i'm nearly running around the house doing a little dance as the first tech preview for qt 4.2 is released!
recommended reading includes the qt 4.2 introductory information, which reveals we'll have lots of new qt functionality to consider in trysil next week, and lar's blog which notes a few other cool things like the ongoing optimizations and new CSS parser and support for CSS in QWidgets. there's even the dbus bindings, which we are already using in kde, in there! wow.
for me this marks a very important step, however, as it means both graphicsview and svg support is now publicly available to play with. these have been two blockers in plasma's path.
the other major blocker has been kde4 libs really not being in a state i feel comfortable writing new application code against. hopefully many, most or even all of that issue will resolve itself with the kde four core libs meeting in trysil next week.
speaking of which, i'd better start packing my bags as i have to be at the airport in around 7 hours.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
how open source saved a100,000 word manuscript
what you are about to read actually happened. only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. however, since there wasn't anyone who was innocent, no names have actually been changed.
i got a phone call from my friend stephen the other day. one of his roommates, a writer, had lost access to their manuscript. it had been saved on some floppy disks (yes, that's a silly thing to do, but she's a writer not a technician) in several files and now every time she tried to access it on her windows machine it just said that the floppy needed to be formatted. she had tried other computers and got the same message on all of them. apparently she was a little freaked out. steve asked if i might be able to help since "linux can do anything, right?" i said "no promises, but sure, send her over and we'll see what we can do."
she arrived at 09:30, flustered with floppies in hand. since my laptop doesn't have a floppy, i fired up the desktop machine that runs suse 10.1. she asked how long it would take and i told her i didn't know. best case scenario: the system would simply be able to access the floppy properly. less good scenario: we could do a direct disk copy via dd and do some manually poking about in the resulting blob of data to see if we could find her manuscript, or at least parts of it. she looked pensive.
i slotted the disk, opened up konqi and navigated to the floppy drive. there were all her files. i copied them to the hard disk and opened one of them up to see if they were intact. they were. she cheered and became chatty (apparently her happy state). she burbled about linux being cool and how her windows machines sucked and how cute my cats were and oh, was that a picture of my son?
the floppy disk did have actual problems: a few files wouldn't copy over. but they were just temporary files that word makes so no data was lost. apparently this corruption is what was keeping her microsoft windows machines from being able to read her microsoft word files. irony. thankfully we have linux. i don't think it was lost on her that if she'd had kde on linux, she'd have been able to do the same thing i did. point, click, voila.
our 5 minute recovery session complete, i zip'd them up via the right click menu, sent them to my laptop via fish:// (that impressed her =), and then emailed them to her gmail account. she left with a smile on her face (and an admonition not to use floppies for something so important) saying she was going to celebrate the afternoon with a little recreational drug use and some hard core manuscript editing. ah, those crazy writers.
i got a phone call from my friend stephen the other day. one of his roommates, a writer, had lost access to their manuscript. it had been saved on some floppy disks (yes, that's a silly thing to do, but she's a writer not a technician) in several files and now every time she tried to access it on her windows machine it just said that the floppy needed to be formatted. she had tried other computers and got the same message on all of them. apparently she was a little freaked out. steve asked if i might be able to help since "linux can do anything, right?" i said "no promises, but sure, send her over and we'll see what we can do."
she arrived at 09:30, flustered with floppies in hand. since my laptop doesn't have a floppy, i fired up the desktop machine that runs suse 10.1. she asked how long it would take and i told her i didn't know. best case scenario: the system would simply be able to access the floppy properly. less good scenario: we could do a direct disk copy via dd and do some manually poking about in the resulting blob of data to see if we could find her manuscript, or at least parts of it. she looked pensive.
i slotted the disk, opened up konqi and navigated to the floppy drive. there were all her files. i copied them to the hard disk and opened one of them up to see if they were intact. they were. she cheered and became chatty (apparently her happy state). she burbled about linux being cool and how her windows machines sucked and how cute my cats were and oh, was that a picture of my son?
the floppy disk did have actual problems: a few files wouldn't copy over. but they were just temporary files that word makes so no data was lost. apparently this corruption is what was keeping her microsoft windows machines from being able to read her microsoft word files. irony. thankfully we have linux. i don't think it was lost on her that if she'd had kde on linux, she'd have been able to do the same thing i did. point, click, voila.
our 5 minute recovery session complete, i zip'd them up via the right click menu, sent them to my laptop via fish:// (that impressed her =), and then emailed them to her gmail account. she left with a smile on her face (and an admonition not to use floppies for something so important) saying she was going to celebrate the afternoon with a little recreational drug use and some hard core manuscript editing. ah, those crazy writers.
Monday, June 26, 2006
tagging icons
chatting with ken-the-artist he noted how much work was left in oxygen. he described to me the challenge succinctly: there are over 1500 icons that ship with kde. a good icon takes time to make. multiply that time by 1500 and .. holy crap.
but this didn't mesh with my own experience in kde. i didn't get the impression of 1500 different actions, applications and mimetypes. certainly i could picture 1500 items in the ui, but are they all unique? hmmmmm...
so i wrote a quick script that scoured my hard disk for all the icons used in kde and the various kde applications out there that i have installed (a rather large number) and put them all in one place without overwriting icons with the same names. i then looked at them in konqueror and it quickly became obvious that we had a huge amount of duplication:
that last group is an interesting one: it's the result of application developers copying icons from other apps or even kdelibs itself and renaming them. why? various reasons: because the icon isn't in kdelibs, the icon is named after a different action, the application developer was using it as a placeholder until a "real" icon for their app was made (which often doesn't happen). the correct course of action is to either move the icon into kdelibs or not rename it if it is. in any case, with kde4 approaching we can consolidate a lot of this duplication. the homonyms are also cause for a huge amount of duplication.
so how to get a handle on it? i fired up digikam and started tagging. i did most of the tagging on slow evenings in paris and on the airplane flights.
doing this tagging is quite enlightening. over 70 tags so far (though more could be employed, and by the end of it likely will) and it requires at times a knowledge of the names used in the code for actions, usability principles and even a bit of icon art appreciation ... the results will get passed on to the artists who, i think, will be relieved to know that they have far, far fewer than 1500 icons to make.
as application developers, we should really try not to recreate this mess over the next 5 years as we did over the past 5 years.
but this didn't mesh with my own experience in kde. i didn't get the impression of 1500 different actions, applications and mimetypes. certainly i could picture 1500 items in the ui, but are they all unique? hmmmmm...
so i wrote a quick script that scoured my hard disk for all the icons used in kde and the various kde applications out there that i have installed (a rather large number) and put them all in one place without overwriting icons with the same names. i then looked at them in konqueror and it quickly became obvious that we had a huge amount of duplication:
- visual homonyms: icons that looked the same, even if they had different intended meanings (actions) behind them
- semantic homonyms: icons that have the same or similar meaning, even though they may look different
- plain old duplication
that last group is an interesting one: it's the result of application developers copying icons from other apps or even kdelibs itself and renaming them. why? various reasons: because the icon isn't in kdelibs, the icon is named after a different action, the application developer was using it as a placeholder until a "real" icon for their app was made (which often doesn't happen). the correct course of action is to either move the icon into kdelibs or not rename it if it is. in any case, with kde4 approaching we can consolidate a lot of this duplication. the homonyms are also cause for a huge amount of duplication.
so how to get a handle on it? i fired up digikam and started tagging. i did most of the tagging on slow evenings in paris and on the airplane flights.
doing this tagging is quite enlightening. over 70 tags so far (though more could be employed, and by the end of it likely will) and it requires at times a knowledge of the names used in the code for actions, usability principles and even a bit of icon art appreciation ... the results will get passed on to the artists who, i think, will be relieved to know that they have far, far fewer than 1500 icons to make.
as application developers, we should really try not to recreate this mess over the next 5 years as we did over the past 5 years.
become what you want to be
it's said that achieving one's goals is as simple as identifying them and then becoming them. sort of like stating the obvious, and when one is at the bottom of the hill looking up at those goals it can seem a bit glib. but it's true.
i've seen it happen many times in kde.
we wanted to emphasize usability and get those things sorted out. so we made up the usability project and hammered away at it for a year or two and eventually attracted real usability people who are now the engine behind this effort. but before we could attract these people we had to become a project with usability as a value.
we wanted to publicize kde's efforts better. so we worked on improving our public communications with better press releases, communications "strategies" (aka "let's talk about Y for a bit.." nothing sophisticated, really). and now we have several communications professionals circling the project and helping with these things.
we wanted to put more structure into the operational side of kde (primarily the e.V.). so we set out to do that and started drafting procedures and mechanisms and making things that ought to be more formal ... well ... formal. we did this always with an eye of not infringing upon the community culture of the technology project itself, of course. and i think we largely have succeeded there. and now we have people from the industry who have proven track records as relationship program creators/managers and entrepreneurs starting to help out.
each time it started with us trying to become what we wanted. despite not having the best people possible for it. but this attracted people of like mind who were the best people possible for it.
on a personal level, this process has resulted in me being obsoleted many times as better people come along. i'm still involved with usability, but i am certainly not the core of it. i'm still involved with press releases and what not, but i am certainly not the core of it. i'll likely still be involved with some of the formalization of process within kde, but i hope to not be the core of it (and it certainly looks like i won't). this is success.
what i really want to do is write code and innovate in technology. sometimes i find it's necessary to support that dream by doing something tangential but necessary. i watch others in the project do this as well. this is one of reason (though not the only) kde grows as it does: we have people aware of the system and not just their role in it; we have people committed to the system and not just their own part in it; we have people who put in efforts over the course of months and years to make these things happen.
in this way we avoid just always observing our own flaws and, from time to time, fixing them. viva la kde.
i've seen it happen many times in kde.
we wanted to emphasize usability and get those things sorted out. so we made up the usability project and hammered away at it for a year or two and eventually attracted real usability people who are now the engine behind this effort. but before we could attract these people we had to become a project with usability as a value.
we wanted to publicize kde's efforts better. so we worked on improving our public communications with better press releases, communications "strategies" (aka "let's talk about Y for a bit.." nothing sophisticated, really). and now we have several communications professionals circling the project and helping with these things.
we wanted to put more structure into the operational side of kde (primarily the e.V.). so we set out to do that and started drafting procedures and mechanisms and making things that ought to be more formal ... well ... formal. we did this always with an eye of not infringing upon the community culture of the technology project itself, of course. and i think we largely have succeeded there. and now we have people from the industry who have proven track records as relationship program creators/managers and entrepreneurs starting to help out.
each time it started with us trying to become what we wanted. despite not having the best people possible for it. but this attracted people of like mind who were the best people possible for it.
on a personal level, this process has resulted in me being obsoleted many times as better people come along. i'm still involved with usability, but i am certainly not the core of it. i'm still involved with press releases and what not, but i am certainly not the core of it. i'll likely still be involved with some of the formalization of process within kde, but i hope to not be the core of it (and it certainly looks like i won't). this is success.
what i really want to do is write code and innovate in technology. sometimes i find it's necessary to support that dream by doing something tangential but necessary. i watch others in the project do this as well. this is one of reason (though not the only) kde grows as it does: we have people aware of the system and not just their role in it; we have people committed to the system and not just their own part in it; we have people who put in efforts over the course of months and years to make these things happen.
in this way we avoid just always observing our own flaws and, from time to time, fixing them. viva la kde.
paris
i was in paris for the last week. i came back from it with more energy than i had when i arrived, which is usually the opposite effect these "one week and turn around again" trips have on me. i think in part it's because i allowed myself enough "me time", which is to say that when i didn't feel like being around people i simply stayed in my room and worked from there; when i didn't feel like blogging, i didn't. this led to me "missing" 2 mornings and not blogging at all. on the one hand i feel a bit bad about this, but on the other hand i'm glad that it didn't take 2-3 days to feel back on my feet again.
that said, paris was very useful when it came to kde and the ubuntu / canonical universe. jonathan riddel and the others involved are doing great work, and ken gets to continue on working on artwork there too. huzzah's all around.
i have a work-week at home and then i'm off again, this time for the kde four core hackathon. i think that'll be truly great. though i'll be watching my laptop twice as carefully when dfaure is around from now on so he doesn't give in to temptation and put "funny" messages on my log-in as he did in paris. ;)
that said, paris was very useful when it came to kde and the ubuntu / canonical universe. jonathan riddel and the others involved are doing great work, and ken gets to continue on working on artwork there too. huzzah's all around.
i have a work-week at home and then i'm off again, this time for the kde four core hackathon. i think that'll be truly great. though i'll be watching my laptop twice as carefully when dfaure is around from now on so he doesn't give in to temptation and put "funny" messages on my log-in as he did in paris. ;)
Saturday, June 17, 2006
it's a bird, it's a .. oh. it's just a plane
i'm off on another half-day plane ride, this time to get to the ubuntu conference. while i'm there my birthday and father's day will pass (on the same day no less) and i'll also be missing a 'father and son' sports day with peyton at his school (it was supposed to be last week but it got rained out and they rescheduled it for a week i'm not here). needless to say this makes me feel a little less than great. oh well. they are just dates, symbols, right? *sigh*
i also spent most of this week writing documents. huzzah. necessary work, but also a bit more like work than coding is.
i did make one nice discovery this week: the upper right corner of the trackpad on this laptop simulates a middle mouse button click while the bottom right corner is a right click. very cool. now i don't have to press both buttons together to get a middle mouse button click, just tap that corner.
as an aside: shame on japan, iceland, norway, the kitt's islanders and the other peoples who are trying right now to overturn the international ban on whaling. truly poor showing. i'll be in norway next month, and i plan on bringing some appropriate t-shirts.
i also spent most of this week writing documents. huzzah. necessary work, but also a bit more like work than coding is.
i did make one nice discovery this week: the upper right corner of the trackpad on this laptop simulates a middle mouse button click while the bottom right corner is a right click. very cool. now i don't have to press both buttons together to get a middle mouse button click, just tap that corner.
as an aside: shame on japan, iceland, norway, the kitt's islanders and the other peoples who are trying right now to overturn the international ban on whaling. truly poor showing. i'll be in norway next month, and i plan on bringing some appropriate t-shirts.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
kindergrad
it's that time of year. school ends, family members graduate ...
in the seigo family it starts early: shortness, academic achievement and women.
congrats peyton ... here's to many more years of scholastics that provide opportunities to grow, chances to hook up and inevitably fail to bend your mind to social norms.
in the seigo family it starts early: shortness, academic achievement and women.
congrats peyton ... here's to many more years of scholastics that provide opportunities to grow, chances to hook up and inevitably fail to bend your mind to social norms.
Monday, June 12, 2006
ramb.b.le
listening to amarok today and "i've been down hearted baby ..." floated past... ah, b.b. king. i love the blues as much for the musical moments as for the lyrical deliveries.
"i've been down hearted baby, ever since the day you left me..." that would be country music. *bleh*
"i've been down hearted baby, ever since the day we met..." (the actual b.b. lyric) now that ... that's the blues.
reminds me of what the emo fellow at a local falafel joint observed one day when t. asked him the difference between goth and emo: "goth is when you hate everyone else. emo is when you hate yourself." (no offense to the emo people who don't hate themselves out there. i assume you exist.)
i recently watched "the libertine" which was yet another amazing depp movie, though more so than usual. pain can be poetry when it doesn't flinch.
btw, if you haven't seen the red hat summit videos yet, it's worth the download and your time. both cory doctorow and eben moglen deliver truly thought provoking and inspiring bits on freedom. and nary a bit of red hat sales pitch in them. love 'em or not, red hat is a company that truly does grok the concepts of free software and what the role of a for-profit corporate entity can be within that.
"i've been down hearted baby, ever since the day you left me..." that would be country music. *bleh*
"i've been down hearted baby, ever since the day we met..." (the actual b.b. lyric) now that ... that's the blues.
reminds me of what the emo fellow at a local falafel joint observed one day when t. asked him the difference between goth and emo: "goth is when you hate everyone else. emo is when you hate yourself." (no offense to the emo people who don't hate themselves out there. i assume you exist.)
i recently watched "the libertine" which was yet another amazing depp movie, though more so than usual. pain can be poetry when it doesn't flinch.
btw, if you haven't seen the red hat summit videos yet, it's worth the download and your time. both cory doctorow and eben moglen deliver truly thought provoking and inspiring bits on freedom. and nary a bit of red hat sales pitch in them. love 'em or not, red hat is a company that truly does grok the concepts of free software and what the role of a for-profit corporate entity can be within that.
Friday, June 09, 2006
progressions
last night p. had his kindergarten graduation event (i'm not going to get all "overwrought parent" and call it a ceremony). they sang a few songs and got diploma scrolls. afterwards everyone had cake and visited. the school he has been attending isn't just a kindergarten, they also do preschool. so some kids have been there for a few years (p. had been there for 2) and it's hard for the teachers to see them leave as they go on to grade one.
a new cat joined the household this week as well, which p. has christened 'george'. he's a little black guy who was found fending for himself by an older woman. she is fighting a bad cancer, however, so had to give him up and that eventually led him to my place. so once again i have two cats. persia and george have gotten past the "who the hell are you and why are you in my house?" stage and are forming a good friendship.
after doing my first qtdbus coding this week, i have to say that the api is really quite nice. while the org.kde.appname and /module/something/more paths are a bit longish (a dbus thing), the actual qt code that one produces is quite succinct. more so than dcop was, even. huzzah. right now dbus causes some crashes in kde4 so it's not particularly usable at the moment, but that's being worked on so we can move on to the next set of breakages ;)
thiago and i are co-authoring a tutorial on using dbus in kde and qt apps that will be released next week. this will probably replace the current kde and dbus wiki page and be more thorough (and maybe even fun =).
i was also sent a nice url for a story about a new 12,000 seat kde deployment in germany. congrats to basysKom (which is eva's company) and to the regional tax office of lower saxony.
some interesting points to be gleaned: 300 desktops a day are being transitioned, so it doesn't seem that there's a big problem with deployment once it gets going; it was 2 years in the planning before deployment started; they were a solaris shop previously, so once again the unix-to-linux story repeats; kde's user and group policy framework (kiosk) was pretty key.
speaking of kiosk ... one of the kde4 TODOs is to rename that thing so it's more obvious what it does. kiosk is the results of years of effort to instrument both the kde libraries to provide an insane level of global and local control (from managing allowed url usage to automagic reflection of kiosk policies in application config dialogs, and a thousand other things in between) as well as individual applications to ensure things like "don't let people move this and that button on the panel, but let them customize the rest" are possible. it was a huge investment for the project, but it's something that nearly all kde deployments of any size end up using (and relying on) heavily. it deserves a better name. it will get one. boop boop be boop, boo!
a new cat joined the household this week as well, which p. has christened 'george'. he's a little black guy who was found fending for himself by an older woman. she is fighting a bad cancer, however, so had to give him up and that eventually led him to my place. so once again i have two cats. persia and george have gotten past the "who the hell are you and why are you in my house?" stage and are forming a good friendship.
after doing my first qtdbus coding this week, i have to say that the api is really quite nice. while the org.kde.appname and /module/something/more paths are a bit longish (a dbus thing), the actual qt code that one produces is quite succinct. more so than dcop was, even. huzzah. right now dbus causes some crashes in kde4 so it's not particularly usable at the moment, but that's being worked on so we can move on to the next set of breakages ;)
thiago and i are co-authoring a tutorial on using dbus in kde and qt apps that will be released next week. this will probably replace the current kde and dbus wiki page and be more thorough (and maybe even fun =).
i was also sent a nice url for a story about a new 12,000 seat kde deployment in germany. congrats to basysKom (which is eva's company) and to the regional tax office of lower saxony.
some interesting points to be gleaned: 300 desktops a day are being transitioned, so it doesn't seem that there's a big problem with deployment once it gets going; it was 2 years in the planning before deployment started; they were a solaris shop previously, so once again the unix-to-linux story repeats; kde's user and group policy framework (kiosk) was pretty key.
speaking of kiosk ... one of the kde4 TODOs is to rename that thing so it's more obvious what it does. kiosk is the results of years of effort to instrument both the kde libraries to provide an insane level of global and local control (from managing allowed url usage to automagic reflection of kiosk policies in application config dialogs, and a thousand other things in between) as well as individual applications to ensure things like "don't let people move this and that button on the panel, but let them customize the rest" are possible. it was a huge investment for the project, but it's something that nearly all kde deployments of any size end up using (and relying on) heavily. it deserves a better name. it will get one. boop boop be boop, boo!
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
kolabadmin (qt4 app)
the kolab groupware server continues to grow both in deployment numbers as well as in capabilities. recent releases have added multi-domain support and replication for instance. it also works rather well with kontact and other groupware clients.
to date, management was done via a web interface. this was an improvement for many over the command line but it can still be funky trying to manage a kolab installation with 1000s of users via a web interface. it's not as fast is it could be and adding people (or removing them) from distribution lists isn't much fun.
enter Tobias Koenig, a name familiar to anyone who's been around kde for a while, and his new baby kolabadmin. kolabadmin is a native graphical application manage your kolab servers. it is a qt4 app released under the GPL, so it runs on your platform of choice and is open source.
once logged in you get a pretty window showing your options:
which gives you access to things like the distribution list manager:
in any listing dialog, one can apply a filter to the list (perfect when you have have more than a few dozen entries, which is typical of a production email environment) and when modifying things like distribution lists you can filter then select all the people you want. it's fast and convenient, though the web based admin makes a great fallback for those times you aren't in front of your own computer.
so how do you get kolabadmin? it's currently available via svn at svn://wgess16.dyndns.org/kolabadmin/trunk. after an svn co, simply do a qmake && make. a few minutes later you have a high powered admin tool.
this really raises the expectation bar for open source groupware servers. and for that, i owe you a beer Tobias =)
to date, management was done via a web interface. this was an improvement for many over the command line but it can still be funky trying to manage a kolab installation with 1000s of users via a web interface. it's not as fast is it could be and adding people (or removing them) from distribution lists isn't much fun.
enter Tobias Koenig, a name familiar to anyone who's been around kde for a while, and his new baby kolabadmin. kolabadmin is a native graphical application manage your kolab servers. it is a qt4 app released under the GPL, so it runs on your platform of choice and is open source.
once logged in you get a pretty window showing your options:
which gives you access to things like the distribution list manager:
in any listing dialog, one can apply a filter to the list (perfect when you have have more than a few dozen entries, which is typical of a production email environment) and when modifying things like distribution lists you can filter then select all the people you want. it's fast and convenient, though the web based admin makes a great fallback for those times you aren't in front of your own computer.
so how do you get kolabadmin? it's currently available via svn at svn://wgess16.dyndns.org/kolabadmin/trunk. after an svn co, simply do a qmake && make. a few minutes later you have a high powered admin tool.
this really raises the expectation bar for open source groupware servers. and for that, i owe you a beer Tobias =)
speed of sound
what's happening in the world of kde4? well, in the last fortnight or so:
oxygen icons started making their way into svn; kde4 made the switch to dbus after thiago and others worked on it tirelessly for some time now; kdialogbase and kjanuswidget (which most people know from kde application configuration dialogs) is updated after it's 7 year reign with the less mysteriously named kpageddialog which sports both a simple interface like what we had (but with a far clearer API) and a model/view driven option; bits of kservice were moved into kdecore so we can plugin enable things like kconfig and kspell2 (ktrader was also broken into pieces and now we have API-improved traders for services and mimetypes; is also leading up to dfaure implementing the xdg mimetype spec as see on fd.o); applnk/ is on its way out with only the screensavers left to leave (working on it).
akonadi also entered svn, though that may have been more than 2 weeks ago now?
and this isn't even touching on the "usual" progress made elsewhere in the codebase. even old standby apps like ksysguard are getting love and attention, while newer apps like okular (was kpdf) continue to move forward and koffice2 devel progresses nicely.
i've also heard rumours of a possible kde4 scripting (aka "application automation") meeting (ala k3m) being arranged... sweet.
so the pace is quickening. still, there is a lot yet to do. sometimes when faced with such a mountain it's easy to not notice the progress that is being made, even if it is coming along nicely =)
oxygen icons started making their way into svn; kde4 made the switch to dbus after thiago and others worked on it tirelessly for some time now; kdialogbase and kjanuswidget (which most people know from kde application configuration dialogs) is updated after it's 7 year reign with the less mysteriously named kpageddialog which sports both a simple interface like what we had (but with a far clearer API) and a model/view driven option; bits of kservice were moved into kdecore so we can plugin enable things like kconfig and kspell2 (ktrader was also broken into pieces and now we have API-improved traders for services and mimetypes; is also leading up to dfaure implementing the xdg mimetype spec as see on fd.o); applnk/ is on its way out with only the screensavers left to leave (working on it).
akonadi also entered svn, though that may have been more than 2 weeks ago now?
and this isn't even touching on the "usual" progress made elsewhere in the codebase. even old standby apps like ksysguard are getting love and attention, while newer apps like okular (was kpdf) continue to move forward and koffice2 devel progresses nicely.
i've also heard rumours of a possible kde4 scripting (aka "application automation") meeting (ala k3m) being arranged... sweet.
so the pace is quickening. still, there is a lot yet to do. sometimes when faced with such a mountain it's easy to not notice the progress that is being made, even if it is coming along nicely =)
Saturday, June 03, 2006
tired in las vegas
i'm currently sitting on the floor in the las vegas international airport (the only power outlet i could find is nowhere near chairs and there are no chairs that i can move). my flight back home is delayed by an hour and half (so far). due to weather conditions in various places in north america, flight schedules have been totally messed up all day.
at least they have free wifi in the airport here =) i have checked my email, said 'hi' to some people on irc and figure i may as well blog quickly though it may be somewhat rambly and incoherent due to my state of tiredness.
last night j5 took me on the green line of boston's subway down to government square (or something like that) where dashboard confessional was playing a free show. it rained, which fit the emo music quite well. after getting pretty soaked in the warm drizzle we wandered a couple blocks to this tiny little irish pub. and i mean tiny. the 15 or so people in it made it feel jam packed. there was a sign behind the bar that said the capacity was 8000 persons. ha. ha.
apparently the very old bar (it has the most wonderfully worn burlwood bar) is being torn down to make way for posh condos. i find the trend of destroying our recent history in north america to be very disconcerting. we have lost touch with what things have value and which don't.
anyways, i started chatting with the 23 year old woman next to me at the bar who works for a property management company and who is going back to ireland, possibly to live. i discreetly exited the conversation and went to the jukebox to chat up random locals to give j5 a window of opportunity with our new friend. didn't quite work out but it was worth a try and i think they had a really good visit. who knows, maybe they'll meet up on some quiet boston afternoon and the saga will continue ....
once i got back to the hotel maddog invited me to join him and another usenix board member for some drinks and we talked about the community around linux and the "passing of the torch" from the traditional unix world to the new free and open source community. so i didn't get to sleep until quite late. and then i was up at 07:00 so i could shower, pack and make it to breakfast with ian murdock, j5 and maddog.
then we went to the 2nd day of the lsb event which was essentially a further and more free-form set of discussions expanding on the first day's topics. there was talk about working on making c++ abi compat a reality, the very cool conformance testing that linuxtesting.org is doing, providing a standard mechanism for software installation (think "install shield" that works, at least nominally, with your package database) and more ... i'll write up a proper summary when i'm not drop dead tired, but for now if you're interested you can get a decent overview here including several of the presentation slides.
a voice just announced that my flight is 15 more minutes late now. and a couple minutes ago when they were putting the "yeah, he's got his passport and it matches his ticket" stamp on my boarding pass they thought that i wasn't on the flight (computer glitch apparently). flying sucks.
at least they have free wifi in the airport here =) i have checked my email, said 'hi' to some people on irc and figure i may as well blog quickly though it may be somewhat rambly and incoherent due to my state of tiredness.
last night j5 took me on the green line of boston's subway down to government square (or something like that) where dashboard confessional was playing a free show. it rained, which fit the emo music quite well. after getting pretty soaked in the warm drizzle we wandered a couple blocks to this tiny little irish pub. and i mean tiny. the 15 or so people in it made it feel jam packed. there was a sign behind the bar that said the capacity was 8000 persons. ha. ha.
apparently the very old bar (it has the most wonderfully worn burlwood bar) is being torn down to make way for posh condos. i find the trend of destroying our recent history in north america to be very disconcerting. we have lost touch with what things have value and which don't.
anyways, i started chatting with the 23 year old woman next to me at the bar who works for a property management company and who is going back to ireland, possibly to live. i discreetly exited the conversation and went to the jukebox to chat up random locals to give j5 a window of opportunity with our new friend. didn't quite work out but it was worth a try and i think they had a really good visit. who knows, maybe they'll meet up on some quiet boston afternoon and the saga will continue ....
once i got back to the hotel maddog invited me to join him and another usenix board member for some drinks and we talked about the community around linux and the "passing of the torch" from the traditional unix world to the new free and open source community. so i didn't get to sleep until quite late. and then i was up at 07:00 so i could shower, pack and make it to breakfast with ian murdock, j5 and maddog.
then we went to the 2nd day of the lsb event which was essentially a further and more free-form set of discussions expanding on the first day's topics. there was talk about working on making c++ abi compat a reality, the very cool conformance testing that linuxtesting.org is doing, providing a standard mechanism for software installation (think "install shield" that works, at least nominally, with your package database) and more ... i'll write up a proper summary when i'm not drop dead tired, but for now if you're interested you can get a decent overview here including several of the presentation slides.
a voice just announced that my flight is 15 more minutes late now. and a couple minutes ago when they were putting the "yeah, he's got his passport and it matches his ticket" stamp on my boarding pass they thought that i wasn't on the flight (computer glitch apparently). flying sucks.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
boston lsb day 1
boy am i mentally tired.
i only got 3 hours of sleep last night due to not getting in until after midnight, not being able to get to sleep immediately and then having to get up at 07:00. meh.
there were nearly 25 people in the lsb meeting today from a good range of linux-facing open source interests ranging from the linux distros (red hat, novell, mandriva, debian) to desktops (kde, gnome) to accessibility to ISVs to printing (openprinting.org) and multimedia (mas, helix) developers to free standards group members to IHVs (intel, ibm) to open source luminaries (john hall). we covered a fearsome number of items today, the intent of which was to get the issues facing the desktop that impact the lsb (and vice versa) out on the table.
ensuring all the relevant kde perspectives were represented and keeping up with the deluge of information the others presented has left my brain howling "enough!" or, in the words of monty python, "my brain's full". otherwise, so far so good =)
tomorrow is the more open "problem solving" session. i'll be writing up a full summary of the event and posting for all the kde people to read over the weekend. some highlights include dbus being recognized as important, the portland project looming large on many fronts (including having the xdg-utils put on the table for LSB adoption), how phonon is becoming a role model in many people's mind for multimedia approaches (it was mentioned several times) and the hightened awareness of Qt/KDE's adoption of technology and the role we are playing in the ecosystem.
as we wrap up i look forward only to the evening, however. tonight i'm probably going to hit a free concert happening outdoors down the street with john "j5" palmieri of dbus fame until the usenix people are done dinner at which point we're meeting up for refreshments.
and then it's sleep, sleep, sleep .. yeah ... sleeeeeeep.
today also gave me a chance to rebuild my kde4 checkout and toy with a few things. along the way i loaded a few pictures in tabs in konqi that were slight variations on each other. i figured that by switching tabs in sequence i could achieve a "poor man's" animation. enter dcop.
j5 thought it was cute and i got a few moments of entertainment out of it.
i only got 3 hours of sleep last night due to not getting in until after midnight, not being able to get to sleep immediately and then having to get up at 07:00. meh.
there were nearly 25 people in the lsb meeting today from a good range of linux-facing open source interests ranging from the linux distros (red hat, novell, mandriva, debian) to desktops (kde, gnome) to accessibility to ISVs to printing (openprinting.org) and multimedia (mas, helix) developers to free standards group members to IHVs (intel, ibm) to open source luminaries (john hall). we covered a fearsome number of items today, the intent of which was to get the issues facing the desktop that impact the lsb (and vice versa) out on the table.
ensuring all the relevant kde perspectives were represented and keeping up with the deluge of information the others presented has left my brain howling "enough!" or, in the words of monty python, "my brain's full". otherwise, so far so good =)
tomorrow is the more open "problem solving" session. i'll be writing up a full summary of the event and posting for all the kde people to read over the weekend. some highlights include dbus being recognized as important, the portland project looming large on many fronts (including having the xdg-utils put on the table for LSB adoption), how phonon is becoming a role model in many people's mind for multimedia approaches (it was mentioned several times) and the hightened awareness of Qt/KDE's adoption of technology and the role we are playing in the ecosystem.
as we wrap up i look forward only to the evening, however. tonight i'm probably going to hit a free concert happening outdoors down the street with john "j5" palmieri of dbus fame until the usenix people are done dinner at which point we're meeting up for refreshments.
and then it's sleep, sleep, sleep .. yeah ... sleeeeeeep.
today also gave me a chance to rebuild my kde4 checkout and toy with a few things. along the way i loaded a few pictures in tabs in konqi that were slight variations on each other. i figured that by switching tabs in sequence i could achieve a "poor man's" animation. enter dcop.
i=1; n=1; while true; do dcop `dcop konqueror-12389 konqueror-mainwindow#1 action activate_tab_0$n` activate; let n=$n+$i; if [ $n -ne 2 ]; then let i=$i*-1; fi; sleep 0.2; done
j5 thought it was cute and i got a few moments of entertainment out of it.
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