05 Mar 2015 1:04pm GMT

(by jmf)

The new monthly drawing challenge on the Krita forums now really boots up! The first run in February was mainly a test run. After that a lot of people said they were interested, so I decided to keep going.

Last month's winner: "Stranger" by tharindad.

The idea came when I was browsing the Krita forums in search of a drawing challenge and the only thing that came up was on Facebook. Not everybody has or wants Facebook, so we'll have this challenge on the forum.

It's not about competiton! It's mostly a way to get rid of the "blank canvas syndrome", to try something new and get new inspiration. If you want to draw but aren't inspired, or want to step out of your comfort zone, this is for you!

This month's topic is "Unusual Dinner".

To enter, post your picture on this thread, The deadline is March 24, 2015. The winner is decided by vote on the forums and gets the privilege to choose next month's topic.

04 Mar 2015 1:38pm GMT

I'm almost back from the C++ Russia conference held in Moscow these past few days. Heading home later today.

I must say that Sergey created a really nice conference, with a carefully tailored set of talks mostly focussed on parallelism and concurrency.

The conference was opened by Sean Parent, with a keynote somewhere along the lines of "don't use raw threads" (after his previous hits like "don't use raw for-loops"). It had everything, great examples from the his projects at Adobe, a few bigger chunks of code, and even abstract scientific parts related to flows in graph theory.

And that was just the beginning.

It was followed by Zoltan Porkolab's talk on debugging and profiling C++ meta-template programs. Fantastic talk that deserves a separate blog post since it can make a lot of TMP-related headaches go away. I'll write it one of the following days, when I get my bearings.

It was also a pleasure to listen to Bartosz Milewski talking about category theory and presenting monads in quite an interesting way; Rainer Grimm on how to cope when you need to use the lower-level concurrency primitives; and Guntram Berti on how to properly write your generic code.

Aliens in Moscow: (from the right) Guntram, Zoltan, Bartosz and me

Unfortunately, a lot of talks were in Russian, so I was not able to follow them. Otherwise, I would not only mention the foreign speakers.

During the intermissions, I talked to local programmers about their environment and popularity of C++ and Qt in Russia. Obviously, since it was a C++ conference, everybody that was present was using C++. But the thing that surprised me is that Qt is also very much alive in these parts of the world. And these were not small IT companies, far from it (not going to mention the names, I have no idea whether this information is public or not :) ).

For the end, a proof that Linux/KDE/C++ people are vandals:

04 Mar 2015 7:18am GMT

Hey there!

We are proud to announce that from now we are incubated in KDE…

Macaw-Movies is a movie collection manager. It is now about to be in the KDE Family! And that's really awesome.

[Edit: As we are often asked I add here that we speak about movie files. No DVD, BlueRay…]

It was a little sprint, and we must say that KDE sysadmins were pretty fast and our supporter of great help. In one night, we created a mailing-list, opened an account on Planet KDE and another on the git repository. We haven't opened an account for the project on the bug tracker yet and still use GitHub for now so our code is currently duplicated between GitHub and the KDE projects' repository.

Now, we are seriously thinking of releasing a first version. It's far from being perfect, and there is still a lot to achieve to release what we are really dreaming of, but it's slowly coming! It already compiles on Linux, Microsoft Windows and MacOX. The program can fetch a movie metadata from Internet thanks to the API of themoviedb.org.

Here are a couple of screenshots of the application: the main window and the dialog to edit the metadata of a movie.

If you want to see a little more, you can find us on:

• https://projects.kde.org/projects/playground/multimedia/macaw-movies
• https://github.com/macaw-movies/macaw-movies
• the official mailing list is: macaw-movies@kde.org

The documentation is slowly being written… but the code is already documented =D

Have fun and give a hack!

03 Mar 2015 10:18pm GMT

KDE's second update of its 14.12 series of Applications and Frameworks 5.7.0 are now available in Chakra's stable repositories. With this release kde-workspace has also been updated to version 4.11.16 and kdelibs to 4.14.5.

According to the official announcement, the 14.12 series offers many "new features and bug fixes to more than a hundred applications. Most of these applications are based on the KDE Development Platform 4; some have been converted to the new KDE Frameworks 5, a set of modularized libraries that are based on Qt5, the latest version of this popular cross-platform application framework."
The applications that have been ported to KDE Frameworks 5 will not be updated in Chakra, as they are being prepared to be included on the upcoming Plasma5 ISO. These include kate and kwrite, konsole, gwenview, kalgebra, kanagram, khangman, kig, parley, kapptemplate and okteta, which will remain at their 4.14.3 versions.

In addition the following packages have been updated:

• xorg 1.16.4
  
• kdepim group 4.14.5
  
• calligra 2.9.0
  
• libreoffice 4.4.1
  
• ffmpeg 2.5.4
  
• pulseaudio 6.0
  
• digikam 4.8
  
• kdeconnect 0.8
  
• qt5 group 5.4.1
  
  It should be safe to answer yes to any replacement question by Pacman. If in doubt or if you face another issue - please ask or report it on the related forum section.
  
  As always, make sure your mirror is fully synced before performing this update by running the mirror-check application.

03 Mar 2015 7:12pm GMT

After the system monitor, today another neat little toy that was gone in the KF5 port returned in Plasma for 5.3: The comic applet.

One thing that I really felt missing for the desktop to be really completed, is an XKCD always on the desktop: how can you live without an XKCD comic always there? I certainly couldn't
It's a pretty much straightforward port of the Plasma 4 version: the UI is identical and all options are still where you left them.
I'm pretty happy how it is and how it behaves right now, so personally I consider it in bug fix mode. However, if someone has big ideas on it (and wants to execute them) that would be awesome as well.
The neat thing is that since all the comic plugins were written in JavaScript, all the old ones that can still be downloaded with Get Hot New Stuff still just work(tm).

03 Mar 2015 7:02pm GMT

Packages for the release of KDE's document suite Calligra 2.9 are available for Kubuntu 14.10. You can get it from the Kubuntu Backports PPA. They are also in our development version Vivid.

Bugs in the packaging should be reported to kubuntu-ppa on Launchpad. Bugs in the software to KDE.

03 Mar 2015 12:37pm GMT

This week some changes in knotifications/knotifyconfig/kanagram/okular are in the works. The kanagram changes are already on master, the others are in review. Those changes are bringing back the use of text to speech features via the new QtSpeech module. Some have asked what the status of QtSpeech is, so I thought I'd share a bit about it here.

More information about QtSpeech can be found here http://qt-project.org/wiki/QtSpeech. I hope this update has been helpful.

P.S. Here's a work in progress screenshot of the example widget Frederik created which is inside the QtSpeech git repository as it appears on OS X.

Edit: The wiki has been moved apparently. It's now found here: https://wiki.qt.io/index.php?title=QtSpeech

03 Mar 2015 2:49am GMT

Would you like to tell us something about yourself?

I like cinema and I like to draw motion pictures. I do not like very much to draw static pictures but I can. I studied traditional painting for eight years in the art school and after that I've continued to do it myself for 36 years. I like to learn painting even more than to paint.

Do you paint professionally or as a hobby artist?

I work in the small animation studio as a 2D-3D artist. I draw storyboards and backgrounds in 2D. I make the full 3D film work: modelling, texturing, lighting, rigging and animation. I have very little time to paint personal works, unfortunately.

When and how did you end up trying digital painting for the first time?

It was terrific! I was scanning the black ink drawings on the paper and colouring them in Photoshop in 1996. It was my black-and-white comics for the regional newspaper.

What is it that makes you choose digital over traditional painting?

The choice is simple. No need to buy oil paints and squirrel brushes, it is so lazy. Laziness is the engine of technological progress.

How did you first find out about open source communities? What is your opinion about them?

When I found out about Krita I wrote to Boudewijn Rempt and he answered! It was cool!

Have you worked for any FOSS project or contributed in some way?

I have no such experience yet and I have no ability to do that at the present day but I would like do it in the future.

How did you find out about Krita?

My favourite artists are Titian and Moebius (Jean Giraud). When the developers dedicated the another edition of Krita to Moebius I was interested in this and looked at Krita.

What was your first impression?

I liked it.

What do you love about Krita?

Krita is my favourite 2D package and I would like to do something for its development.

What do you think needs improvement in Krita? Also, anything that you really hate?

There is nothing to hate in Krita. I hate myself for that I can't convince Boud to do what I want and not what he wants:)

In your opinion, what sets Krita apart from the other tools that you use?

I like to write to Mr. Rempt and to Mr. Kazakov and I like how they answer.

If you had to pick one favourite of all your work done in Krita so far, what would it be?

I don't have any favourites yet.

What is it that you like about it? What brushes did you use in it?

I like Smooth Zoom Tool, Wrap Around Mode and Mirror View. I use the standard brushes: Ink_brush_25, Airbrush_linear, Block_tilt, Basic_circle, Bristles_hairy, Basic_mix_soft. I make animated texture brushes and rotate them during painting manually.

Anything else you'd like to share?

Unfortunatelly I cannot share all my professional works to public. It is just because they are owned by the customers of Irkutsk small animation studio Forsight. I can do it a bit on some sites: http://megayustas.deviantart.com, http://ascomix.narod.ru and http://igor-leskov.livejournal.com.

02 Mar 2015 8:00am GMT

01 Mar 2015 6:24pm GMT

History:

Some weeks ago I spoke with David how to configure what debug to show in qt5 (now it uses qloggingcategory)

In kde4 time we had kdebugdialog. It allowed us to define some debug areas.

But we are not able to extend it because it was in kdelibs4support module and it was kdebug specific.

Qt5 doesn't provide application to do it.

Application:

So I decided to create a new application named "kdebugsettings" (c) David

This application worked as old kdebugdialog, we have a file which defines categories.

This file is named kde.categories.

I added debug area that I found in source code. More areas will add in the future.

It will allow to generate qCDebug rule.

In kdebugsettings we have 2 tabs, one for kde applications which are defined in kde.categories and another one which allows to define custom rules (if you want to show warning/debug/all, enable/disable it).

Where to find it ?

It is stored in projects.kde.org, in playground/util module.

You can test it and report bug/feature etc.

Future:

I hope for 15.08 to release it.

01 Mar 2015 6:17pm GMT

As part of KDE Frameworks, we have a collection of QImage plugins that allow Qt applications to read various types of image files not natively supported by Qt. I've recently overhauled the one that reads Photoshop images (PSD files) but, without access to Photoshop, I have no way to create images that test the code. The one test image I have, I created using the Gimp, which is less than ideal when I want to test compatibility with Photoshop itself.

So, if you have access to Photoshop (Photoshop Elements might be sufficient, I'm not sure) and would be willing to make some test images (in pairs - one PSD, one PNG) of various specific configurations and in various save formats, please do get in touch (alex dot merry at kde dot org, alexmerry on IRC, or just post a comment here).

To the extent that the simple images I require would be copyrightable, you would need to be willing to license them under the LGPLv2+ or a permissive license (CC-BY-SA would be fine, for example).

01 Mar 2015 11:21am GMT

Hello all,

If there's anyone in the community, or even just reading this blog, that has experience with node.js and a bit of time I would like to recruit you for a special task. The task is to get bodega-server (and maybe the webapp or admin client too if you're so inclined) to actually work again. It worked at some point in the past year from what I hear, but currently it just spews 404 error pages for any api call it gets. I gather that this is because the nodes that it uses have changed their api since it was written. My time is limited and I've poked it enough to not give warnings at runtime anymore, but someone that really knows the ins and outs of node.js could probably fix it much faster than I so I am asking for such a brave soul to come forward and get the next generation software/data/"stuff" distribution system to do so. I know you're out there and you're considering, stop considering, hop on #kde-devel or #kde-www or anywhere on freenode and find me or others trying to get this going. Or just look at the code itself here and throw me some pointers.

I can't promise much except fame, thanks, admiration of your peers, etc. but hopefully that's enough.

P.S. this couldn't happen soon enough, ocs/attica, knewstuff, and opendesktop/kde-look, etc. are really showing their age. Having bodega working would make a lot of awesome things possible again.

28 Feb 2015 10:28pm GMT

Qactus, a Qt-based OBS notifier, is out in the wild. Version 0.4.0 is the first release.
I started it a long time ago together with Sivan Greenberg as a personal project for learning Qt. And now it's back into life

It features
- Build status viewer
- Row editor with autocompleter for project, package, repository and arch
- Submit requests viewer
- Bugs

This application is possible thanks to Marcus 'darix' Rueckert. He has helped me getting further knowledge of the OBS API.

I think this version is usable. So, why don't you give it a try?
The source code is hosted on GitHub.

27 Feb 2015 8:18pm GMT

Lobby of the venue

Back home. Tired and jetlaggy, but satisfied: SCALE rocked!

SCALE loves ownCloud

The 13th South California Linux Expo was awesome! It is the biggest LinuxFest in the USA. While decidedly different in nature from Europe's biggest Linux event that that took place just three weeks prior (FOSDEM), we met similarly enthusiastic existing and future users. Conversations were also similar: about half the visitors already knew ownCloud, often using it or planning on deploying it; and the other half was more than a little delighted to hear about it, often exclaiming they had been looking for 'something like that' for a while. Negativity was extremely rare: I don't recall a single negative comment at SCALE (merely a few people who liked ownCloud but had no use for it personally), FOSDEM had one conversation starting unpleasantly but quickly turning around - even though one feature of ownCloud wasn't up to snuff, the user was happy with the experience as a whole.

Before the action started!

For most users, ownCloud was simply a wonderful product and they used it at home, deployed it for customers or managed it in their company. Some asked what features were coming or just arrived in ownCloud 8, or asked about the state of specific features and in more than one occasion they very enthusiastically told me how excited they were about ownCloud, how they loved it and how they were telling everybody to use it!

ownCloud to-go

Those who didn't know ownCloud were almost invariably surprised and excited. I can't count the times I heard "wow, why did I never hear about this before" and "dude, I've been looking for something like this for ever!". Often, people wondered how long ownCloud had been around (we just turned five), if it was open source (yes, with love), how many people contributed to it (719 and counting) and how many users it has (we guestimate over 2 million, with 500,000 in this single deployment alone). Oh, and, does it scale? The deployment linked above and a mention of users like CERN can put most concerns to rest. Yes, ownCloud scales from Raspberry Pi to Atom Smashing size.

What came up a few times as barriers to their future usage of ownCloud was pretty much what I discussed before. Running a server at home is not easy and I walked by the EFF booth to ask about progress on Let's Encrypt to ask about the progress of solving one aspect of that problem: more easily getting SSL certificates. I was told the project is on track for the 2nd half of this year.

Frank and Bryan Lunduke

It is wonderful to have such energizing, positive, enthusiastic users - and to have such an enthusiastic booth crew to talk to them as well. At the booth we had Frank, Matt, Ron, Camila and myself. Awesome it was and we had great fun! Below a timelapse video of Saturday morning. It was still rather quiet but it is nice to see us jump around!

Stuff and talk

Just like at FOSDEM, we brought ownCloud stickers, hand outs explaining ownCloud to users and developers as well as some posters for the booth and pins to give out. This was all very much appreciated - I estimate we gave out about 400 hand outs and 500 or so stickers as well as about 50-100 pins.

Sunday at 3PM, I gave a talk about Privacy and ownCloud, with Frank finishing off with a section about his talk at MIT where he discussed ownCloud's Federated Cloud sharing feature and where it is going. The talk was well received; I think the angle I took to privacy (inspired by my background in psychology) spoke to the audience and Frank's description of federation and how it's done in ownCloud was very interesting. owncloud.org and owncloud.com will feature blogs with some more information about this soon.

Friends

Big, big booth!

I also walked by the booths of 'old friends' - the openSUSE/GNOME/KDE crew in particular, it was awesome to meet them. Some I hadn't seen in years, others I met for the first time. They did an amazing job and richly deserve the reward they earned for most Stunningly Amazing Booth Crew (don't know the real name of the booth award but that's what it should be). If you think that 'just' GNOME an KDE being incorporated in the openSUSE booth isn't enough - Master Planner of the Booths Drew aims to bring in Enlightenment and XFCE as well next year. Supposedly a Trello board has been set up already. I bet it won't be long before it has grown to the point where the SCALE organization needs to give the 'openSUSE booth & friends' a separate hall at SCALE...

I have to note that it was thanks to our green friends that I could hang up the ownCloud flyers - they lend me some (green!) tape to do that.

The KDE booth had a bunch of terribly cool stickers (I only now realize I forgot to get one for myself!) as well as the "frameworks 5" flyers. I could only bring, like, 5 t-shirts and a dozen old 'join-the-game' flyers so I'm glad Bert Yerke and his wife, who formed the awesome local KDE team, had created the other materials. We already discussed 2016, as they have plenty of ideas on how to improve the booth!

Awesome stickers...

If you, dear reader, want to help out at the KDE or ownCloud booth next year - let me know, either in the comments or by mail. I can promise you: it is awesomely fun and by far not as scary as you might think! Bert and Matt and everybody who has ever been at a KDE, openSUSE, ownCloud or other FOSS booth can attest to that: it is a great way of getting involved and making a big difference!

Bonus points for who finds a suitable meaning for the one item in the title which isn't yet an acrynym ;-)

27 Feb 2015 4:46pm GMT

We prepared new Windows builds today. They contain the following updates:

• Improved brush presets. The existing presets were not optimized for Windows systems, so Scott Petrovic took a look at all of them and optimized where possible
• The brush editor now opens in the right place even if the screen is too small
• You can now disable the on-canvas message that pops up when zooming, rotating etc. This might solve some performance issues for some people
• We increased the amount of memory available for G'Mic even more. This may mean that on big, beefy Windows machines you can now use G'Mic, but on other, less beefy machines filters might still crash. G'Mic is an awesome tool, but keep in mind that it's a research project and that its Windows support is experimental.

We'll move the new builds to the official download location as soon as possible, but in the meantime, here are the downloads:

• 32 bits Windows: http://download.kde.org/stable/krita/krita_x86_2.9.0.1.msi or http://download.kde.org/stable/krita/krita_x86_2.9.0.1.zip
• 64 bits Windows: http://download.kde.org/stable/krita/krita_x64_2.9.0.1.msi or http://download.kde.org/stable/krita/krita_x64_2.9.0.1.zip

27 Feb 2015 2:23pm GMT