A Qt Blog

Via Roland Walters (liquidat) on Planet KDE, the full release plan for KDE 4.1 has been published. This entails a freeze on new features in "trunk" on 31st March, a full feature freeze on 22nd April, with an expected four pre-releases until the projected release date of 29th July. A feature plan can be found here.

The first bug-fix release of KDE 4.0 has also been tagged, and a changelog can be found here.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Trolltech's website (and also here at Nokia's site):

Nokia and Trolltech ASA have agreed that Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech; the offer is NOK 16 per share in cash, and holders of 35,024,830 shares (66.43% of the total) have irrevocably agreed to the sale; among those who have agreed are Haavard Nord (Trolltech founder), Vuonislahti Invest AS (controlled by founder Eirik Chambe-Eng), Teknoinvest and certain funds managed by Index Ventures. Nokia have said that they will continue releasing Qt on an open-source basis.

At KDE Dot News, Aaron Seigo notes that Nokia will also become a patron of KDE e.V. and the KDE Free Qt Foundation (which is licensed to release Qt under the BSD licence should Trolltech, or its successors, cease doing so under the GPL) and last week, Messrs Nord, Chambe-Eng and Lee Williams of Nokia wrote this letter to the KDE community asking "for ideas and comments on improving their relationship with the open source community".

Posted by Indigo Jo at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Qt Apps:

The Perl bindings for Qt4 have been released. Changelog (since the last RC):

• add access to protected function for object classes
• add call virtual function from C++ classes into perl
• fix bug with INOUT for static function

Downloads (source, FC7 RPMs) here.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE Apps:

Two new versions of KTorrent, the BitTorrent client for KDE, have been released. Version 2.2.5 "fixes several bugs in 2.2.4" and there is also a first release candidate of version 3 (3.0rc1) for KDE 4, which may be the last pre-release. Screenshots of v2.2 are here (a screenshot from the KDE 4 version is on the home page); source downloads of both versions here.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 5:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Version 2.4.8 of CMake, the cross-platform Makefile generation tool used by KDE 4 and also popular for Qt applications, has been released. The release announcement, and changelog (by release candidate since v2.4.7 was released) here. Downloads (Windows & Mac installers, Unix source and executable bundles but no packages) here.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Qt Apps:

Version 1.3.3.11 of Scribus, the open-source desktop publishng (DTP) application based on Qt 3, has been released. Changes:

• This stable release adds the following:
• Several fixes and improvements to text frames and the Story Editor.
• New Arabic Translation.
• More translation and documentation updates.
• Many improvements to PDF Forms exporting and non-Latin script handling in PDFs.
• Several fixes to protect against possible crashes.
• Improved Color Managed Display in some cases.
• Some fixes to the Scripting plugin.

Screenshots here; for downloads, see the Scribus home page. Requires Qt 3; there is a requirements list but it seems to concentrate on the development version, citing Qt 4 as a requirement.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE Apps:

Version 0.42 of KlamAV, the KDE front-end for the ClamAV Linux anti-virus software, has been released. Changes:

• Disable and remove auto-scanning of files when they are modified. The approach is not maintainable.
• Patch from "Nadav Kavalerchik" to handle hebrew filenames properly.
• Fix to prevent command injection from Dirk Mueller.
• Fix a couple of compiler warnings (Dirk Mueller dmueller at suse.de)
• Disable quarantining of files that exceed the limit by default. this one is debateable, but it seems more people like to not have it by default, as they think their personal archive is a virus, while it just compressed really well. I think this also matches the clamav default, but I might be wrong (Dirk Mueller dmueller at suse.de)
• Fix the ui for archivelimits to show "default" when its 0, so that the user isn`t confusing it with "no limit". ( Dirk Mueller dmueller at suse.de)
• Restrict khtml`s parsing and not allow javascript by default in the update dialog. also, deleting the filelist is too much because it is already deleted via qojbect (Dirk Mueller dmueller at suse.de)
• Fix https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171414
• Patch to scheduled scan script from "Vincent J. Schiavoni"

Screenshots here, source downloads and installers here, with links to packages (below the screenful of Google ads) here. Requires KDE 3 and ClamAV.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Trolltech's Qt to be licensed under the GPL v3 — Trolltech

Trolltech has added GPL v3 to the list of licences under which its Qt cross-platform development toolkit is issued. This is in addition to, rather than instead of, its existing GPL v2 licensing. Packages of Qt 3 licensed under the new GPL are available here, and are available, as before for X11 and Mac only; right now, only development snapshots of Qt 4 under GPL v3 are available (i.e. not Qt v4.3.3 which remains available under GPL v2 with the usual exemptions). This follows KDE e.V. adding the licence to its new licensing policy. See Thiago Macieira's blog entry here.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE Apps:

Version 2.8.1 of Yakuake, a drop-down terminal based on KDE's Konsole similar to the drop-down Quake console, has been released. Changes:

• Added an option to control whether the Yakuake window keeps above other windows.
• Improved experience for non-KDE users by disabling KRootPixmap-based pseudo-translucency for them. Gets rid of rendering errors with skins that make use of the alpha channel. Replaced by configurable skin background color.
• Fix leftover gap below the window at 100% height or in fullscreen mode.
• Added option to automatically open the Yakuake window when the pointer touches the screen edge it lives on.

The first beta of v2.9 has also been released. Changes:

• Rewritten from scratch for KDE 4.
• Changed license from "GPL v2 or later" to "GPL v2 or v3 or any later version accepted by the membership of KDE e.V.".
• Replaced pseudo-translucency with XComposite translucency (aka "real translucency") support (see KDE4 FAQ for caveats).
• The context menus of tabs and the main menu now sport additional actions to manipulate Konsole profile settings.
• The tab bar itself has gained a context menu as well.
• An option to dynamically update tab labels with information about the content of the active terminal has been added.
• The skin engine is now more robust when it comes to processing invalid or corrupted skins.
• Skins are now stored in the skins/ sub-directory of the app's data dir.
• The window geometry is now updated dynamically when the work area of the screen changes.
• The window title bar now appropriately uses the window title font from the KDE font settings rather than the general UI font.
• Changes to the KDE font settings are now applied at runtime.
• Support for right-to-left layouts in the configuration dialog has been improved.
• A bug where the "Rename Session..." action would operate on the wrong session has been fixed.
• Yakuake no longer crashes when Konsole is not installed, but instead cancels startup with a preceding error dialog.
• Lots of internal cleanup.

Screenshots and source downloads are both at KDE Apps (link above).

Posted by Indigo Jo at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Feature: Distributions and KDE 4

DistroWatch reports on the state of play with Linux distributions and KDE 4: it is not the default in any except for the Fedora Rawhide (unstable) repository. OpenSUSE, Kubuntu and Mandriva have binaries available and there are third-party binaries for Slackware 12, but the next versions will have version 3.5.8 as default; live CDs are available from OpenSUSE and Shift (the latter based on Ubuntu). However, Gentoo, Arch and Slackware itself appear to have no intention of providing packages, at least until KDE 4.1 appear in six months' time or thereabouts.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

KDE's New Licence Policy - kdedevelopers.org

KDE e.V. today adopted a new licensing policy for source code in KDE's Subversion repository, removing old licences (such as Artistic and QPL) and includes "versions of the header texts for those who don't trust the FSF to keep future GPL versions free but still allow us to use them when they are". In short, library source based on KDE Platform APIs ((kdelibs, kdepimlibs and kdebase-runtime) must be LGPL 2.1 or 3, BSD (without ad clause), MIT or X11 licence, and other source must be one of the above or GPL 2, 3 or later. Full policy (at KDE TechBase) here.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE Apps:

Version 2.0.0 of Umbrello, the UML modelling software for KDE, has been released. This is the first stable version which depends on KDE 4 and is part of the kdesdk (KDE Software Development Kit) module of KDE 4. Screenshots here, downloads are available through the KDE project. See here for dependencies.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE home page:

Version 4.0.0 of KDE, the X11 desktop environment based on Qt, has been released. This is the first stable release based on Qt 4. Major new features include the Plasma desktop with widgets similar to those in Windows Vista and Mac OS X Tiger, Oxygen artwork, a much improved KWin window manager, the Okular document viewer and Dolphin for the file manager rather than Konqueror. A visual guide with screenshots is here; source downloads are on the info page here, with links to binaries on the main page linked above.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 9:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE Apps:

Version 1.6.1 of KScope, an environment for editing large C-based projects which uses Cscope for code analysis, has been released. Changes:

• New: Support for case-insensitive queries
• New: Per-project Ctags command line (for advanced users only)
• Bug fix: Stop queries when their result windows are destroyed
• Bug fix: Query results sorted by line numbers are sorted numerically
• Translation: Chinese

Screenshots here, downloads (source only) here. Requires KDE 3.3 and CScope (see here for full requirements list).

Posted by Indigo Jo at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Version 1.6 of DesktopBSD, a FreeBSD-based desktop OS with a KDE-based front, has been released (see release notes). Changes:

• FreeBSD 6
• X.Org v7.3
• Live CD/DVD
• Revised installer, which allows upgrade from v1.0 and from release candidates
• Improved package manager usability and performance
• Many enhancements and bugfixes for the DesktopBSD tools
• Support for multiple processors and multi-core CPUs
• Inclusion of the NVIDIA graphics driver for hardware 3D rendering
• DesktopBSD build servers as an up-to-date source for precompiled packages

Screenshots here, downloads (CD and DVD images for i386 and AMD64) here.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Trolltech website:

Trolltech today announced a partnership with Broadcom, "a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications", to develop a complete Voice-over-IP (VoIP) development platform for IP manufacturers. The platform is to be based on Broadcom's BCM1103 VoIP processor and BCM1180 video and multimedia co-processor and Trolltech's Qtopia.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE Apps:

Version 1.3.3.10 of Scribus, the open-source desktop publishing (DTP) application, has been released. Changes:

• Several fixes and improvements to text frames and the Story Editor.
• New Arabic Translation, and complete German translation of documentation
• More translation and documentation updates.
• Many improvements to PDF Forms exporting and non-Latin script handling in PDFs.
• Several fixes to protect against possible crashes.
• Improved Color Managed Display in some cases.
• Some fixes to the Scripting plugin.

Screenshots here; downloads (source with Mac, Windows and various Linux binaries) from Scribus home page. Requires Qt 3.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the second anniversary of the founding of Qt Centre, the forum and wiki for Qt developers. Founder Johan Thelin, who was contracted to write his Foundations of Qt Development as a result of a contact on the site, posted this message:

Two years ago the QtCentre site was launched. The goal was to provide the leading forum on the internet, encouraging the exchange of experience and to provide a meeting point to the Qt community. The response to this has been beyond our wildest expectations - all thanks to all our visitors and contributors.

As a part of QtCentre's ambition to be the meeting point of the QtCommunity a Qt programming contest was held last year. The result was fenomenal with a great list of high quality entries and a matching list of prices. The participants came from all of the earth, reflecting the wealth of the community available at QtCentre.

A forum is good for exchanging experience and providing answers. For the more in-depth information QtCentre provides a wiki filled with articles. These articles touch the peculiarities of Qt, provide helpful tips and tricks as well as providing useful general knowledge about Qt.

The QtCentre team would like to thank all visitors and contributors. Thanks to you, the centre has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. We hope to see you all in 2008 and make that an even greater year!

Posted by Indigo Jo at 11:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE Apps:

Version 2.0 of Gambas, the Visual Basic-like IDE for Unix, has been released after three years of development. Changelog is here (too many to list here, and there's no synopsis) and an article on what's new in Gambas 2 is here with some screenshots. Source downloads here with links to various (probably now out-of-date) binaries. See here and here for the system's many requirements.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From KDE Apps:

Version 0.9.1 of Smb4K, the Samba client for KDE (for accessing Windows shares), has been released. Changes:

• Replaced all occurences of getenv("USER") by getpwuid(getuid())->pw_name.
• Corrected spelling mistakes in German translation.
• Fixed compilation error under FreeBSD.
• Fixed fails-to-build-from-source bugs with upcoming GCC 4.3.

Screenshots here, downloads (source code with links to third-party binaries) here. Requires KDE/Qt 3.3 and Samba 3.x.

Posted by Indigo Jo at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)