Plasma Sprint : near the end

It’s 22H50 and plasma sprint is near the end :(. Tomorrow everybody come back to their houses. All people had worked on various things and it will be benefit for plasma. We have worked on the API of Plasma (2 days of API review) with 26 whiteboards that remind us the work to do. Now all changes have to be implemented. Today i have made a hacking sprint with Sebas to fix build and bring back to plasma a correct level of usability. The main missing part is the task manager applet that need a lot of refactoring stuff (Alt+tab can be an alternative :p). And i try to thanks aaron that help with this fuc***g background!

Here a little screenshot of plasma after major changes, and LOTS will arrive!

Plasma Sprint : Porting Plasma API to Qt 4.4.0

Yeah a little post to explain on what i work during the plasma sprint. I’m actually port our plasma API to Qt 4.4.0. Actually the base class of Plasma is QGraphicsItem but since Qt4.4.0, Qt provide a new cool class (named QGraphicsWidget) that allow using layouts (and others cool features) for us. So i move our API in order to use this class. In my deeply dreams (wich will become the true soon) our layouting classes will be delete in order to use QGraphicsLayouts classes. Actually 2 applets works but it will be merged in trunk for porting others applets with plasma team!

See this screenshot that show applets on the desktop and the panel with Qt’s layouts!

French Release Party in Toulouse…

I’m not the first to speak about the release event but i think i will be the last…

The event start on friday evening with a long talk of Kevin Ottens (ervin). He had shown a lot of things : KDE pillars, videos and so. The room was full and we can say it was a success. Ervin is a really good speaker (everybody is agree with me). Thanks to Ervin. After the presentation we had a coktail, so people have asked many questions about KDE. It’s was a pleasure to promote it.

On saturday, we had technical conferences with Aurélien Gâteau, David Faure,Laurent Montel, Kevin Ottens, Anne-Marie Mahfouf and me. All talks was interesting and i have listened like a kid.The room was full with a big turn over of people. I was happy to be present, especially because it was my first talk around KDE.

Saturday evening all KDE people were in a good restaurant and we have discuss about many subjects, especially how we were enter in KDE. It was very interesting (especially David Faure).  Finally, I was happy to see again David, Laurent, and to meet Aurélien. KDE community is very wonderful. I’m very impatient to be again at the next akademy.

I would like to thanks all people who helps me to organize this event :

• Our sponsors, C&S and KDAB;

• All the people from Toulibre, especially Alex and Thomas.

• Michel Saliba and all people who help around Aaron’s keynote;

• Ervin for his help, for his advices and all. Thanks so much!

I’m very proud to have organized my first KDE’s event, and i hope others will come (An aKademy :p). The bad point for this event was the communication (we have to improve some points especially the poster), but i have won a dinner and a beer (i have sticked or given more than 250 posters in Toulouse).

Now it’s time to go back in code, Plasma i’m comming, have you forget me?!

KDE 4.0 release event in France.

For the KDE Desktop Environment 4.0 Release the French contributors are pleased to invite you to the Toulouse Release Party on 25th and 26th January at the Centre Culturel Bellegarde in Toulouse. On Friday 25th January evening, at 8:00 PM, an introduction to the KDE project will be presented with some parts of the keynote (translated to French) by KDE eV Board President Aaron Seigo from Google Headquarters. A coktail will close the evening. On the next day, Saturday 26th January, from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM you will be able to enjoy a full day of KDE presentations on KDE 4 pillars, Qt, CMake, How to contribute to KDE, Education…
Everyone is welcome!

Here you can find more informations about the event and the schedule of the event.

The new device notifier in KDE4

After many versions, many layout problems let me introduce you the new device notifier :

Another screenshot :

As we can see on screenshot it display recent plugged devices in a list with the number of actions associated to the device. It you have one action for a device and you click on it, it open directly the action. If you have many actions associated to the device it open solidUiServer with the action list.

When you plug a device the notifier pop up on top to inform you when a new device is plugged.

Actually i do a sample file wich recognize only usb key but for applications it will be easy to associate an action to a device. You can see the following example :

[Desktop Entry]
X-KDE-Solid-Predicate=[[ StorageVolume.ignored == false AND StorageVolume.usage == 'FileSystem' ] OR [ IS StorageAccess AND StorageDrive.driveType == 'Floppy' ]]
Type=Service
Actions=open;
[Desktop Action open]
Name=Dolphin
Exec=dbus-launch dolphin

You have just to create a solid predicate which match with the device you want to associate and after you install this .desktop file in installdir/solid/actions and hotplug engine will do everything for you…

You can give me feedback it’s the goal of my post…

Thanks.

KDE 4.0 Release Party in Toulouse (France)

After the message of Wade Olson, i post about release party we will organize in France for KDE 4.0. We will do this event in Toulouse and all developpers of France (or other guys) are invited. The day is not really fixed we don’t know the date and the time for the mountain view event and we don’t know actually if we will wait 2 or 3 days for the release party because it will be more easier for our people if differents talks are translated in French. I will post the date as soon as possible. Talks of KDE’s contributors are welcome.

My ToDo List on Plasma…

I see on the last commit digest that we speak about the lock/logout applet. First time that we speak about my work ;). I need to improve it a little (add an onHover effect on icons : perhaps a blue on hover on lock button and red hover on logout button). We have just to resize it, hide the background and put it where we want but the question is actually where?Wait and see… Perhaps i will talk with oxygen’s guys because icons are not very easy to differenciate, especially when they are small…

I have to talk with aaron about onHover effect because in plama panel “kicker” the onHover effect use a Qtimeline (i remember [but i'm not sure] in aKademy that aaron want to use one QTimeline for all applets so..).

Actually i work to finish new device notifier applet. The applet works very well, up/down animation and when we click on it, it open solidUiServer. I have just a problem with desktop files use to define actions list in solidUiServer. I worked yesterday with David Faure to find the problem, i will find the solution soon. The last thing on this notifier is to improve slideAnimation, but actually i don’t know how to start in Phase class in Plasma. As the lock/logout applet, actually we don’t know where we can put this applet and a notification area.

Many work to do and after perhaps i can work on the show desktop applet.

KDE Hacking Session of October

Yesterday was the monthly Hacking Session in Toulouse. For the first time we were in a good place in the center of toulouse : many tables and chairs in a big aera.Fine ;)…At the beginning we have discover a problem with the network (no Wifi router) and a man who work for the city of toulouse has found an old ethernet wire…GREAT!So we have worked on KDE. Ervin has work a long times to configure his firewall with icecream and i work on new device notifier, more exactly on the engine and .desktop files. Annma has joined us at 10:00 and Florian just before eating. Florian has started to translate DigiKam and Annma worked on KHangMan, KLettres and looked into KNewStuff .After a long fight with his firewall Ervin has worked on a bug in dolphin when you rename a file.Two new guys of Toulibre has joined us and they have worked to install dev platform. Two friends of mine were present : One to develop on KDE and one interessting to promote KDE (marketing and so).Wonderful ;)… So four new guys in our meeting, we hope they will stay a looong time with us.

MSI perhaps a sponsor of KDE dev ? :p Ervin’s laptop (On the left) and my laptop (On the right). Ervin stay always in KDE 3.5 (not an adventurious guy, :p) and i work on a KDE4.

KDE Hacking session of October : people present

Back to KDE and internship started!

Hi everybody,

I’m back, lot of things to do during these 2 last months : a new academic year started, an internship to find and so… So it’s finished and now i can work again on KDE4. Last week i worked on Solid Notifier to improve it. No more plasma crashes when you load it ;). Now it up and down when you plug a device, you can click on it to have a window with the actions corresponding to the device (old media notifier in KDE3). I moved it yesterday in kdebase according to aaron.I found a name, more “user friendly” : New device Notifier. Exit the name of solid. Ervin was sad (no it’s a joke).

So the next step is to improve up/down animation and to work with aaron (if he want :p) in a notifier aera somewhere…I will participate to the meeting plasma IRC announced in the mailing-list.

So exit KDE let’s talk about my internship. I have found a good subject in a company named CS and i will work in visual reality (it’s a big european project). The project is a big application to create cartoon, movies,games, virtual worlds and so with a program write in QT and C++. We can create 2D or 3D story.It’s interesting: i can improve my skill in QT and it will be positiv for me and for KDE when i will work on it again in my house. The first day i create a small cartoon with a character moving in different area, it was very easy to do because GUI is very efficient. My job is to rewrite a module that manage actions of objects. This part of application use LUA scripting and actually user have to write in LUA code. It’s not cool so i will think about a better interaction with wizards and so (User interface will be in QT). Good and many work to do!

See you!

Just added to PlanetKde

Hello everybody!

It’s cool, my blog is on PlanetKDE…Thanks to Chris Lee!Big kiss!

It’s an honor for me to be here and to post my work on KDE. Actually i’m very busy, no time to spend on Plasma but i will come back as soon as possible!

I actually do a training in Orange so i have to write a report for my school. I have to work too because i have an exam at the beginning of september.