KDE.news 

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Better support of wildcards in the directory path field and improved menu key functionality in Dolphin
• Interface for pictureshape cropping, cache rendering in assistants, numbered bibliography entries, improved DOCX, OOXML support in Calligra
• Memorize expanded groups in bookmarks in Skrooge
• QWidget-based tooltips in Telepathy
• Sync improvements in rekonq

Read the rest of the Digest here.

KDE España has started planning Akademy-es 2012—the most important KDE-related event in Spain. The conference is an opportunity for Spanish KDE users and developers to meet, share experiences, catch up on KDE news, and plan for the future. Akademy-es includes a range of presentations, workshops, hacking sessions, informal get-togethers and an assembly of KDE España members. KDE members and supporters will be coming from other countries to enjoy famous Spanish hospitality and meet up with KDE friends. The date for Akademy-es depends on what location is chosen and the availability of suitable facilities.

Developers, testers, bug chasers and many more people are putting in a major effort on KDE's next major release. It will soon be time to appreciate the result, sit back and relax! The occasion calls for commemoration of KDE’s recent accomplishments.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

• Embedded mode for TabBox in KWin
• Reimplemented name filtering in Dolphin
• Initial support for resource events in read-only kparts in kdelibs
• Calligra updates include improved opening of .kexis files, and creating new app instances and main window UI changes in Kexi; support for filled radar charts, updated document handling and optimization of reverse iterator and ODF saving
• Improved download management and shortcut+slot to Open Downloads page in rekonq
• KDevelop supports configuration of some environment variables for CMake jobs
• Export of non-local files in Skrooge.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

Today KDE released the first release candidate for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing. Compared to Beta2, RC1 contains hundreds of fixes. Please give this release another good round of testing to help us release a rock-solid 4.8 in January.
Highlights of 4.8 include:

• Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is making its way into the Plasma Workspaces. The new Plasma Components provide a standardized API implementation of widgets with native Plasma Look and Feel. The device notifier widget has been ported using these components and is now written in pure QML. KWin's window switcher is now also QML-based, paving the way for newly designed window switchers.
• Dolphin's file view has been rewritten for better performance, scalability and more attractive visual appearance.
• KSecretService optionally enables shared password storage, making your saved passwords available to many other applications, leading to a more secure system and better integration of non-KDE apps into the Plasma Workspaces and KDE apps into non-Plasma workspaces.
• Many performance improvements and bugfixes improve the overall user experience, making the KDE Applications and Workspaces more productive and fun to use than ever before.

As usual, bugs can be reported, verified and found at bugs.kde.org.

Plasma Active Two has been released. In just two months, the Plasma Active development team has made significant improvements over Plasma Active One. The release announcement has more information, including a video and sites for downloading and installation instructions.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest Andrew Lake writes about the Bangarang project and recent improvements. As usual there is also a list of updates:

• Kdelibs change that improves storage of passwords in a webdav share
• Folders panel fixes in Dolphin
• Calligra sees updated support for DOCX and PPT and many bugfixes
• Share URL by mail action and remote ftp sync in rekonq
• Optimization of map themes load in Marble
• Bugfixes in KDevelop, Dolphin, Plasma Active.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

KDE Telepathy 0.2

• KWallet integration for storing passwords
• A Plasmoid for instant access to a contact
• Ability to set status to the currently playing track from Amarok, Clementine or any other mpris2-compatible player
• Auto Away
• Progress bar and cancel button for file transfers
• Over 130 bug fixes and tweaks since 0.1!

The Value of Sprints

KDE Telepathy Sprint attendees.

The Future

This is an early release, far from what we consider the "finished product". However all the functionality works and many of us now use it as a daily instant messaging client.

Today, KDE makes available two new releases of its Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. 4.7.4 provides bugfix updates, new translations and performance improvments on top of the stable 4.7 series, while 4.8 Beta2 gives a glimpse at what is coming in 4.8, to be released next month. As 4.7.4 is limited to low-risk fixes, it is a recommended update for everyone using 4.7.3 or earlier versions. 4.7.4 will be the last release of the 4.7 series. The next stable release of KDE's Workspaces, Applications and Development Frameworks will be 4.8.0, which will be ready in January 2012. Among the highlights which will be in 4.8 are a new and fancy view engine for Dolphin, Qt Quick Components for Plasma, and of course all the fixes that went into 4.7.4.

Over the weekend of 19 and 20 November, KDE contributors met in Berlin for the KDE e.V. Sprint—the first ever. KDE e.V. is the non-profit organization that represents KDE in legal and financial matters and provides funding to assist KDE development and promotion. We aimed to work on some key areas to form a strong foundation for KDE e.V.'s future development, including: