KDE.news 

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest, Boudewijn Rempt writes about the 2.4 version of Krita. In addition, the usual list of updates:

• Progress in the work to separate QGraphicsView from libplasma
• Calligra sees work on docx support and autocolor
• Telepathy sees UI refactoring; there is now extended away support and dialog-less setup for link-local XMPP
• Marble gets 'space view' activity
• Digikam gains Aspect Ratio Crop tool and Kodak HIE infrared filter in Image editor converter
• Plasma Active gets UI for setting start page, adblock and history; lockscreen
• KMyMoney can show the balance of a budget.
plus many statistics on bugs, wishes, commits, i18n, bug fixes

Read the rest of the Digest here.

Over the last couple of years the KDE Mobile project has been evolving as it targeted many embedded platforms. Currently, the focus is on the shiny Nokia gadgets (N9 and N950) running the platform called Harmattan. Eleven talented developers met in person at a recent KDE Sprint, giving a boost to porting KDE Applications onto this platform, creating new working relationships, and discussing various issues around the KDE Mobile project for handsets.

Plasma Active and the Mer OS have been installed successfully on the ARCHOS G9 tablet.

Plasma Active & Mer on ARCHOS tablet

Plasma Active is innovative technology for a smarter mobile user experience—the latest member of the Plasma Workspaces family from KDE. The touchscreen interface is more than just an application launcher. Rather than the commonplace grid of applications, an Activity view shows a single project, task or idea, gathering all related documents, people, web sites, media and widgets. By creating multiple Activities, a mobile device can be customized to respond effectively as the user moves between contexts. Plasma Active is based on Qt and KDE technology, enabling quick and efficient development of touchscreen user experiences.

In the weekend of November 11, more than twenty Calligra developers braved the fierce weather of Helsinki to meet up again! Well, the weather wasn't that fierce actually, but it could have been! We met up in the office tower that houses Nokia's research department during the weekdays for two days of hacking, presentations and meetings. For several attendants it was their first travel to a community gathering: welcome Smit Patel, Brijesh Patel and Dimitrios Tanis!

Calligra Sprint attendees

Some highlights: the Saturday morning meeting where we decided to have one or two additional beta releases -- and the same day our Release Dude (who couldn't be present, unfortunately) came up with the same idea. It's not that we don't want to release, but the first Calligra release has to be good!

Saturday afternoon, SKF gave a remote presentation on how they are using Calligra Words as a report generator/editor in their tool. Their usage is very advanced, it includes RDF, for instance, and the presentation was a huge success. It's always great to see the results of your project in actual use!

A similar presentation was given by Nokia the next day: we were shown how well suited the Calligra office engine is to power the Harmattan Office application on Nokia's smartphone, the N9. This being a developer meeting, a slide that showed that we're doing better than Microsoft's mobile office was followed by four slides of Highly Important Bugs in what we can improve to make Calligra even better!

But that was great as well -- as great as the lunches and dinner Nokia provided for all of us. Thanks go to Nokia and KO GmbH for sponsoring travel and accommodation, and Nokia for sponsoring food and drink for the whole group! Thanks also to Claudia Rauch of KDE e.V. for helping with getting help on the organisational thinks like visas.

And now everyone is home, it's time make our code ready for the long awaited first release of Calligra, Calligra 2.4

The KDE community is proud to announce that next year's Akademy will be held in Tallinn, Estonia from the 30th of June to the 6th of July. Akademy is the annual world conference held by the KDE community to celebrate the Free Software desktop and work towards the future of KDE.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest we have included a feature on updates in Plasma Active from Marco Martin.

In addition, the usual list of updates:

• Window Thumbnail support for QML in Plasma Workspaces
• Mouse cursor size is now configurable, Oxygen mouse cursors (pseudo) scalable
• Basic routing activity added in Marble
• Import of internal libraw 0.14.3 to libkdcraw, with support of new cameras
• Porting of gamma table editing finished in Kooka
• Final border refactoring, initial support for filtered frame layers and bugfixes in Calligra
• Multiple crashes fixed.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

Today KDE released the first beta for its renewed 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 new and old functionality. Highlights of 4.8 include, among other things:

The third Quarterly Report of KDE e.V. for 2011 has been published. It gives an overview of all the activities KDE e.V. supported in the last 3 months. This includes the Desktop Summit in Berlin and various sprints, and also the e.V.'s annual general assembly and an interview with Lydia Pintscher about why KDE rocks at mentoring.

With the KDE 4.8 releases drawing near, it's time to change the look of the default desktop. Every two major releases, the main wallpaper of the Plasma Workspaces changes to maintain a fresh style.

Pick your task

Be ready

Don't hesitate to contact the mentor prior to taking a task if you need more information. The KDE community is happy to help you and is looking forward to working with you!