KDE.news 

On April 23rd 2002, the KDE Project released the first beta version of KOffice 1.3. It comes with many new features and improvements, new filters, hyphenation and the new database client Kexi (screenshots). Read more in the KOffice 1.3 Beta 1 announcement and in the full KOffice 1.3 Beta 1 changelog. First binary packages are available, or grab the sources or use the newest version of Konstruct (cd apps/koffice-unstable;make install). The second beta and feature freeze is planned for June 24th. Read More

Russell Miller recently took over as maintainer and editor for KC KDE (from a long line of predecessors) and has lost no time in releasing issue #47! This week he covers everything from KImageEdit MMX optimizations to KDE hacker Ellis Whitehead's joyful step up in life. Congratulations Ellis, and thanks Russell! The more news the merrier... Read More

In this fascinating interview, Eric Laffoon and András Mantia give us a glimpse into the world of the Quanta Plus project. Read on for everything from tantalising references to Kommander, billed by Eric to be part of the foundations for the next generation desktop and user experience, to details of future plans for Quanta VPL (Visual Page Layout). We also launch a call for help from the users, either in the form of Quanta contributions or much-needed donations to help sponsor the work. Read More

This week's KDE-CVS-Digest is out. We can now do bash scripting in KDevelop. KGhostview gets command line switches and some bug fixes. The infamous Konqueror tab delay has been fixed again, while Safari fixes up to v68 (current is v73) have been merged. Kicker docking and KWin crash bugs have been fixed. And much more... Enjoy! Read More

The KDevelop team announces the availablility of KDevelop 3.0 Alpha 4a (yes, 4a). In the more than 3 months since the last release, many new features have been added, bugs have been squashed, and existing features have been refined and polished. Downloads are available via the KDE mirrors. Direct links to packages can be found at the KDevelop download page. Read More

After more than 5 months of development, the KBarcode team has released version 1.2.0 of KBarcode. This latest stable release brings professional high-quality label printing to the KDE desktop. In fact, KBarcode is already used by a few companies under production conditions and has proven to be reliable and stable -- considering the high costs for similar commercial applications, KBarcode might save you some money! KBarcode supports labels with most major barcode types, images, as well as any kind of rich text, and can be used for everything from simple CD covers to printing thousands of business cards. Labels can easily be created using the WYSIWYG label designer (misc shot) and over 1000 predefined labels. Configuring is easy thanks to the graphical setup wizard, which can also optionally create SQL tables. KBarcode is available in English, Finish, German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. For further information on documentation and support, click here. Read More

This week in the latest KDE-CVS-Digest, lots of work is happening on the basic services. A rewrite of the SMTP kioslave, S/MIME support added to KSSL, and continuing improvement to the RSS DCOP service. KMail gets an mbox (== Unix mail spool format) import filter. KOffice 1.3 is getting ready for beta, and new releases of Kig and KPlayer are out. As I write this I also notice the new spell checking feature in Konqueror! Read More

The KDE Security team has issued an advisory on a vulnerability present in all versions of KDE that allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands under your account. KDE 3.0.5b and KDE 3.1.1a have been released to address this problem. For KDE 2.2.2 patches to the KDE 2.2.2 sources have been made available. Read More

eWeek's Jason Brooks gives us his take on the discussion about the complexity of KDE and GNOME in his article "Sometimes, More Is More". "I didn't switch from Windows to Linux on my home and work systems because Windows wasn't easy. I switched because as I came into contact with OS alternatives, I became frustrated with lack of flexibility I found in Windows." Do you agree? Are we (roughly) on the right course, or should we be trimming away options? Read More

The KStars Team is pleased to announce the latest stable snapshot release of KStars, the powerful graphical desktop planetarium for KDE. Recently featured in Linux Magazine, KStars displays an accurate representation of the night sky as seen from any location on Earth, on any date, including all of 40 000 stars, 13 000 deep-sky objects, all planets, the Sun and Moon, and 2500 comets and asteroids. KStars has an intuitive interface that makes it easy for anyone to explore the night sky. Read More