KDE Development News

Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel, the new release dude, has begun the release process for KDE 1.1.2. The release, code-named Kolor, will be based on 1.1.1 and in addition will include the KDE Theme Manager, a selection of themes, new high-colour icons, an assortment of bugfixes and improvements, and possibly one or more additional applications. The release process is expected to last at least 9 weeks. Meanwhile, the KDE Artist Team is in need of more artists, especially those skilled in icon drawing. Interested parties should contact Torsten Rahn.

KDE Image Manipulation. There have been renewed talks of future cooperation between KDE and Gimp developers, both on the gimp-developers list as well as on the #gimp channel. Most seem to agree that the Gimp should evolve towards a toolkit-agnostic architecture, but there has as yet not been unanimous agreement on a collaboration.

Meanwhile, Daniel M. Duley (aka Mosfet) announced an alliance with the ImageMagick team. ImageMagick brings a large code base of advanced graphical effects and conversions to the KDE project. The intent is to create KDE libraries that will build the foundation for future advanced graphical applications such as KPaint II or KImageShop. Hot on the heels of this announcement, Matthias Elter announced and presented a detailed description of the KImageShop project, and Mosfet proposed the creation of a joint KDE canvas project.

KMieSculptor. Andreas Pour announced an initial developer's release of KMieSculptor, a tool which simplifies the task of building a GUI. Current bindings include bash and Python with Perl soon to follow.

Debian packages. Ivan E. Moore II gave us a round up of the debian packages currently available for KDE and then added a whole lot more to the list. A new mirror for folks in Europe has also been made available.

More KDE Quickies. devel-home.kde.org is finally back online -- free web-hosting is available to developers needing a website for KDE-related projects; contact Martin Konold. Waldo Bastian announced the successful deployment of a new optimizing feature, a zone allocator, for the KHTML widget and potentially other applications. Aaron Levinson pointed out that translators often have little context to work from, and gave an example illustrating how application developers can help improve the situation. Mario Weilguni sent out a proposal for cleaning up the KDE libraries. There have been approximately 500 messages this past week on kde-devel alone; a concerned Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel has started a discussion on how best to handle the situation.

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