Support for MTP devices, a script-based integration of the "Free Music Charts", and beginnings of a "first run tutorial" added to
Amarok 2. More steps towards supporting other planets than Earth in
Marble. GetHotNewStuff support in the "Comic" applet, a configurable auto refresh interval in the "Web Browser" applet, and a first version of a configurable "Pastebin" applet in
Plasma. KsCD is connected to the "Now Playing" applet using D-Bus. Support for Python-based Plasmoids. QEdje's wallpaper plugin reaches an almost-working stage. Shade and unshade buttons added to the
Oxygen window decoration, with a new scrollbar design in the Oxygen widget style. RESTful web service access possible in Lokarest framework. Improvements in the Details view of
Dolphin. Source Browser usability improvements, and less interface lockups in
KDevelop. Work on a GeoNames annotation plugin for
NEPOMUK. Support for refreshing diffs in
Kompare. New syndication plugin (superceding the RSS plugin) added to
KTorrent. Spellchecking returns to Lokalise. Initial commits to KPackageKit. Kapman moves from kdereview to kdegames. "System-monitor" Plasmoid moves to kdereview. Continued porting of KDETV to KDE4. Import of a first version of the Skype text protocol for
Kopete, ported to KDE4. KNewsTicker removed as superceded by Plasma-based RSS applets.
Continuing previous
successful student projects at the
IUP ISI of the
Paul Sabatier University, Kévin Ottens writes about efforts this year:
So, this year is the third year we're starting such projects. This year we'll have three teams of students. One working on KBugBuster which is going toward a rewrite in Python and modernizing it to handle the new features from the newest Bugzilla. The second team is working on KPresenter, implementing new interesting features in it, in particular for more professional presenters (advanced rehearsal feature, interaction with slides during presentation, and so on). The third team goal is to create Akonadi applications suited for the Maemo platform, they'll have to be suited for this kind of small form factor devices. Nokia has kindly accepted to provide us a few N810's for allowing the students to see behaviour on the real thing.
The teams we have this year:
KBugBuster:
- Client contact: Dirk Mueller
- Technical help: Pino Toscano
- Students:
- Caitline Bonnard
- Julien Bringuier
- Gaël Courcelle
- Kévin Kin-Foo
- Maximilien Verdier
KPresenter:
- Client contact: Thorsten Zachmann
- Technical help: Thomas Zander
- Students:
- Alexia Allanic
- Jérémy Courtiau
- Johann Hingue
- Jean-Nicolas Artaud
Akonadi/Maemo:
- Client contact: Till Adam
- Technical help: Volker Krause
- Students:
- Karim Dembele
- Cédric Descamps
- Romain Pécoult
- Audrey Speronel
- Guillermo Cabanas
In a sign of a spreading idea, Tiago Pereira Porangaba introduces similar student projects at a Brazilian university:
We are a team from a research laboratory from São Paulo State University, Brazil, called LTIA – Applied Information Technology Lab. For the KDE Project, we are working with some KDE-Edu applications in order to improve usability and educational aspects. More specifically, we have been working with KBruch, KPercentage, Kalzium, and we have plans to contribute to KSudoku as well. Also, we have planned some work about supporting good execution of KDE-Edu applications on KDE Windows, using and testing these applications on Windows in order to find and report bugs.
Since we are a team composed of software engineers and usability experts, with some experience on educational software, we really believe that is possible to improve the educational experience of these software applications using usability work for that. In all software applications we have been working on, we have identified some opportunities to improve the user experience, so we decided to contribute with this kind of working.
We are finishing our work on KBruch, including the "merge" with KBruch and KPercentage and on Kalzium. Our development work is planned to end before the KDE 4.2 hard freeze. After that, we continue just testing on KDE for Windows.
Lastly, we would to say that we are enjoying a lot working with KDE software and community. It has been such a great experience for us.
I'll catch up with representives from both groups to check on their progress to date in a few issues time.
For many reasons (like important "real-life" work and including the simple desire for a rest), the Digest has not been published for many weeks now. My plan to get up to date with current commits is to publish the weekly editions as usual on an accelerated schedule, but with no introductory content (as seen in the section above) - especially as this correspondence is often delayed or doesn't reach me at all!
Essentially, I am out of content for these introduction sections, a situation that needs to be remedied for the "current" issues which will be released after the backlog of basic Digest editions. So I ask again that developers who are doing interesting work
let me know so that together we can develop introductory features - I will also be sending out some emails seeking content (as I always have done!).
And of course, have a great new year!