October 2007

A fourth beta version of KDE 4 has been released; the project's announcement is here. This appears to be a backtrack on the earlier release schedule, since they have announced a number of "beta goals" which will mean more betas until they are met. This seems to be a bug-fix release over beta 3, but they have also issued a release candidate for the KDE 4 "platform", meaning the basic libraries necessary to build and run KDE 4 apps. Downloads of both are available at the info page, with binaries already available for OpenSUSE (Kubuntu will probably follow).

Trolltech Issues Maintenance Release of Qt Jambi — Trolltech

Trolltech has released version 4.3.2_01 of Qt Jambi, its Java bindings for Qt. Changes:

• QObject::setProperty() and QObject::property() can now read and write Qt C++ properties. This is primarly useful when an unmapped Qt C++ class is passed to into Qt Jambi.
• Improved error messages on native library loading. -Dcom.trolltech.qt.verbose-loading is now only required when investigating load order.
• Fixed crash when using custom icon engines.
• Fixed Mac source package to properly build on when the OS is set to case-sensitive.
• Types that inherit Qt C++ template classes now contain out-of-bounds checks, throwing exceptions instead of crashing. This includes QPolygon, QPolygonF, QItemSelection among others.
• Fixed internal race condition in use of text related API which in rare cases would cause the application to crash.
• Designer: QDockWidgets now have the properties "docked", "windowTitle" and "dockWidgetArea".
• The "Show all signals and slots" option in the signal / slot editor now properly filters out slots in the base classes of the current widget.
• Juic now detects a number of Java keywords and will try to escape names like "native", "final", etc, when these are used as object names in Designer.
• New example: HTTP, showing use of QHttp class.
• New example: OrderForm, showing more advanced textlayout handling.
• New Example: Slider example, showing range controls.
• "About Qt Jambi" menu item has been added to examples.
• The Launcher now properly detects Aqua style on Mac OS X.
• The binary package now contains translation files for Qt

This is available, as usual, under the GPL (downloads here) or a commercial licence. An integration package for Eclipse (Windows and Linux only) can be found here.

From Qt Apps:

Version 0.5.6 of QTM, the blog management application written by the author of this blog, has been released. Changes:

• New feature: "associated hosts" in quickpost templates. The user can specify a number of hosts in a template, and when he then quickposts an article with that hostname in the URL, that template will be used.
• Improvement: two new template tags: %host% (which is just the hostname of a page being blogged) and %domain% (which is %host% without the www.).
• Bug fix: fixed crashes when shutting the quickpost template config window when there are no templates.
• Build system: fixed relinking behaviour; no longer relinks when QDEBUG is not set (from CMake command line).

Screenshots here, downloads (source, Ubuntu binary with SUSE and Mac OS X binaries to follow) here. Requires Qt 4.1 (Quickpost requires Qt 4.2).

Kubuntu - Kubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon On the Streets

Version 7.10 of Kubuntu, the edition of Ubuntu which uses KDE as its desktop, has been released. Main features:

• KDE v3.5.8
• Dolphin, rather than Konqueror, as the default file manager
• A restricted driver manager application and single package installer
• OpenOffice.org v2.3
• Kontact Enterprise version
• Strigi desktop searching
• KDE 4 beta 3
• Linux kernel v2.6.22, GCC v4.2, X.org 7.2, Python v2.5, Qyoto (Qt/C#) and Jambi (Qt/Java) bindings
• Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) support on systems which support it
• Free Windows software on the Desktop CD

Downloads are here. There is a Desktop CD (an installable live CD, like PCLinuxOS) and an alternate CD (for any specialised installation requirements including LVM and RAID, the new name for the old installation CD), both available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. You can also upgrade using APT from Feisty (see the announcement page).

This is part of the Ubuntu v7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) release. The GNOME version, simply called Ubuntu, features GNOME v2.20, Evolution 2.8, Firefox 2.0 with an improved plug-in finder, Compiz Fusion (3D desktop effects) enabled by default and desktop searching. Ubuntu also has a server edition with automatic LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) installation. Downloads are here.

K Desktop Environment - KDE 3.5.8 Release Announcement

Version 3.5.8 of KDE, the Qt-based desktop environment for Unix, has been released, containing hundreds of bug fixes. Main changes:

• Improvements in Konqueror and its web browsing component KHTML. Bugs in handling HTTP connections have been fixed, KHTML has improved support of some CSS features for more standards compliance.
• In the kdegraphics package, lots of fixes in KDE's PDF viewer and Kolourpaint, a painting application, went into this release.
• The KDE PIM suite has, as usual, seen numerous stability fixes, covering KDE's email client KMail, the organizer application KOrganizer and various other bits and pieces.

The full changelog can be found here. Source code can be found here, with instructions on how to compile it here. The KDE project do not produce binaries, but the upcoming Ubuntu release (v7.10 Gutsy) includes it as standard.

From KDE Apps:

Version 0.8.6 of Smb4K, a Windows/Samba share browser for KDE, has been released. This version fixes a crash bug which occurred when mounting shares when the paths contained special characters. Screenshots here, downloads (source, links to download locations) here. Requires Qt/KDE 3.2 and Samba 3.

From KDE Apps:

Version 1.5.6 of KPoGre, a KDE app for administering PostgreSQL databases, has been released. Changes include:

• Replaced 't' and 'f' boolean values in tables with icons
• Lazy load Database 'Cast tab' in properties window to speed up
• Implemented 'locks' tab in database property window, containing list of locks in the database
• Using "long long" type rather than special KPGDatabase etc; resolves problems in loading large databases (tested on 30Gb database)
• Fixed multiline comments in syntax highlighter
• Improved code completion
• Introduced option for lazy-loading tables' children for speed
• Added FILLFACTOR option to "Create table" wizard

Screenshots here, downloads (source, SUSE 10 downloads with dependencies) here. Requires KDE 3.5, libpqxx v2.6.9 or newer, and PostgreSQL v7.4 or newer.

From Planet KDE:

Morten Sørvig at Trolltech has released a binding for the Mac spellcheck system, allowing it to be used in QTextEdit widgets on that platform only, which required the use of Objective-C to implement. It is available in this ZIP file from the Trolltech site. The code is under the GPL, and may be released with the next version of Qt Solutions for commercial Qt developers.

Bookpool, the discounted computer book company, is selling Apress and Friends of Ed titles half price. This means that Johan Thelin's book Foundations of Qt Development is going for $27.25 (plus shipping; free shipping applies only above $40). Beware of taxes and shipping costs if you are outside the USA.