KDE.news 

Qt 2.2.4 Is Out

Saturday, 3 February 2001  |  Dre

TrollTech announced today the release of Qt 2.2.4. It is billed as a bugfix release (ChangeLog, Download). Happy compiling!

$200 Brazillian Net PC to run Linux and KDE

Friday, 2 February 2001  |  Jcunha
As announced by Pimenta da Veiga, minister of communications of Brazil, in the next 120 days, a Linux-based computer will be available on the Brazilian market for US$ 200. The computer configuration is a 500 Mhz AMD processor, 64 Mb RAM, 16 Mb flash disk (no hard disk included), 14 inch monitor, sound, 56 Kbps modem, ethernet, printer and USB ports. The software is Linux, KDE, KOffice, Konqueror, and all other technical specifications are public domain. The is not taxed by the Brazilian government, and it will be sold in 24 monthly payments of US$ 13. [Ed:Also, from Slashdot: The Brazilian government notice is available, as are pictures of the device. Nice.] Read More

Multimedia: The Noatun Development Handbook

Friday, 2 February 2001  |  Csamuels
As you might know, Noatun (with a Kaiman module) is the new KDE 2.1 multimedia player. Noatun supports plugins on a very deep level, and a rich API allows large amount of control of the entire application. A new document is now available with developer information on writing playlists, user interfaces, visualizations, and even coffee-makers for Noatun. ;-) Also available, an API reference. Read More

People of KDE: Jing-Jong Shyue

Thursday, 1 February 2001  |  Inorog
It is time again for a friendly meeting at the virtual interview table that Tink entertains on the People Behind KDE site. This week's guest is Jing-Jong Shyue, member of KDE's Traditional Chinese translation team. His (and his team's) work in KDE is particularly valuable given the unwitting bias of Western/European cultures sometimes present in software projects such as ours. Read More

Trolltech, IBM and KDE to Demo Voice-Control

Thursday, 1 February 2001  |  Rmoore
Trolltech, IBM (NYSE:IBM - news), and KDE have teamed up at LinuxWorld Expo in New York and are demonstrating IBM's ViaVoice speech-recognition technology running on Qt and KDE. With ViaVoice integrated into Qt/KDE, it will be possible to control Qt/KDE desktop applications with speech input -- from launching applications to menu selections to text entry. Developers can easily integrate this technology into existing applications; in fact, in many cases no changes have to be made. The Trolltech press release follows. Read More

IBM makes KDE available for AIX

Wednesday, 31 January 2001  |  Numanee
Reza Arbab wrote in to inform us that IBM has made KDE 1.1.2 and KDE 2.0.1 available (download here) for AIX. Reza intends to keep up to date with the latest KDE releases, but does need help with currently OS-specific parts of KDE (related to sound, kcontrol info panels, etc). Thanks Reza, thanks IBM. Read More

KDE 2.1-Beta2 Is Out

Wednesday, 31 January 2001  |  Dre
Coinciding with the start of the LinuxWorld Expo here in New York, the KDE Team has announced today that KDE 2.1-beta2 is ready for your enjoyment. The attached press release goes into the details (and I can't help but throw in this cool screenshot of the new Konqueror splash page), and lists a number of pre-compiled packages. This all in prelude to the scheduled release of KDE 2.1 in mid-February. So what are you waiting for -- startcha 'loadin'. Update: 02/02 10:39 AM by N: Link to Debian packages now included. Read More

New Version of KDE Devel Tutorial + KBillar

Monday, 29 January 2001  |  Uposter
Antonio Larrosa, active KDE developer and preacher, recently wrote to us about the release of a new version (1.1.2) of his popular tutorial on how to write KDE2 applications. Antonio has also made public a first release of KBillar (take a look at it), an interesting KDE2 application, that uses a billiards game as a nice pretext for demonstrating the use of mathematics and 3D graphics. Read More

Development Quickies: SMB, Java and Printing

Thursday, 25 January 2001  |  Dre
In the last week several KDE developers delivered short reports about the status of their projects. The first was Wynn Wilkes, who gave a report on the status of Java support in Konqueror. The short version: all applets which can be run the jdk appletviewer should now work, the security manager (sandbox) is in place, and applet loading via proxy and over SSL is now working (for SSL you need the JSSE (Java Secure Sockets Extension)). Next came Lars Knoll, who reported on his progress on better font handling into the Qt PostScript® driver. The improvements concern X displays which have a resolution different from 75dpi, and support for embedded TrueType and Type 1 fonts. Finally, Wynn Wilkes (again) reported that the integration of smblib into the SMB KIO-slave was progressing well. Read More

Writing Plugins for KDE Applications

Thursday, 25 January 2001  |  Numanee
In the first of what we hope to be an exciting series, Richard Moore has published a tutorial on how to write KPart plugins for KDE 2. In this tutorial, Richard gives us a glimpse into the power of KParts by demonstrating how simple it is to extend Konqueror with a plugin. In particular, he implements a plugin for HTML Validation, but the same mechanism could have just as easily been used to write a plugin for convenient Babelfish translation of the current webpage, or indeed something much more fancy. In general, once you understand what's here you should be able to write plugins for pretty much any application or component in KDE. The full tutorial can be found on the KDE Developer Site. This story was amended and republished at 04:00 PM. Update: 01/26 04:35 PM by N: Kurt Granroth has made available various modifications to the htmlvalidator example and, best of all, has implemented a nifty BabelFish plugin. See his article for details, download the plugins here. Update: 01/28 07:55 PM by I: As yet more proof of the power and simplicity of KParts-based plugins, Carsten Pfeiffer has created another plugin, which allows easy configuration (from a light drop-down menu) of Java, JavaScript, cookies and image loading. Thanks, Rich, Kurt and Carsten. Read More