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The menu item styles of the KDE 3 "Classic" menu return to Kickoff. GetHotNewStuff for KDE colour schemes. "Recently Visited" listings in Konqueror. A new simplified hotkeys configuration module. The ability to print a "cheat sheet" of shortcuts. Automation plugin for scheduling checks, and GetHotNewStuff support in KLinkStatus. Support for Synonyms, Antonyms and False Friends in Parley. Improved online play (through GGZ) in KSquares. "Photocopy" functionality in Kooka. Various scripting improvements and integration in Kross and Plasma. Ability to monitor the input and output of processes, and support for pausing and resuming processes in KSysGuard. The ability to scale remote VNC desktops in KRDC. On-the-fly spell checking comes to Kile. Work on a knotify-dbus-plasma bridge. A fullscreen KDE splashscreen, without flicker. Printer-applet (written in Python) replaces KJobViewer. Kubrick and Glimpse move to kdereview. KTip has retired. Various anticipated sanity enhancements to the default settings of a KDE desktop. The bugfix edition KDE 4.0.3 is tagged for release.
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Adam Pigg writes about the enhanced reporting functionality in Kexi:
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The currently named "pgzkexireport2" aims to add the long-missing feature of reporting to KOffice"s database application, Kexi. What started out as a separate plugin for Kexi 1, has evolved over time to its current state, where it is fully integrated into Kexi.
Anyone who has used databases for even a small amount of time can appreciate that it is necessary to be able to report/summarize the data that is held in the tables in a format that can be presented to others. As a simple (completely fictional) example I"ve been building on to test the functionality, I have a table which collates rainfall levels per week and day, and the report then summarizes this with weekly totals and averages.
Currently the report functionality is already quite featureful - the feature list from a few weeks ago looked something like this:
Missing from the above list and example screenshot is the fairly awesome (well, in as much as "awesome" can get when you talk about reporting!) scripting support, which basically allows you to do perform actions when the report is rendered. The biggest use is probably changing the properties of items in the report based on values being used. To expand on the last example, it is easy to highlight areas where rainfall has been excessive...
...using a script similar to this (they don"t match because the above screenshot is a bit older):
Long term, I hope that the plugin stabilizes into something that users forget about, and just "use" in their day-to-day tasks for data reporting, with all the features they could need from the major players such as Oracle, Crystal Reports, and MS Access.
Maybe there could also be some kind of standard for the report definition that could be used across database engines, so that if a report was opened in say, OpenOffice.org Base, it would also work.
The above screenshots show scripting using QtScript, which at the time of writing is what is in SVN. This is currently being replaced with the Kross scripting engine from koffice/kdelibs, to make it language-neutral, giving it wider appeal.
I can"t take full credit for this... when I started out, I looked for an existing report engine that could be modified for use with Kexi, and I found OpenRPT (www.openrpt.com). Fortunately it was licensed under the LGPL which made it eligible for inclusion with Kexi. What is currently in Kexi is quite different, and incompatible with the original OpenRPT, lots of code has been removed/replaced with code from KOffice, such as reusing the koproperty system, and basically using KOffice libraries where appropriate. I hope to work with the OpenRPT people in the near future to contribute some changes back where there are still similarities and it is appropriate.
If anyone else finds this interesting and wants to get involved in developing or writing documentation then please feel free to drop into our IRC channel (#kexi on irc.freenode.net) to discuss. I am definitely going to need documentation written for the scripting API, and if anyone has ideas they think would be a benefit I"d definitely like to hear them!
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Jure Repinc introduces the early work on a new KDE game, Parsek:
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A few minutes ago I imported Parsek into KDE SVN, into playground. I started working on Parsek back in December 2006, as a way to start learning Qt and KDE programming. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to work on it since then.
So a quick introduction to Parsek. It's a client for playing turn-based 4X strategy games which are created using the Thousand Parsec framework. The games are set into Universe so they are mostly like an advanced version of Konquest (although the rules can be cloned in a ruleset that is running on a server).
For connecting to the server and communicating with it, Parsek uses the existing C++ library for Thousand Parsec. So a lot of work is already done and what's mostly left is creating a nice looking and easy to use user interface and everything else that is needed for it.
You can't yet play games with the client. Currently you can use it to connect to a game server, which downloads objects from the Universe and displays them in a simple tree. It also downloads messages and displays them in a simple table.
Hopefully I'll have more time to work on Parsek in the coming months. First thing to do is to create a starmap (with a navigation bar, similar to the one in Dolphin, if possible), make it possible to show and add orders to objects and make the messages and Universe tree display nicer. Basically, make it possible to actually play games!
One of the plans for the more distant future also include porting the client to Qtopia, so that it will be possible to play from mobile phone and other devices.
Anyways, I hope I did the import into SVN right and that there are not too many newbie mistakes in the code or in CMake files. Any help and feedback is much appreciated!
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There was an interesting comment on the KDE community recently from fellow Dot editor Daniel Molkentin, who laments the noticeable decline of some of the comments on the Dot, KDE's official news outlet. As a Dot editor myself, I try to keep up with Dot comments (and I always read all comments on the Digest), so I can certainly relate to the issues raised by Daniel, and I know many other people within KDE feel the same way.
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This is Digest issue 104, which means the new KDE Commit-Digest is now 2 years old! Contrary to what some Dot commenters would have you believe, there hasn't been a week without a Digest since I started, 104 weeks ago. Birthday greetings are welcomed via PayPal and/or Dot comments!
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