Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 02:45:59 +0100
From: Stefan Heidrich <sheidric@rz.uni-potsdam.de>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: KDevelop 1.0 Final Press Release


Press Release:

KDevelop 1.0 - The KDE Development Environment

1. Introduction

This version 1.0 is the final official release for KDE 1.x systems.  Since
KDevelop (http://www.kdevelop.org) went to Beta status in August 1999, we
spent 4 months of development only for testing, correcting and improving
the current codebase. Beside that, we can now provide better support for

different Unix systems. The IDE proved its stability in real testing by
programmers, who created over a dozen of applications with beta versions of
KDevelop. Now all bugs are fixed and KDevelop showed that it is usable and
hits the intentions of the authors. We hope that our work is a good
contribution to free software development.

2. Intention

The main reason for the creation of KDevelop was the lack of a modern,
competitive solution for application development. Although Unix
systems provide the user with a good and stable environment, including
the X Window Sytem, modern tools available under other operating
systems are missing.

Whereas hard-core Unix-developers state that Emacs and vi are the
ultimate solution, KDE provides developers with a complete application
framework together with the Qt library. The fact of the commercial
availability of Qt also gets the interest of commercial development
parties. Therefore the KDevelop project wants to

a) provide a code-writing environment for free
b) ease the use of standard development tools such as autoconf and
automake
c) offer a graphical dialogeditor that reduces GUI design cycles
d) provide developers with direct, uncomplicated access to documentation
written
   by the team or by third parties. This includes documentation for the
   KDE and QT APIs.

3. Overview

The KDevelop IDE provides the following tools for C/C++
application development:

a) a wizard-based projectgenerator that builds configurable frameworks
   for various application types
b) a coding environment including:
   - a syntax-highlighting editor
   - a class browser and viewer
   - various file viewers
c) a documentation system for direct access to HTML-online
   documentation, including 5 handbooks for KDE/Qt development and fast
   search
d) a dialogeditor that fits the need for rapid construction of user
   interfaces, embedded completely into the development environment
e) works with the mime-type of files to start automagically the
   appropriate application inside KDevelop, like KIconEdit for bitmaps
   or KDbg for executables
f) CVS support for project development
g) support for uncomplicated localization of projects
h) translation into 17 languages
i) many additional features such as autosaving, commandline-passing etc.

This enables programmers to reduce development cycles to a minimum,
while it offers the flexibility to work as they want at the same time.

We like to mention that although KDevelop requires KDE and Qt to work,
you can as well use it for any other C++ project. It's designed as a
C/C++ development environment in the first place.

4. Why to use KDevelop

Every developer will ask if KDevelop can be better than Emacs, better
than MS Visual Studio, better than Borland. The fact, that KDevelop
provides a complete, user friendly interface, is mostly not regarded.

But we do not think we have to step back behind a long-term development
of e.g. Emacs. Actually KDevelop is being developed with beta versions
of KDevelop. In our own interest, stability was and is the main goal.
You can expect KDevelop to do what you want it to do, it will stay
stable, as far as we can consider by user reports of prior development
versions.

The features were designed during the need of them for our own purposes.

The programmer can expect that his environment interacts with him
intuitively
and in a fast and friendly way.

All features are well documented as well as we provide a whole set of
handbooks for giving KDE primers a seamless start from wherever
they may come from.

We hope that our contribution to the free software market will make more

users and programmers realize that they have a choice.

5. The Future

As KDE is stepping towards new technologies, the KDevelop project keeps
up with the time. Besides the final work on KDevelop 1.0, we already
proceeded
towards version 2.0 that will support KDE 2 and future versions of the
Qt library. So stay tuned !

6. About the Team

The KDevelop Project, started in summer 1998, aims to provide
developers with a good, stable and useful environment which can compete
with
modern IDEs. Since the beginning of the development, the team has
grown from three members of the core team to seven codewriters and
a translation team with over 50 people.
In the meantime, a lot of beta-testers have joined and shared their
experience to improve KDevelop in stability and functionality.