Java for KDE. The big news this week is from Richard Moore. He has checked in some impressive work into the KDE CVS under the kdejava module. Included are the KDE Java Applet Server (KJAS) and QtAWT.

"KJAS consists of a pure java server which provides a framework for running applets, and a small C++ library containing a KDE widget that displays applets (and a few goodies). The KJAS server can be used independently of the C++ library (for example it would be possible to use the server to add Java applet support to perl/Tk or a shell script)."

QtAWT is a port of the Java AWT to the Qt toolkit, which basically means that Qt can be used instead of the native AWT implementation (generally Motif under Linux). The port uses JNI and should in theory work under any JVM.

Both of these efforts are works in progress and currently of alpha quality. If you are interested in Java for KDE and would like to help, contact Rich.

KDE 1.1.2 status. The latest release schedule from Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel is available. It is estimated that 4 extra weeks will be needed to complete the high-colour icons and themes. A developer is also needed to implement a save option in the theme manager. Please contact Matthias if you can help.

The Artist, Torsten Rahn, put together some more eye candy (inferior JPEG available) showing off the new high-colour icons that will be featured in the upcoming release. Torsten also revealed that none of the included themes will imitate existing GUIs such as that of the Mac due to copyright reasons (A pity, IMHO, since the Mac theme is very nice. It has, alas, also been purged from kde.themes.org.) On the subject, KDE's trash icon may have to be renamed due to the fact that Apple holds a trademark for the word 'Trash'.

Meanwhile, people are encouraged to test the latest stuff.

KDE Quickies. Peter Putzer announced version 1.0.0pre1 of KSysV, a graphical editor for SysV-style init. In the eye candy department, Daniel M. Duley made available a new screenshot showing off some of his recent work on themes and styles for KDE 2.0.

Boris Povazay posted an update on the KDE Standard Website Project. It was also revealed that Leon Widdershoven is working on a wizard, KreateProjectHomepage, to complement the project. On the subject of websites, there have been lengthy discussions and proposals on improving the KOffice website; hopefully there will be some public results soon.

Nicholas Wells revealed that he is writing a new KDE book for Macmillan publishing in the US. He needs someone to write the development section for a tidy fee, contact him here. Finally, FREENIX has sent out a call for papers, consider submitting a KDE paper! The deadline is November 29, 1999.

An archive for these reports is available.

ODBC in KDE. The big announcement this week was from Lars Doelle concerning the ongoing integration of ODBC support into KDE. In particular, iODBC, unixODBC (announcement clarifications from Nick Gorham) , and libodbc++ are now part of kdesupport. Since iODBC and unixODBC provide the same functionality, one of these may have to be dropped prior to the release of KDE 2.0.

Short term goals for ODBC in KDE include configuration tools, a database browser/editor/query tool and possibly database support in KOffice. Long term goals include integration between the ODBC API and the world of distributed objects.

Peter Harvey has already added graphical configuration support for unixODBC, including a couple of generic driver config libs, to the KDE Control Center.

developer.kde.org. Richard Moore has checked in a new version of developer.kde.org. Now that the developer site is in CVS, it is hoped that more people will get involved and help maintain and improve the site. I'm pleased to announce that the KDE Development News reports will soon be hosted at this new site.

On a related note, Martin Konold announced that the infrastructure for devel-home.kde.org is finally in place. To recap, devel-home.kde.org provides free webhosting for KDE projects that need it, minus all the annoying advertising.

KDE Standard Website? Boris Povazay is interested in maintaining a well-designed website template for KDE hackers who are webdesign-impaired (or don't care enough). He's wondering whether there are any developers out there interested in using such a thing. See the example site.

Krumple. Yannai A. Gonczarowski announced version 0.1 of the KDE Installation SyStem Installer Generator. Krumple automatically generates a self-installing multi-platform executable package complete with GUI from the gzipped tar of the source package. It currently uses the KISS package format across all systems but frontends for RPM/DEB/PKG/etc that emulate KISS syntax may be added.

Empath. Rik Hemsley has been hard at work as usual. His pet project is currently Empath, described by a fan as a great, if not better, Outlook clone (screenshot). In particular, Rik announced that he has finished documenting libempath, a general mail kernel. Libempath is basically a backend that handles all mail transactions, allowing one to implement an arbitrary frontend/UI. Rik also announced that he has been working on a generic addressbook format.

Featured Application: KPriMa. Did you know that there was a KDE GUI to the PS utilities? A utility that helps you manage printing queues, change paper size and even save the rain forest by printing several pages on one sheet? It's called KPriMa and is currently at version 0.1.

KDE Quickies. Jo Dillon (of Harmony fame) has written a KControl applet that allows the user to set the mouse cursor for the root window. Torben Weis announced that KOM/OpenParts/KOffice development has switched to MiniSTL in order to save memory and decrease compilation time.

Want to help KDE? Matthias Elter has updated the jobs page.

An archive for these KDE development reports is available.

"I have just checked in the first version of my KDE/Java work. There is a preliminary (though working) version of my KJavaAppletWidget, and also my work on porting the AWT to Qt. Please feel free to help!

Only suitable for programmers right now, don't expect perfection yet."

Heading for KDE 1.1.2 release (Week 9)

          1. Start of release		     Week 1
          2. Application Freeze       	          4
     ==>  3. Translations                         6+x
          4. Source release                       8+x
          5. Final release                        9+x
     

TODO: Finish the icons and themes

Please consider the KDE_1_1_BRANCH to be frozen!

This means that changes to the code are only allowed if

• they fix critical bugs
• they have been approved by at least two developers

Exceptions from this rule are only translations, documentations and additions by the artists team.

TODO: Test the KDE_1_1_BRANCH

Now that the code is frozen, please check it out and test it on as many machines and OSes as possible to ensure everything is working.

Coolo made tarballs of the current KDE_1_1_BRANCH availabe via ftp.kde.org, so everybody is encouraged to get the stuff and give it a try.

You can get the tarballs at:

ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/CVS/snapshots/1.1.2pre

TODO: Update the translations

If there are any translations that still have to be completed, this is the right time to do so.

CRITICAL:

Output of the team currently know as the "Artist Team"

Current state:

• 90-95% of the 48x48pixel-hicolor-icons are done.
• 15% of the 32x32pixel-hicolor-icons are done (These take *much* less time than the large icons)
• 20 % of the themes are done.

• kdegraphics
• korganizer

As we also want to provide an optional set of 40-color-icons we are still searching for well-experienced artists who would like to help us by converting some of the hicolor icons down to 40 colors (Note: Converting does *not* mean that you should dither them down. -- We would ask you to repaint the icons that were redesigned using the kde-40-color palette .)

NON-ARTISTS will follow the release plan as closely as possible nevertheless. As the icons will not need code changes, we can add them after all translations are done etc. So please proceed as planned.

NOTE: this report is prepared weekly by the Release Master Matthias Hölzer-Klüpfel.

ODBC as an integral part of KDE enables the development of Linux and UNIX based GUI applications that are also database independent.

ODBC (Open database Connectivity) is popular data access interface under Windows that enables the development of database independent applications, components, and abstraction layers.

The ODBC data access interface is implemented by ODBC Drivers, the components responsible for backend database connectivity. These are available from a variety of database vendors and third party data access middleware vendors.

These libraries to be integrated are:

• iodbc - an ODBC driver manager by Ke Jin, now maintained by Patrick van Kleef of OpenLink Software.
• unixODBC - an ODBC driver manager by Peter Harvey, rewritten and now maintained by Nick Gorham of Easysoft.
• libodbc++ - a C++ library implementation of the Java Database Connectivity API (JDBC) by Manush Dodunekov.

All of these components are Open Source and LGPL based.

Lars Doelle, for the KDE Team.

KDE is compared with industry standards in great detail and its virtues are nicely praised. Even though for the experienced KDE developer or user the article doesn't uncover earth-shattering news, the author does an excellent job of underlining the special features, the common sense design decisions and the overall benefits of using KDE.

Thanks to Navindra Umanee for sharing with us this entertaining week-end lecture.

While the KOffice document format is generally stored as plain text in human-readable XML, documents are often accompanied by embedded binaries such as images or sound files. Torben Weis has tackled the problem by implementing tar read/write capabilities for KOffice with gzip compression support soon to follow. Hence KOffice documents may soon be stored as tgz-style files containing the XML document and any accompanying files or binaries.

The KOffice site is currently very much out of date and does not reflect the relentless progress of the KOffice project; if anyone would like to take the initiative to help maintain this site, please get in touch with Reginald Stadlbauer and Martin Konold.

Christian Esken has shed some light on the multimedia situation. As it turns out, there are currently 4 or more independent efforts to implement multimedia systems in KDE. This includes Christian's own kaudioserver, Stefan Westerfeld's aRts and Martin Vogt's kmpg. Unfortunately, while these efforts have similar goals, they are mutually incompatible and it will be necessary to agree on a common system soon. (ref: Last week's proposal from Stefan.)

Pietro Iglio wrote in with some proposed improvements for KPanel. In particular, he intends to make matters more transparent to the user by eliminating the concept of separate global and personal menus, and allowing full user customization while still enabling priviledged users to globally publish menu items. See the discussion for all the details.

KDOC. Sirtaj Singh Kang gave us the skinny on the history of KDOC as well as an update on the new and planned features of KDOC 2. It is hoped that KDE developers will stick to kdoc for class/API documentation and will help extend and improve KDOC when their needs are not met.

KDE Quickies. Mirko Sucker announced the addition of 2 new classes, DialogBase and KAboutDialog, to kdelibs. Daniel M. Duley has added diagonal gradient support to KPixmap (screenshot). Amir Michail announced the availability of improved KDE/Qt reuse patterns. Espen Sand announced version 0.8.1 of khexedit (RPM available thanks to Troy Engel).

Finally, if you're a KDE developer and you're interested in writing a book on KDE programming, you might want to get in touch with Miller-Freeman.

An archive for these KDE devel bits is available.

Excellent job, Navin. We're grateful.

Roberto Alsina uncovered this little gem on comp.os.qnx: Jean-Claude MICHOT calls for beta testers interested in KDE on QnXFree86. QnXFree86 is an X server for the real-time UNIX-like operating system QnX.

Matthias Ettrich found this report about the recently happened Europe-Japan Conference on Linux and Free Software (link in German only). KDE developer David Fauré was given a warm reception at that conference among Japanese developers. You can visit here the presentation David gave. The KDE team are eagerly looking forward for help of the developers interested in the Unicode support that KDE-2.0/Qt-2.0 will provide. David, our congratulations and warmest thanks.

NOTE: Thanks to Waldo Bastian and John Corey for helping to get right the usage of English on this item :-)

KDE multi-head support? Cristian Tibirna has initiated discussions on multi-head development issues in KDE. The XFree86 folks have apparently already demonstrated KDE running on Xinerama (multiple screens acting as one) where one can transparently drag a window from monitor to monitor or display an application across screens. Cristian is working on making KDE work nicely per X11 screen; the situation is more analogous to virtual desktops except that actual physical screens are involved.

KDE 2.0 Screensavers. Martin Jones has announced a new screensaver engine. The design is now very similar to jwz's xscreensaver and in fact should support all xscreensaver hacks. Martin also explained how configuration dialogs will be supported.

KDE hacker Mosfet, occasionally known as Daniel M. Duley, gave us an update on widget themes for KDE. He also made available a snapshot of his latest desktop but notes that he will get the KDE artists in on the act in due time. Mosfet has recently accepted a new job (good luck!) and so has less time for KDE hacking; he is looking for a KDE hacker willing to take over the KDE/ImageMagick project.

GOFAI-WMT. Lotzi Boloni revealed that he is working on a new organizational application, a visually browsable conceptual graph. The reaction was quite enthusiastic; Sirtaj Singh Kang chimed in with some of his ideas on the subject. Lotzi subsequently uploaded his code. Incidentally, GOFAI-WMT stands for "Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence - With a Modern Twist".

KMonop. Rob Kaper is in need of assistance with the KMonop project, a server/client implementation of the Monopoly board game. In particular, help is needed with the client portion. Interested parties should contact the KMonop team.

KDE Quickies. Moritz Moeller-Herrmann pointed out that Kmail won the GUI email client shoot-out feature by 32BitsOnline. Congratulations to all Kmail hackers and other parties involved. David Sweet released an update of the KDE Developer's mini-HOWTO. Herwin Jan Steehouwer posted an update on the status of KXicq.

Stefan Westerfeld offered his thoughts on multimedia in KDE 2.0 but appears to be unaware of other KDE multimedia efforts currently progressing. He has also spoken with Elliot Lee in an attempt at coordinate matters with the GNOME folks.

Chris Schlaeger is looking for beta testers for the SuSE Distribution. The aim is to minimize problems with the KDE packages in the next stable release. Interested parties should mail cs@kde.org.

Errata. Last week, I unintentionally short-changed the usefulness of the network-connection manager. The manager will also provide an easy way for applications to obtain a connection to the internet as well as be notified when the line goes up or down. It is similar to diald but with the intent of being portable and with several other features. For all the details, please read the list articles and Bjoern Kahl's web page.

An archive for these KDE devel bits is available.

Kalle will give both a programming tutorial and a talk. You can look up the schedule here for conferences and here for tutorials.

• Learn KDE in 24 Hours written by Nicholas Wells, "A step by step guide to using and developing KDE applications on Linux/UNIX system.". KDE-1.1 binaries come with the book on the accompanying CD-ROM. Published by SAMS.
• Practical KDE by Denis Powell, "Practical KDE suits your needs if you need to learn how to run KDE on your Linux system efficiently, effectively, and with an understandable guide that you can refer to over and over.". Published by Que.

Thanks you, Daniel, for the notice.

For a large list of other books having KDE as topic, look at the books page.

The event will take place on July 16-17, 1999 at the House of World Cultures in Berlin. KDE will be represented by Kalle Dalheimer.

More details and info on the program and the speakers can be found at the web page linked above.

The conclusion Mark draws is that KMail KDE's own mail client wins the contest thanks to its nice configurability, completeness and functionality.

Main authors of KMail are Stefan Taferner and Markus Wuebben. A lot of maintainance work has been done by Sven Radej and Don Sanders. Many others provided bug reports, fixes, featurefull patches. Our congrats to all of them.

Mark Bashaw also points out a few weak spots in KMail, but those who frequent the kde mailing lists know well that these issues are already addressed: IMAP support, folder trees, better addressbook support.

Once again, congrats to the KMail team.

In case you haven't caught the news, I've joined forces with Ivan E. Moore II of the KDE/Debian packaging project to form the new KDE Linux Packaging Project (http://kde.tdyc.com). Ivan is still getting all the web items in place, but I think the ftp archives are ready to be used.

All packages previously at my ISP account have been transferred to:

ftp://kde.tdyc.com/pub/kde/redhat

UPDATE: Troy lets us know that info on all Red Hat and Debian packages he and Ivan Moore are building is readily available at kde.tdyc.com.

KDE authors, feel free to contact me if you'd like a package built and I'll do my best...

All packages are built with a basic set of guidelines where possible:

• default prefix is /opt/kde, but is relocateable
• .src.rpm is rebuildable by non-root, and respects $KDEDIR
• file inclusion lists are dynamically driven to facilitate new version releases
• no beta KDE-base code is used, only released stuffs (currently KDE 1.1.1, Qt 1.44)
• rebuilt .src.rpm packages clean up after themselves completely

  KDE/Redhat packagers, if you'd like to help just send an email - we aim to make the site a one-stop-shopping place for all your pre-packaged program needs. All I personally ask is that you try to use the same generic guidelines as above when making your packages...

  thanks!

  ---

  Thanks, Troy.

KDE Audio Server. Christian Esken has checked in some major changes to the KDE audio server. In addition to supporting direct output to a sound device, the audio server now supports the Enlightened Sound Daemon (used by Enlightenment, GNOME and various other apps) and/or writing directly to a file. The audio server also now works flawlessly with 8 bit samples and does almost as well with 16 bit samples.

Other KDE 2.0 updates. Mario Weilguni is back with an update on animated menus for KDE. There are currently 8 funky effects implemented, including the popular "no effects" option. Daniel M. Duley is adding GTK+ pixmap theme compatibility to the current theme support in KDE 2.0. Please contact him if you have any pointers to a reference for the GTK+ pixmap theme config format.

KDE Linux Packaging Project. The tireless Ivan E. Moore II has made KOffice debian potato packages available. Be warned that KOffice is not yet of release quality and may have certain features disabled due to the fact that it is now based on the ever-changing (and improving) KDE 2.0 codebase. Ivan also gave us this update on the status of the KDE Linux Packaging Project where he hints of a possible future arrangement with the Linux Mandrake folks. Troy Engel posted this update concerning Red Hat packages.

More KDE Quickies. Martin Jones was quick to respond to a security flaw that was discovered in klock; the latest patch is available here. David Sweet announced a new plotting widget for KDE. Amir Michail has identified typical reuse patterns of the Qt/KDE libraries in the hope that it will be useful to KDE developers.

Troll Tech has released Qt 2.0. Johannes Sixt announced version 0.3.1 of KDbg. Daniel Naber announced version 0.1.2 of kwordnet. As expected, KDE 1.1.2 is now in code freeze.

Martin Konold gave us this report (with this clarification from Matthias Ettrich) on LinuxTag 99; apparently KDE had a rather prominent time at the show. David Faure made his slides for a talk he gave in Japan available. Finally, here's an amusing thread on terminology used in KDE.

Errata. Last week, I incorrectly interpreted one of Stephan Kulow's articles. The article clearly explains certain significant changes in KConfig and has nothing to do with the issue of customizing system kdelnk files as a user. Stephan assures me that the next release of kmenuedit and kpanel will deal with the latter unrelated issue more transparently.

An archive for these KDE devel bits is available.

Thank you for this excellent report, Navin.

Status:

     1. Start of release		Week 1
     2. Application Freeze       	     4	            
==>
     3. Translations                         6
     4. Source release                       8
     5. Final release                        9



DONE: FREEZE THE KDE_1_1_BRANCH

Please consider the libraries in the KDE_1_1_BRANCH to be
frozen! The KDE core applications are also frozen.

This means that changes to the code are only allowed if

- they fix critical bugs
- they have been approved by at least two developers

Changes that do not match these criteria will be reverted.

Exceptions from this rule are only translations,
documentations and additions by the artists team.


TODO: Test the KDE_1_1_BRANCH

Now that the code is frozen, please check it out and test it
on as many machines and OSes as possible to ensure everything
is working.

CRITICAL:

Output of the team currently know as the "Artist Team"

I talked to Thorsten Rahn about the timeframe for the hicolor
icons. His estimation is that they will not be finished in our
scheduled timeframe. As he is reluctant to release an
incomplete set of icons, we decided to release 1.1.2 when the
icons are ready.

FOR NON-ARTISTS: We will follow the release plan as closely as
possible nevertheless. As the icons will not need code
changes, we can add them after all translations are done etc.
So please proceed as planned. Starting next week, the
translations should be brought uptodate, if this is necessary.

Bye,
Matthias.

NOTE: Thanks to Roberto Alsina for letting us know about the press release