KDE.news 

Following the first introduction to KParts on IBM developerWorks, David Faure now goes on to show developers how to <a href=http://www-105.ibm.com/developerworks/education.nsf/linux-onlinecourse-bytitle/A96500917FA1DB0786256BC000808C0F?Open&t=gr,p=KParts>create KParts components (free registration) in the first part of this tutorial series. You'll get an introduction to the core KParts concepts of read-only and read-write parts and network transparency. You'll learn how to create a read-only component, and then modify it to be a read-write component. You'll also learn how to deploy the component so that Konqueror can use it.

Following the remarkably successful launch of the KDE 3 series with a very stable KDE 3.0 last month, the KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.0.1. While primarily a translation release, it also squashes some bugs, including some minor security issues with KHTML. Check out the announcement and the fairly complete ChangeLog. Binary packages are available from the stalwart KDE packagers at Compaq Tru64, Conectiva Linux, Mandrake Linux and SuSE Linux. As always, we hope you enjoy the latest and greatest KDE!

The KDE on Cygwin project, the project to port Qt and KDE to Windows, has announced the first beta release of KDE 2.2.2 for Cygwin and Cygwin/XFree86. At the moment they offer kdelibs and kdebase for download but it seems we can expect other packages like kdegames, kdepim and kdevelop in near future too.

kde.de reports that a mailing-list for German-speaking KDE users called "kde-de" has been created, inviting both users and developers to subscribe. As usual, there is an archive and NNTP access available. This mailing-list completes the support with the de.comp.os.unix.apps.kde newsgroup (archive) and #kde.de on irc.openprojects.net for German speakers.

The KDE Usability Team has come out with the biggest and most visible change yet. Aaron J. Seigo recently announced and committed an almost complete re-organisation of the Kicker KControl module with accompanying updates to Kicker. Illustrative screenshots of this important first step can be found here. For more news of upcoming improvements be sure to check the kde-usability archives.

The Kooka team is proud to announce the launch of the official Kooka website. Kooka is a scanner management suite for KDE with support for Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The Kooka web site offers extensive documentation on Kooka and the KScan library, future project plans, screenshots, and much more.

Here's my official statement in response to the recent controversy over certain comments that slipped out of my mouth during a LOOOONG interview that also happened to include many positive and not-so-controversial comments about KDE. I have now switched to using KDE on a daily basis and I am really enjoying it. Thanks for the feedback and keep on hacking! :-)

I'm proud to announce that KDE Events, a new site for information about upcoming KDE events, is now online. The site is meant for community members who want to help represent KDE at trade shows and expositions, want to give talks or present their pet project at the KDE booth, and so on... KDE Events also includes a registration form for people who want to support KDE at upcoming events. In particular, you are all invited to sign up online for the upcoming LinuxTag 2002 taking place June 6-9 in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Guarddog is an easy to use, yet powerful, firewall for Linux machines running KDE 2 or 3. Guarddog isn't just a pretty GUI face thrown over the standard command-line firewalling utilities, it allows you to quickly and easily specify your firewall policy at a high-level, and then takes care of the rest. The first release candidate, version 1.9.15, is out and now needs heavy user testing. Everyone is encouraged to test it on as many weird and wonderful network setups as possible and report their experiences before the final official 2.0 release. The full announcement follows.

As part of the May 2002 issue of "Application of the month" series on KDE.de, Klaus Stärk has interviewed Håvard Frøiland, author of KTouch. KTouch is part of the KDE Edutainment Project and provides a quick and fun way to learn the useful and impressive skill of touch typing. See the main homepage for further details and screenshots -- the interview follows.