KDE.news 

George Russell today released Speaker, a first salvo at making Konqueror (the KDE web browser) synthesize text to speech and hence making Konqueror useable by people with visual impairments and by people who are otherwise unable to view a screen. Speaker is a plugin for Konqueror which provides text-to-speech-synthesis using the Festival Speech Synthesis System engine developed at Edinburgh University. Currently text has to be selected with the mouse and the Speak menu entry selected, but hopefully the interface will be improved so visually impaired users can surf the web with Konqueror. More information is on the homepage and at apps.kde.com. Note that this is a testing release and requires a KDE CVS tree. Read More

Michael Goffioul, the main architect of the new KDE Print system, has posted an HTML version of the presentation he gave at LinuxTag. The presentation is complete with screenshots and gives a good overview of the KDE Print technology featured in KDE 2.2. More info, screenshots and photos are available from the KDE Print site. Michael is also seeking help in documenting the KDE Print components, both for developers and for users. If you think you can help, please be sure to contact him. Read More

One of the most frequently asked questions on the KDE developer lists is, "How can I start contributing to KDE?" -- NewsForge.com may just have the answer. In an article entitled Joining the Round Table: How to get started developing for the Linux desktop, Tina Gasperson gives some helpful tips and links on how to get your feet wet with KDE or other Open Source coding. Read More

At about the time the London Linux Expo was ending, sixty KDE developers converged on Stuttgart, Germany for LinuxTag 2001. LinuxTag is the largest Linux and Open Source exhibition in Europe, drawing in 15,000 visitors and 110 exhibitors this year. Besides having a great time seeing each other in person again (or for the first time), the KDE developers greeted thousands of visitors to their booth and presented several talks and workshops. More details, and lots of shots from the event, are available below. Read More

While most headed off to the LinuxTag event, a handful of brave KDE people decided to tackle the London Linux Expo. Read Anne-Marie's entertaining account for some of the great stuff that went on there -- including photos of the bar encounter with a friendly gnome. Also check out Lee's site for more photos. Many thanks and kudos are due to Giles, Anne-Marie, Oliver, Lee, Jono and Mark who staffed the booth (and did an excellent job), our sponsors, and anyone else who helped, including: the KDE League, SuSE UK, Nick Veicht from Linux Format, and Cheep Linux. Oh, and bonus points if you can spot the Adobe inside joke. Read More

With the help of David Faure, I have just made available a KDE Developer FAQ on developer.kde.org. Here is your chance to see answered that annoying little question about development which you never dared ask. You are strongly encouraged to submit any other such questions about development for which you don't yet have a clear answer -- don't be shy, if something is a problem for you, it is probably a problem for ten other developers! I also take this opportunity to highlight the fact that we need volunteers to rewrite, complete or update the various documents on developer.kde.org. If you can help, please apply! Read More

Konqueror has received another huge shot in the arm, this time by gaining the ability to embed MSIE ActiveX controls such as the popular Shockwave Player. KDE developers Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the initial release of reaktivate. While not perfect yet, work is ongoing to support other controls for which no native Linux/Unix solutions exist, such as Apple's QuickTime. Credit goes to the WINE developers for providing the ActiveX support. So now that Konqueror can embed MSIE ActiveX controls, Netscape Communicator plugins (for Linux), any X window (through X window parenting), Java applets and any KParts components, and does an excellent job at handling HTML, CSS and JavaScript natively, it seems to me Konqueror is fast becoming the best browser on any platform. Sweet. Read more for the full press release. Read More

I am starting a new monthly feature, tentatively dubbed KDE & Companies, which will consist of a series of interviews with KDE-related or KDE-friendly companies. We will start with the company that, through Qt, is arguably at the root and foundation of KDE; Trolltech's CEO Eirik Eng has agreed to answer our questions. Please submit any queries you may have for Trolltech in the comments below. I leave you one week for this, after which I will choose the best questions and compile an interview for Eirik. All considered, I expect that it will take a month at the most before we publish the answers. Read More

For those amongst you who gr0k spanish, KDE hacker Antonio Larrosa Jiménez will be presenting a KDE development talk on IRC this Saturday. The talk will mostly cover material from Antonio's well-known tutorial (browse online). If interested, be sure to drop by server irc.irc-hispano.org on channel #linux-prog, Saturday 7th at 20:00 (spanish time). If you need any help with IRC, check the IRC help site first. Read More

The XFree86 Project has announced the XFree86 Technical Conference. The conference will take place on November 8th, 2001, in Oakland, California, in a concurrent run with the 5th Annual Linux Showcase & Conference. The last call for papers was put out on July 5th. You have up to July 13th to submit an abstract. I secretly hope that somebody will present a nice talk on the use of libICE in KDE's DCOP mechanism. This certainly deserves attention as one of the most interesting developments around the XFree86 project, along with antialiasing, modular drivers for the XServer and TrueType fonts support. Read More