KDE development tools. KDevelop and KDE hacker Bernd Gehrmann wrote in
with this update:
With the 1.0
Beta 4.1 release, KDevelop has gone into the next round. Many
important bugs have been fixed, and we are not aware of any situations
in which KDevelop still crashes. If you still have problems, please
read this
note and give helpful information on bugs.
While the last bugs in the 1.0 branch are being ironed out, some
exciting new features are already in the queue for 1.1: John Birch has
written a powerful integrated debugger. The
possibility to set breakpoints directly in KDevelop's editor windows
promises fast turnaround cycles. Richard Dale has added support
for Objective-C in kwrite, the class parser and some dialogs. A patch
for kdoc is also available. So in the future, development for
GNUStep could look like this.
Meanwhile, we are already working on KDevelop 2.0, which will be based
on KDE 2. The compiler frontend (now colored) has been rewritten to
support asynchronous message parsing. Further features include MDI
support, a new grep frontend, DocBook support and the beginnings of a
plugin interface.
Recently, Darius Stachow has made available a first development
snapshot of KUML, a
graphical editor for UML diagrams. The drawing engine is already very
nice, but developers for other further diagram types are certainly
welcome. An integration into KDevelop is planned, but of course KUML
will also run standalone and support multiple languages.
Johannes Sixt has now released the stable 1.0.0 version of his
debugger frontend kdbg. This is
supposed to work both with KDE 1 and KDE 2.
Judin Max also gave us an update on KDE Studio (mirror).
New features include a visual form builder (check out that screenshot),
and a new plugin system with the "Bookmark" and "GlobalBookmark"
plugins implemented. There's very little documentation available but
if you have questions or want to help, contact Judin.
KDE2: Relentless progress. Daniel M. Duley has some great
updates for us up on his site. Amongst other
exciting news, he has
redesigned both kghostview and kdvi so that they can now act as Konqueror
browser views, rewritten the KStep widget
style, and ported a whole slew of features to kicker including
QuickBrowser, DND features, client-based dynamic menus and recent
document menus. Also noteworthy: he is working on KDE tutorials
written in the style of the Qt
ones. Rock on.
Waldo Bastien posted his thoughts on a design for KThread,
an attempt to make threading for KDE easy and portable. It
turns out the need for threads had already been felt and a couple of
independent KDE thread implementations from the likes of Bavo
De Ridder and Lubos
Lunak and Mirko
Sucker already exist.
Roberto Alsina announced
his effort to implement GraphApp/KDE with
the aim of providing a simple C API for KDE. He is also
considering implementing a CORBA interface for this GUI. Rumour
further has it that Roberto is working on a BSD-free library that will
provide some core KDE functionality potentially allowing commercial
companies like RealNetworks and Star Division to more easily integrate
their product with KDE. Roberto also informed
us of the Lazarus
Project, an effort that appears to have produced Pascal bindings
for Qt.
Preston Brown announced
kcmemail, a Control Center module that will potentially centralize
basic configuration of the various KDE mail applications. The aim
is to share basic common information between KDE email clients while
each client will handle its own advanced configuration.
Rik Hemsley has implemented
a system for giving user feedback while an application is
starting. This has been a weakness in KDE 1, where naive users
tend to click "Netscape" indefinitely until various windows and errors
pop up all at once. Rik's solution fortunately does not involve
turning the X pointer into an hourglass, but rather takes the NeXT
approach and indicates that an app is launching in the taskbar.
Geert Jansen has implemented
and committed kdesu, a graphical
version of su that allows one to run a program under different user
privileges. Also included, of course, is a kcontrol module for
configuration. Stefan Westerfeld announced
MICOSec, a wrapper for MICO that implements the ORBit authentication
mechanism. Matt Koss announced
Motif DND, ready for integration. He is considering submitting the
patch for integration in Qt. Eric Bischoff announced the
move from LinuxDoc to DocBook for all KDE documentation.
As for Krash, the release dude (aka Waldo Bastian) has announced
that the KDE libraries are now in feature freeze; kdebase and
koffice will be feature frozen on the 15th. The plan is to release
Krash quickly and unfreeze everything so that developers can continue
with the current furious pace of development.
KDE Applications.The KDE Forum has a nice feature article on Magellan
(screenshots),
touted as a powerful open source PIM rivalling Lotus Notes in
ambition. Edwin Glaser announced the DataWidget project, the
goal of which is to provide free data-aware widgets based on Qt (see
also KMySql). Jeff Cody announced
kGrep, a GUI
utility for searching and displaying strings in text files (shots).
Peter Putzer announced the latest version of KSysV, the SysV
Init Editor. Mirko Sucker announced
a new KDatePicker.
Markus Goetz is looking for assistance
with KWebSearch, a
frontend for Web search engines.
QCad is an open source 2D CAD
system based on Qt that might make a worthwhile port to KOffice. On a
related note, John Dean is seeking
volunteers to help port his 3D CAD system to KDE; a mailing list is available.
However, the honour for best KDE application this month, goes to Ky. All 567k of it:
"Ky is a KDE version of the useful unix utility `yes'. I find this
comes in handy when I want to run `yes', but I don't want to page
through the output using something like `more'. Instead, this gives me
a nice GUI with a scrollbar. In addition, I can use copy and paste to
save the output if I want."
As usual, if you are looking for packages of your favorite
applications, check out KLPP. They
even have the latest KDevelop and KDbg.
Other KDE Quickies. Cristian Tibirna has a slew of slides
available from his workshop
and talk
at Alternative:
Linux. Thomas Leitner announced
a port of KDE 1.1.2 to Digital/Tru64 Unix 4.0f. Need free webhosting
for a KDE project? Check out the new HOWTO.
Finally, drop by Microsoft's site to see what they think
of KDE.
An archive for these reports is available. Une
version francaise pourrait eventuellement etre disponible ici.
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KDE
