More Cross-desktop collaborators and the eventual '1.0' release of the weather applet

Colaboration

I am pleasantly surprised to hear from Aaron Seigo and others that there has been more collaboration going on that most people might not know about. Learning that Qt 4.x now can use the Glib event loop gives us a lot of abilities to create glue between KDE and GNOME interfaces which is really encouraging.

Also happy to see other GNOME people such as Hubert Figuière and Rodrigo Moya are looking at more collaboration between our two teams. This can only be a Good Thing.

I personally look forward to working with other teams together to help us make the Desktop on Linux (and the other Freenixes too) grow.

I had a look at libgweather and wonder how to hook this into the weather engine but haven't examined the code yet. If it can provide similar data such as collecting current conditions as the ions do, maybe create an ion (data source plugin) to load libgweather and hook that in somehow.

Plasma Development

In the meantime, I spent a night of debugging to track down some new behaviours the Plasma Sprint has introduced. Needless to say, some of my code changes to fix the applet seem like ugly hacks but they might be part of a bug somewhere in the new API I hope. Now that I'm Plasma Ready(tm) again, I'm planning for a simple applet release in time for KDE 4.1 (for extragear).

Now, in previous postings I've talked about all sorts of wizbang features and things, but those are the goals of the project. This first version is going to have a 'button like' look, much like other simplistic applets. It will utilize the SVG skin theming only for now not icon theming. We don't have a free set of icons to use other then kweather's icons. Maybe this will make the Oxygen people cry and demand new icons

Since I'm going for simplistic right now, it will only display current conditions. Let's get something out the door that works. As for KDE 4.2, things should become more exciting.

It was important for Plasma to break the API and even if that slowed down Plasma development, this will give us a much better framework to work from.

Syndicated 2008-04-30 20:48:22 from spstarr's blog

Calling all cross-desktop developers! Let's make crossdesktop colaboration more important in Free/Libre Open Source

It's been a little while since I've last posted an entry. My own personal life has been busy and hasn't given me much time to work on code. That will change soon though

I post here today as a KDE developer and moderate in the support of cross-desktop collaboration and friendship. Myself and a fellow GNOME friend have created a channel on Freenode and irc.gnome.org (Gimpnet) called #freedesktop-cafe. The channel is designed to have GNOME and KDE (and other desktop camps) developers (and users too if you like) come together for casual (non-developer) chat and to help build friendships. It's not meant to be political. The channel relays its messages to both networks. I'd like to know what you all think.

This channel is not sponsored by either KDE or GNOME. I hope in future we can work together more, despite our language differences and technologies. You can't work with people if you aren't friends with them.

Syndicated 2008-04-25 17:09:09 from spstarr's blog

Sometimes, you just have to do it

You know, it's just in my nature. When someone falls, you help them up. When someone needs help you provide assistance. Well, the same goes in the online world. You see, ever since Aaron Seigo and Siraj Razick wrote up the CIA.vc applet, I sort of had a small crush for it. After watching it bitrot, stumble and cry for help. I thought it was time to make it smile and feel loved once again.

I bring you the updated CIA.vc applet. There are some small goals to come for this such as, adding a config dialog to display (or allow) you to type the CIA project you want to monitor and finally fix some of the rendering issues near the bottom of the plasmoid (if the current layout functionality in 4.0.x lets me).

Just remember, when you see code wallowing with sorrow and shame, cheer it up and make it grow and shine!

Syndicated 2008-01-08 03:47:33 from spstarr's blog

Happy New Year! And a little present

Well, the homestretch is near, I've had to dropped some functionality to get this finished for KDE 4.0.0. So, no Icons for this version. But, you can see It should replace most of the functionality kweather did. This applet does not support dropping onto the panel or If it does, it might not render correctly.

I decided to just leave the name 'Weather Applet' for generic reasons. Maybe the name will change for KDE 4.1 we'll see.

Next, I have to write a HOWTO for people to write ions (data source backends) to get other weather sources from your local country (if available).

If you know of any countries that provide XML data or freely available data, do let me know. I'd be happy to write a backend to add to this list

Here's a busy screenshot showing various places. Some of the data sources (ions) report warning/watch information. Only the Environment Canada one at this time provides this information.

Comments welcome, please note this is just for KDE 4.0.x, KDE 4.1 I will implement the features mentioned in previous blog postings. We just ran out of time folks

Syndicated 2008-01-03 07:30:06 from spstarr's blog

Goals for the Weather Applet (I need a name for this) and testing KDE 4.0 post-Beta 3

Given the time constraints for KDE 4.0, I have decided to downgrade the functionality for the weather applet. In this release, my aim is to replace kweather functionality completely. This should be feesable to do for the 1.0 release.

Given that Plasma will likely have changes for KDE 4.1, It would make sense to hold off until more of the plumbing has settled down then all the eyecandy can be added in.

I gave KDE 4.0 post-Beta #3 (October 21nd build) a go last night. For the most part, I was able to use KDE functionally. Konqueror crashed a few times, but expected. Composite worked, exploding windows and all I could not log out or lock screen as it would deadlock X for some reason.

Given I've been ridiculed on IRC for complaining about KDE 4.0's release time/schedule, The best thing I can do is to look at what bugs that can be fixed which I can start looking at tonight.

I would note the Oxygen window decoration is nice however on LCD screens - gamma adjusted or not - it there is no contrast between white windows. I hope the theme will get gradients so that one could distinguish between different windows.

Syndicated 2007-10-22 17:53:39 from spstarr's blog