KDE Archive

The KDE project announces the availability of the third development snapshot of the upcoming KDE 4. This snapshot is meant as a reference for developers who want to play with parts of the new technology KDE 4 will provide, those who want to start porting their applications to the new KDE 4 platform and for those that want to start to develop applications based on KDE 4. This snapshot is not for end users, there is no guarantee that it will be stable, the interfaces are subject to changes at any time.

When a project with the size and scope of KDE gets to be as big as it is, sometimes changing a decision established almost a decade earlier is very difficult. KDE has relied on autotools to build most of the project since its inception, but for the last year, KDE 4 has been building with CMake, a newer build system that is rapidly becoming a heavyweight contender. Read on for more.

Decibel is a service that is concerned with real time communications; therefore, everything that connects one user with another user and makes it possible to get replies instantaneously is in the scope of Decibel. Decibel is based on the Telepathy D-Bus API's and uses the Tapioca implementation of these API's.

"Focusing again on applications this week, specifically I'll look at two of the promising document viewers for KDE 4, Okular and Ligature. They are two of the rising stars of KDE 4, but they both have their roots as KDE 3 applications that have grown up."

With the Sonnet library for KDE 4, developer Jacob Rideout hopes to reinvigorate the field of desktop linguistics by adding automatic language detection and other innovative features. Sonnet is to be for KDE 4 what KSpell 2 is for the current version of the K Desktop Environment, providing spell-checking facilities to applications as diverse as the Konqueror Web browser, Kopete instant messenger, and KWord office software. Unlike KSpell, however, it will also provide grammar checking, multilingual tools, and perhaps even translation, dictionary, and thesaurus functionality across all of KDE.

"Like the previously featured articles on new KDE 4 technologies for Job Processes or SVG Widgets, today we feature the shiny new multimedia technology Phonon. Phonon is designed to take some of the complications out of writing multimedia applications in KDE 4, and ensure that these applications will work on a multitude of platforms and sound architectures. Unfortunately, writing about a sound technology produces very few snazzy screenshots, so instead this week has a few more technical details. Read on for the details."

"I had the opportunity to speak with several KDE developers recently. Benjamin Reed, Jaroslaw Staniek and Ralf Habacker are several of the many talented developers working on porting KDE to Mac and Windows respectively. They explain in detail what's involved in making KDE and its myriad of applications boot under Mac and Windows."

KDevelop 3.4 has been released, bringing many new features to KDE's Integrated Development Environment. The first major release in over a year closes more than 500 bugs. There is an impressive list of additional features including improved Qt 4 support, new debugging abilities, more attractive default user interface layout, and improvements for C++, Ruby, and PHP support. The developers have put together a slideshow to showcase the new features.

Have you ever had your taskbar filled with 10 applications all doing something that involved waiting for a task to finish? Document Printing Progress, a K3b CD burning dialogue, Audio Encoding via KAudioCreator, File Transfers in Konqueror, Kopete, KTorrent, checking email in KMail... The new Jobs support in KDE 4 will unify the display of progress for these tasks, making it easy to see and manage what is happening on your system. Read on for details.

"Just because KDE has been designed to be portable across Linux, FreeBSD and other UNIX/X11 environments for an age now, doesn't mean we aren't up for the occasional challenge. With version 4, Trolltech released Qt for the Mac, Windows and now even embedded environments under the GPL. Since Qt is the base upon which KDE is developed, KDE is now free to offer native support for these platforms. Today I am focusing on the KDE/Mac developments for KDE 4."

"In this weeks' edition of the Road to KDE 4, we'll take a look at the up and coming KWord 2.0 as part of the KOffice project. KWord 1.6.1 is already a powerful KDE-integrated word processor, but with KDE 4 technologies, KWord 2.0 promises to be among the most powerful free word processors available. Read on for more details."

"Ever wonder what KDE 4.0 is going to look like when it is finally released some time this year ? As far as end users should be concerned, it is going to be much more beautiful, responsive and usable than KDE 3.5. Some of the features that it will have are as follows." Note: I thought the Kickoff menu was a SUSE thing, instead of being a KDE 4.0 thing?

"Since KDE 4 development is in full swing with plans for a KDE 4.0 release sometime later this year, I thought I'd put together a weekly piece entitled The Road to KDE 4. The idea is to have a short overview of one or two of the features that show progress in KDE 4. For my first issue, the goal is to show off some of the great SVG work that has taken place so far."

For those of you who have not followed the comment thread on the 'On Favouritism, Apologies, and Black Helicopters' story: I there promised to write an article about all the customisations I do on KDE to make it look and (more importantly) behave in my own preferred way; as a sort of Christmas present, so to speak (it is not like it is a fast news day today). Read on!