The KDE project is happy to announce the selection of 40 KDE projects for the Google Summer of Code 2007. This is the third consecutive year that KDE is participating in the initiative.
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Bluetooth support in Solid. 'Breadcrumb" navigation widget from Dolphin is made more modular to allow use in other KDE contexts. Support for different caret (text cursor) styles in Konsole. Various bugfixes in TagLib.
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: The beginnings of a KControl module for Decibel configuration make an appearance. Developments in the Subversion plugin for KDevelop. More optimisations in the KJS JavaScript interpreter. Further progress in the KBattleship rewrite. New country maps in KGeography.
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Final stages of Freedesktop.org naming compliance performed on the Oxygen mimetype icons. IMAP-related crashes targeted in KMail. Many KFilePlugins ported to use Strigi. Better zoom and preview size interaction in Digikam.
As we reported last week, KDE will be taking part in Google's Summer of Code again. The deadline for student applications is approaching now, so be quick sending in your ideas before March 26th. If you are a student and would like to spend the summer on a cool Free Software project, do apply for one of the scholarships.
The KDE Community and the release team have put together a release plan for the long anticipated version 4.0, which is planned to be released in October 2007. KDE 4.0 will be a major milestone for the Free Desktop, as it offers a new foundation and set of frameworks that will shape the desktop user experience for years to come.
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Interface experiments in Amarok 2.0, with the aKode engine shown the door. Initial work on incremental parsing functionality in KDevelop. Further functional development in the Step educational physics simulation package.
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: The Oxygen iconset is moved from playground to kdelibs, changes made throughout KDE to support the new icon names specification. The Crystal iconset is moved from kdelibs to its kdeartwork retirement home. More work on the Oxygen widget style. Security fixes in KTorrent.
In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: KSplashX, a potential replacement for the KSplashML engine is imported into KDE SVN. Continued progress in the Solid and NetworkManager integration. More refinement, including better keyboard shortcuts, in Konsole. New keyboard layouts in KTouch.
The Faces of KDE takes a look at some of the developers working on KDE 4. "In this stage of development it’s a lot of pain for very little glory, re-designing the next generation KDE from the ground up. It’s a task that separates the core developers from the hangers on, and the architects of the new desktop are a pretty dedicated group.