[LWN Logo]

KDE Development News

Wed 30 Jun 1999 - Tue 6 Jul 1999

KDE 1.1.2 is now in week 6 of the release schedule. The high-colour icons for this "beautify" release are not yet ready, so KDE 1.1.2 will be delayed until they are. Otherwise, the release schedule will progress as planned. Torsten Rahn followed up with some precisions and his thoughts on the release. The Artist pointed out that the release is more than just a bugfix release and deserves to be numbered 1.2 instead of 1.1.2. He also revealed that the artist team is working on including a high-colour 32x32 icon set in addition to the new 48x48 icon set.

KDE multi-head support? Cristian Tibirna has initiated discussions on multi-head development issues in KDE. The XFree86 folks have apparently already demonstrated KDE running on Xinerama (multiple screens acting as one) where one can transparently drag a window from monitor to monitor or display an application across screens. Cristian is working on making KDE work nicely per X11 screen; the situation is more analogous to virtual desktops except that actual physical screens are involved.

KDE 2.0 Screensavers. Martin Jones has announced a new screensaver engine. The design is now very similar to jwz's xscreensaver and in fact should support all xscreensaver hacks. Martin also explained how configuration dialogs will be supported.

KDE hacker Mosfet, occasionally known as Daniel M. Duley, gave us an update on widget themes for KDE. He also made available a snapshot of his latest desktop but notes that he will get the KDE artists in on the act in due time. Mosfet has recently accepted a new job (good luck!) and so has less time for KDE hacking; he is looking for a KDE hacker willing to take over the KDE/ImageMagick project.

GOFAI-WMT. Lotzi Boloni revealed that he is working on a new organizational application, a visually browsable conceptual graph. The reaction was quite enthusiastic; Sirtaj Singh Kang chimed in with some of his ideas on the subject. Lotzi subsequently uploaded his code. Incidentally, GOFAI-WMT stands for "Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence - With a Modern Twist".

KMonop. Rob Kaper is in need of assistance with the KMonop project, a server/client implementation of the Monopoly board game. In particular, help is needed with the client portion. Interested parties should contact the KMonop team.

KDE Quickies. Moritz Moeller-Herrmann pointed out that Kmail won the GUI email client shoot-out feature by 32BitsOnline. Congratulations to all Kmail hackers and other parties involved. David Sweet released an update of the KDE Developer's mini-HOWTO. Herwin Jan Steehouwer posted an update on the status of KXicq.

Stefan Westerfeld offered his thoughts on multimedia in KDE 2.0 but appears to be unaware of other KDE multimedia efforts currently progressing. He has also spoken with Elliot Lee in an attempt at coordinate matters with the GNOME folks.

Chris Schlaeger is looking for beta testers for the SuSE Distribution. The aim is to minimize problems with the KDE packages in the next stable release. Interested parties should mail cs@kde.org.

Errata. Last week, I unintentionally short-changed the usefulness of the network-connection manager. The manager will also provide an easy way for applications to obtain a connection to the internet as well as be notified when the line goes up or down. It is similar to diald but with the intent of being portable and with several other features. For all the details, please read the list articles and Bjoern Kahl's web page.

An archive for these KDE devel bits is available.