theme in Kapman. A new default theme in KBounce. Various work in Darkroom, including access to different export codecs. Configuration work in KWin-Composite, especially for cylinder and sphere effects. Option for Compiz-like "mouse dragging in cube" effects. KDED module for Phonon for handling audio devices. Support for ejecting devices in the Lancelot alternative menu. Work on indexing web sites in NEPOMUK. Start of integration with NEPOMUK in Mailody, with a move from KHTMLPart to Webkit for displaying HTML emails. Work on inline track info editing, and the ability to play a track directly off of an MTP device in Amarok 2. NX resume sessions support, and improved scaling behaviour in KRDC. A 7zip plugin for Ark. Various improvements (and a move to kdereview) for PowerDevil. Beginnings of a "download order script" in KTorrent. Configuration dialog for selecting presentation slides in KPresenter. Porting to Eigen2 (from Eigen1) across KOffice 2. Scriptable GUI plugins, and an RSS reader script plugin, in the Shaman package manager. Import of "Twine", a tool for generating and updating Python bindings from C++ headers, into KDE SVN. Import of a KDE 4 port of Guidedog, a tool for setting up connection sharing, basic routing, and Network Address Translation (NAT), into KDE SVN. Import of an "Asciiquarium" screensaver into playground/artwork. system-config-printer-kde is added to kdereview. KDE 3.5.10 is tagged for release. Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Interface work and new applets specialised for use on MID (small form factor) devices, beginnings of applets-in-the-systray, and work on a new calendar popup widget design in Plasma. A collection of new comic provider sources, and use of Solid to detect network availability in the "Comic" Plasmoid. The "Spellcheck" runner moves to kdeplasma-addons, a revival of the "Strigi" Plasmoid, and a new "XEyes" Plasma applet. Two new layout modes for the "present windows" effect in KWin-Composite. Even more bug fixes in Kicker for KDE 3.5. A basic "revision history" implementation, and the beginnings of code generation support, in kdevplatform (the basis of KDevelop 4). Support for loading 100e8 stars in KStars. Get Hot New Stuff for downloading new skins in KSirK. Support for exporting to JPEG in Darkroom. The ability to pick a colour from the desktop in KColorEdit. Support for video annotations (using Phonon) in Okular. Marble integration in Mailody displaying the network route an email has taken. Automatic language detection and a range of bug fixes in Sonnet. Dramatic speedups in AdBlock filtering in KHTML. A configuration dialog and KConfig support in kio_bookmarks. Initial implementation of KOSDWidget-based KNotify OSD plugin. Various work on PowerDevil, with a move into kdereview. Import of a KIO thumbnailer plugin for RAW camera files. An experimental library to abstract away media player interfaces. Initial version of an Open Collaboration Services client, "Attica", and an Akonadi resource for handling users. Version 1.0 of the Lancelot alternative menu is tagged for KDE 4.1. KDE 4.1.1 is tagged for release. Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

Alexandre Prokoudine has an interview with Krita developers on his blog. Taken at the Libre Graphics Meeting he talks to Boud and Cyrille about KDE's painting application. When asked what are Krita's primary goals the answer is "Krita is a very flexible foundation for all kinds of image processing. We’ve got an unparalleled architecture to build raster graphics on and a really flexible system of plug-ins", which covers pretty much everything. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: New "Browser History", "Konqueror Sessions", "Konsole Sessions", and "Kate Sessions" KRunners in Plasma. Proof-of-concept of simple uploading in Plasmagik. A MythTV data engine for retrieving data about a MythTV installation (upcoming recordings, etc), and the start of a RSIBreak engine. An applet for displaying new message information from KMail, Kopete, etc for use with the Plasmoids-on-Screensaver project. Support for panel form factors, and a configuration dialog in the Lancelot alternative menu. Various improvements in the "Desktop Grid" KWin-Composite effect. More bugfixes for Kicker in KDE 3.5. A backtrace browser plugin for Kate. Code completion for PHP in KDevelop. More levels added in the Stepgame project. Lots of improvements in KGo, support for themes in Kapman. Window title tagged images in KSnapshot to assist indexing by Strigi. Support for reading form actions and removing annotations in Okular. Animated image support (eg. GIF) in Gwenview. First steps towards a Mailody Kontact part. More work for Amarok 2.0, especially regarding playlist handling. Start of a PDF import filter (for KOffice 2.1, using Poppler) in Karbon. Initial Kross integration in the Shaman package manager. More user interface work in KColorEdit. New device notifier moved into kdebase, new KsCD moved into kdemultimedia. Removal of viewer functionality in KPilot to become a syncing application only. Import of Kaffeine video player into extragear. Tagging of Amarok 1.4.10, a security fix release. Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

The KOffice team, developers, students, packagers and bug reporters have prepared the final Alpha release of KOffice 2.0: KOffice 2.0 Alpha 10. KOffice will enter feature freeze in two weeks, so the next release will be the first Beta. And we are committed to releasing as many Beta's as is necessary before declaring Release Candidate status for KOffice 2.0. Read on for more details. Read More

At Akademy 2008, KDE Release Team members Sebastian Kügler and Dirk Müller discussed the future of KDE's development process. Describing the challenges KDE faces and proposing some solutions, they spawned a lot of discussion. Read on for a summary of what has been said and done around this topic at Akademy. Read More

The KDE community has finalised another update to the 3.5 series. While not a very exciting release, 3.5.10 brings numerous bugfixes and translation updates to those who choose to stay with KDE 3.5. The fixes are thinly spread across KPDF with a number of crash fixes, KGPG and probably most interesting various fixes in Kicker, KDE 3's panel. Read More

This year's Google Summer of Code is drawing inexorably to its close: the first indication that season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is indeed upon us. The KOffice students are busy tying up the last threads, adding the last flourish of polish that makes all the difference before they will slake the satisfied sigh that goes with work well-done. So - what did we achieve this year? In our very best tradition, read on for an overview! Read More

The Amarok team is proud to announce the first beta version of Amarok 2, codenamed Nerrivik. It contains a considerable amount of improvements over the previous alpha versions, bringing Amarok one step closer to the 2.0 release. The highlights of this first beta version are the scripting interface, file tracking (so you keep your statistics if you move your files around), gorgeous new artwork as well as lots of bugfixes. Read more about it in the release announcement. Read More