Amarok Blog - apachelogger

Facts about Rosetta and Kubuntu l10n

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 21:05:00 +0000

Facts

Kubuntu (needs to) import KDE's translations (+po templates, +desktop file translations, +desktop file po templates) into Launchpad's translations system Rosetta
Those translations then can be changed and/or enhanced
Changed translations don't automagically get overriden by a new upstream import but have to be reviewed by the translation team
Changed translations have to be manually upstreamed by the translator or the translation team (thus implying that one should either have direct access to upstream's po files or file loads of bug reports)
Rosetta makes new contributors contribute to out-of-date translations
Rosetta failed to properly support KDE 3's po format for years
Rosetta's interface is difficult to use
Rosetta has no clue when a package gets removed from the archives or superseded with a new major version that does not ship the once available translation template
Kubuntu's localization breaks at least once every release cycle, always as close to release as possible
Kubuntu string changes/additions don't get translated at times
Kubuntu needs to maintain patches to keep that whole construct of import-breakage-export working

Rants

Import

Having to import all main applications' l10n related data to a distribution specific tool for enhancement and bug fixing is a completely sane thing to do. Of course, if the whole process would not be bound to the build process (i.e. if it could be supervised outside the build process) it would be a lot easier to notice/track/find issues, and god knows there are loads of those (at least for KDE imports). It probably would also help if rosetta wouldn't need ages to process the data for import. But hey, what can you do, it's a bottlenecked design.

Rosetta

So, assuming that the data ended up properly in Rosetta (which is not always the case, though it arrived there ... I guess you can imagine what I'm talking about), now a nice community member can start fixing bugs or enhance the translation (to pick up on the bottleneck: if the template is imported but the po is not, there will be loads of untranslated strings ... again I'm quite confident that you see the implication here).

---
Let's use the following example:

Leon is Kubuntu user. He is speaking German and wants to help translate KDE. Being a user who actually knows about the need of translation he knows that the translations are being handled over at Launchpad. So he commands to konquer launchpad.net. Right at the top there is a link to Translations. Leon clicks.

On the translations main page he finds a link to the translations for Ubuntu 9.04. Again he follows that link.

Oh dear, what a load of red!!!!

Anyway, he scrolls down and eventually finds german.

So far so good, now Leon just needs to find some KDE application.

Hum... Leon reads kdesktop and kicker, having used KDE for quite some time he knows that this stuff was replaced in KDE 4 and is not even available in the archives anymore, so he avoids them, luckily they are fully translated anyway.

On the very same page he finds konqueror with one untranslated string. He thinks that one untranslated string would be a perfect starting point so he wants to give it a shot.

Our character filters for untranslated items having no clue what the guide filter means as there is only none or german.

The suggested translation "Textmarken" from openoffice's translations sounds about right so he applies that. For those who don't know, the KDE default translation for bookmark in german is "Lesezeichen", Leon doesn't know that, and neither does Rosetta. JohnTooray suggested "Lesezeichen" but that was almost 2 months ago, so one must assume it was not very much liked, so for the scenario's sake we will just ignore that there is already a suggestion.

Leon submits his suggestion "Textmarke" and goes on walking through >20 pages of templates trying to find more KDE stuff to translate.

[timelaps]

3 months later still no one approved his suggestions (in Rosetta someone from the managing team, i.e. the ubuntu translation team for $language, needs to approve the translation ... those poor people have to know all common translations for GNOME, KDE, GNU, $someothersoftwarestackinmain). Leon is right now pretty pissed off and decides to never try helping again.

---

I hope you see the flaws I tired to highlight, in that very simple example use. Those are mostly non-technical problems, I have talked about the technical ones so often on IRC and in various meetings that I am simply tired of repeating myself all the time.

Export

If we are super lucky someone didn't decrease the translations quality and the language teams were not too busy fighting with Rosetta's interface to not be able to approve new suggestions. At some point (post string freeze, so someone like Apachelogger, who would actually care if import and export are working correctly before that, doesn't have a chance to fix quirks before translators start working there arse off) a ubuntu langpack gets generated and spit upon the archives.

Communication

Ubuntu must be high on something since it seems pretty much impossible that Ubuntu and Kubuntu communicate just for once. It goes like that: Ubuntu does something -> Kubuntu notices it -> hell breaks loose -> Kubuntu tries to catch up -> Kubuntu barely (read: only partially) manages to catch up before release. That seems to be some kind of law of nature.

Latest example: "lets go rape our packages of their desktop file translations" which was done less than one month before release of 9.04 without any warning.

Result: Systemsettings was speaking english most of the time, so did the menu, so did loads of other stuff

Cause: The Kubuntu patch for grabing desktop file translations from .mo files was not working + the translations were not imorted + the templates were not imported + no-one ever warned us

This isn't news at all. A flickr image set is watching the progress of Kubuntu since 8.04 (though it is, with exception of 8.10, mostly tracking in-development progress, then again how much localization QA can you expect when it is horribly broken half the time).

Also if you speak german you might want to check out the latest KDE-de thread about Kubuntu's state of translation, they also had a similar one for 8.10, where they considered various crude but understandable actions in how to handle this issue. After all the KDE l10n teams probably get most of the complaints, because the user is lead to believe that it's a problem there.

Conclusion

So, finally just let me get my position straight.

Rosetta is the best example why rolling release does not work in every case
I raised my concerns about the constant issues and lack of quality coming out of Rosetta... for I think the last year or so
Most people do not speak English, and if they do as second language I find it doubtable that they do well enough to use an operating system in English
Ubuntu touts itself as believing it's important for everyone to have a computer that works in their own language, yet the project as whole (Kubuntu being part of that larger Ubuntu) fails to meet that very claim most of the time
I pity all those that have to use Rosetta in order to make their desktop not speak 2 languages at the same time, as well as those that have to live with constant complaints coming from Kubuntu users
I am deeply sorry that I can't help either of them, due to the very nature of Rosetta still not being open source
Should this crap continue I am going to leave the Project and join Debian or Fedora, I am not going to waste my time on a system that is constantly breaking due to external (meaning not caused by the Kubuntu crew) screwups
Comments on how to improve the situtation (i.e. what Kubuntu should do in order to get out of all this) are greatly, because I'd rather not leave a project I have spent most of my spare time on for the last couple of years

Project Neon: KDE Nightly Edu++ GGadgets++

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

If I had more time for blogging I would do more blogging... but I don't have

Quick update:
Newly available in Project Neon's kde-nightly is kdeedu (i.e. kde-nightly-kdeedu). Newly available in the kdebase build is support for Google Gadgets (using GGL SVN from yesterday).
Upcoming is Quassel (which got KDE integration) as well as the return of MSN in Kopete.

choqoK - twittering fun

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

I am glad to announce that choqok my most favorite Twitter client (well only for a week or so is now available for Kubuntu Jaunty as well as Intrepid-backports (a.k.a. unsupported updates).

I must admit choqoK looks very promising and can probably also become a very awesome non-twitter micro-blogging client. I guess the lead developer could use some help, so if you get a minute or two: check it out and maybe come up with some feedback or even a patch or a piece of translation or a handbook...

Have fun with 0.2 meanwhile.

To the Batcave!

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

<jontheechidna> You should do a seminar "Rapid debian package deployment with ruby"

(Click for bigger awesome)

Qt Firefox

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Due to the KDE Dot interview about Qt Firefox I (as a Kubuntu guy) felt pretty challenged....

me@apoc { ~/moz }$ ls -lah | grep deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 me me 22M 2008-08-13 00:35 firefox-qt_0.1~hg20080812-0ubuntu1~ppa1_i386.deb

That's all for now

Can't you hear the drums?

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

You know the tension before something huge happens? Like when Luke faces Darth Vader, or just the minute before Batman chooses to make Harvey Dent a hero in exchange for his own reputation, or when Frodo is supposed to throw the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom.

That is what I am experience more and more with every day that passes by.

^ that is a clicky link, by the way

I am disappearing

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Due to new employment (Zivildienst) I'll be unable to continue my work on the various projects I am a proud contributor of. Well, until mid-October at least.

I'll most likely not be able to follow mailing lists, nor will I be online on IRC when I am not really available. If you want to reach me, you better drop me a mail personally... the inbox is pretty much everything I kind of read. Should you be lucky enough to actually get a hold of me: don't expect me to do or say anything useful

By 2010 I should be able to attend conventions and fairs again, so you can worship me live and in action

So long...

Monthly changing wallpapers? ... aye!

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

While KDE 4 is shipping with awesome default wallpapers, I still find myself at times facing the problem that they become boring after some weeks. At the same time being developer and all it is difficult to keep up with latest wallpaper trends, also partly due to the fact that I simply can't watch kde-look for hot new stuff. So I said to myself (due to continuing lack of people to drop my ideas at ) maybe having the wallpaper switch monthly via a remote resource would make sense. Well, that is how I came up with Kubuntu Wallpaper of the Month (kubuntu-wotm). Now, while this would be a nice feature for Plasma itself, due to me being a self-centered distro developer (and not being qualified for Plasma hacking anyway) I decided that doing it via a package makes more sense for the time being (+ it has the advantage that our update-notifier queries the repos anyway).

Don't let me bore you though. Bottom line is: we need a team of people with taste for good wallpapers and the time to select a good one every month, to get monthly new wallpapers for Kubuntu. If you are constantly looking for hot new wallpapers anyway, joining the team and helping people like me, who are totally incapable of finding good wallpapers at all, would probably improve your karma quite a bit

Please poke me on IRC, leave a comment, or drop a mail to apachelogger@kubuntu.org

...

Since we just talked about this a bit on IRC: I could also imagine that we make a collection of wotm wallpapers available in the official Kubuntu archives (e.g. wallpapers of the last 12 months). That way you can also have a nice collection of wallies for slideshowing, updating everytime you upgrade to a new Kubuntu release

It is Qt...

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

...unless you are talking about Quick Time.

Project Neon: neonmake

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

I totally forgot to blog yesterday :-S

Anyway, since the first day of Project Neon, there was neonmake. You might be wondering what neonmake is, though if you read all the other blog posts about Project Neon you probably know that I will explain it as following:

neonmake is a wrapper around make, ensuring all environment variables are set as necessary

That however doesn't really describe it very well, in theory neonmake should be called amarok-nightly-kde-nightly-cmake-make-sudo-make-install, which of course is far too long

Well, let's get through it step by step.

neonmake consists of 3 parts - neonmake, make.sh and varsrc

neonmake is a wrapper around cmake, make.sh and sudo make install
the nifty thing about it is that it will bring you to $src/build, or stay there, or create it (i.e. it forces you to do out-of-source builds and keep your source tree clean
it will also detect whether you are trying to compile anything amarokish (i.e. if amaork is part of the source directory's name) and tell make.sh about it

make.sh is a wrapper around make and varsrc
it will force compiling against kde-nightly or amarok-nightly depending on certain magic cases and invoke vasrc
once varsrc is finished it will run make

varsrc is responsible for the environment variables and is usually invoked by all amarok-nightly- or neon scripts

The actual capabilities are quite confusing (I think I don't even understand it completely, and I created that thing after all).

you can run neonmake with kde or amarok as argument forcing it to compile against kde-nightly or amarok-nightly
if the source folder contains the word "amarok" neonmake will asume you compile against amarok-nightly
neonmake will create and/or take you to a subdirecotry called "build" ensuring you do an out-of-source build
if 1. and 2. don't apply varsrc will check whether kde-nightly's kde4-config is available
if kde4-config doesn't return the proper direcotries it asumes we have kde-nightly installed but aren't using it -> variables for amarok-nightly
if 4. does not apply (i.e. no kde-nightly is installed) it will check for amarok-nightly's kde4-config, if it is available -> varaiables for amarok-nightly
if none applies it will throw out totally insane errors

to sum that up:

you can only compile against kde-nightly with kde as argument or when you are running it
you can only compile against amarok-nightly with amarok as argument or when kde-nightly is not installed or when the directory name contains amarok

Suggestions for improvements, as always, very welcome.

Now you go play with neonmake and I have to rest from this post.

A breath of fresh air for Konsole

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Oxygen thingy of the day: Konsole Color Scheme

I'd still like to get some feedback on the color composition so give it a try. Currently only Nightrose (aka Lydia) tested it, and usually her display's colors are way off .
Lydia also states that it rocks with irssi, but who uses that thing anyway?

Grab it today and get your Konsole a breath of fresh air.

BTW: apparently it takes some time to get used to it, but once you did, it is quite awesome to work with this color scheme

The Awful KHelpCenter

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Today I did a little bug hunt (that's where you actually search for the bugs and then kill them int he most hackish manner

And KHelpCenter made me cry, seriously...

It's still using the crystal icon all over the place:

It's main content is for some reason missing icons:

Remember this pic:

Notice anything?

Note the upper right in the following

Glossary has an as awesome icon issue open content uses help-contents, closed ones should use contents2 (crystalsvg name of course, and an oxygen replacement never got requested apparently :S)

Content of the Glossary then did it and made me cry

At least I got search index....

...strange that it doesn't work even though the index builder said so

First off: I didn't report these issues yet, because bugs.kde.org only offers versions up to 3.5 and unspecified, now I can't really use unspecified, right?

Things I was wondering: Why does khelpcenter still use htdig? Wouldn't Strigi/Nepomuk would be better for that kind of job? Does the index builder need to make me think it succeeded? Does everything have to look so broken? Is khelpcenter actually maintained?

Meanwhile I understood that none of the answers is important anyway .... we, KDE, as a community should just go fix these issues.

I already did a start

DBug

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

What is better than Akademy?
...
inGardenWithCoffeeHaXX0ring(tm)

Nowadays everyone is obsessed with debugging, including me, this obsession leads to the urge of having debug packages for each any everything. So, while half the KDE crew was listening to talks due to leak of power supply I was working on debug packages for Project Neon (i.e. kde-nightly and amarok-nightly) and I think the Neon PPA doubled its size.

Now you can install amarok-nightly-dbg which is pulling in a complete debug stack for amarok-nightly. In addition to that you also get a new script called amarok-nightly-debug which wraps around amarok-nightly-vars and gdb. Basically the same applies for kde-nightly, but kde-nightly-dbg will only pull in the necessary dbg packages rather than the complete stack (just like kde-nightly). There is no wrapper script yet, but kcrash takes care of almost everything anyway

If you have time, please take the dbg packages for a testcrash and complain if it fails to crash ... err... to trace the crash

And tomorrow I'll tell you about a script I created months ago and used it yesterday for the first time.

About Help, Wikis and Firefox Qt

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Busy days, like really busy....

First things first.
KHelpCenter looks less awkward:

It now uses the help-browser icon instead of the old crystal one. The style templates are fixed, glossary now also comes with KDE 4 style and the old introduction stuff got removed completely.
Kicker applets stuff was removed in favor of Plasma (which also got an icon . In general all icons are now fixed (well, some quirks with the main items are still remaining).
KCModules (i.e. the thingies for System Settings and KInfoCenter) are added to their categories.

I also came to think about improving the general experience. In my opinion the interface should be redesigned making the search a central part (considering nepomuk/strigi usage gets implemented), there is really no way I would want to browse docs manually in the year 2008 . Also using Phonon and KHTML/QWebKit a much greater use of online content should be considered (e.g. screencasts).

About the written online content we also had a discussion today. Essentially a lot of the documentation is outdated, no wonder thinking of the amount of applications and features, so really no one's fault here, still we should improve the situtation. Current proposal: using a wiki for ongoing documentation, then take snapshots for proof reading by the responsible developers and then let translators do their magic. Eventually even do the translation in the wiki? I certainly think with this approach we should only ship a very basic amount of documentation with KDE and access the remaining parts online.
I think Windows' help does it quite the same way in that it includes the MS support database, well at least I think it does.

If anyone wants to get loads of karma, he/she may step up and start work on KHelpCenter, I really think there is great potential for this application.

-------

Another really cool thing: work on a new wiki.kde.org started (whichmakes me quite happy since the current one was always kind of not-working when I needed something). The best thing about it is that it got OpenId (alsa known as 'I-only-need-one-login') support, which goes very well with the OpenID support in Amarok's web infrastructure.
The thing is: we need you! you, dear reader
Content from wiki.kde.org needs to be reviewed and selected for migration or dumping (later on moving and updating seems to be on the todo).

So, if you have some time and want to help KDE get a new shiny wiki -> join #kde on irc.freenode.net and poke Jucato

-------

Meanwhile I got firefox-qt to work (at least until you press any buttons...), head over to Jonathan's blog for more information.

One note about the used archive though: this archive is meant for very expermiental packages (Intrepid users will find mozilla-plugin-plasma for example). By experimental I don't only mean the software itself but also the packages, e.g. there is no guarantee that firefox-qt will be named firefox-qt once it is in the offical archives.
Therefore I suggest to be very careful which packages get installed from this archive, I would even go so far that you should remove it once you installed the desired software and check for updates yourself.

Comparing KDE 3 with $SOMETHING

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

I just (again) noticed how different KDE 3 and KDE 4 really are.

In the latest issue of Full Circle (Ubuntu/GNOME focused online magazine, still very recommendable!) theming of KDE 3 and GNOME were compared at page 26.
Now this doesn't make any sense because theming is a useless thing in KDE 4, Oxygen is just too awesome to theme it away

But seriously. All 4 mentioned points aren't like that in Kubuntu's KDE 4 anymore... I hope I am allowed to quote Lance. If not: he may poke me in the eye, thus slow down release preparation of KDE 4.1.1

1. In order to theme the login manager you have to install KControl. Why is this not already available in the Look and Feel?

There is still a little quirk (or actually a rather big one) since you can't get root access easily. I hope to get that resolved before Intrepid.

2. The GRUB boot loader can be themed, but again, it's not an option by default in KControl. Why does it require an application to be installed?

In Intrepid we will most probably ship Kgrubeditor by default allowing you to restore a broken GRUB from the Live CD and of course theming when installed.

3. After downloading a theme, there is nowhere to apply it unless you know that it can be dragged and dropped on top of the settings window, or that you can go to the command line and use KControl.

I guess you are talking about theme packages. Support for these vanished from KDE 4.1 and IIRC they never worked properly anyway, eventually they broke more settings than they actually themed.

4. I also had to install Ksplash to change and theme the splash screen just after login, but before you hit the desktop.

I guess that is an improvement over KDE 3?

...now back to the batcave (don't ask, it's top secret)

Sometimes I am feeling loved

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

... definitely not today.

I can't do anything in the Ubuntu wiki (bug report) ... yeah Konqueror is only default browser on Kubuntu, why would we do QA for it

I just learned that when you install the java plugin it will pull in firefox, which will pull in ubufox, which will pull in synaptic, which will pull in half the main archive.
And why do you think is that?

Depends: libasound2, libx11-6, libxext6, libxi6, libxp6, libxtst6, sun-java6-bin (= 6-07-4ubuntu2), firefox | firefox-2 | iceweasel | mozilla-firefox | iceape-browser | mozilla-browser | epiphany-gecko | epiphany-webkit | epiphany-browser | galeon | midbrowser | xulrunner

Notice anything?

Now I am feeling rather stupid because I actually started work on ubuntu-kde-default-settings making KDE 4 apps look like native Ubuntu/GNOME ones, too bad I don't feel like continuing it

Introducing the Apachelogger Software Store

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Project Neon (i.e. me, me and me ) recently introduced the all fancy kdeplasma-addons package to kde-nightly on Kubuntu...

followed by kdeutils...

followed by sleep...

followed by kdepim (including -dbg package, for the upcoming KMail BugDay)...

followed by a screenshot:

QA, PowerDevil, KDESVN-kde4, Quassel, Java

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Kubuntu got its very own bug team!
The bug tracker changes list also got updated to aggregate all KDE 4 packages (well, at least I hope we catched all). But! Be aware that Jonathan is pretty much flooding the list (I didn't read mails for 2 days and got 360 unread bug mails...).

Anyway.
I am currently thinking about getting powerdevil (that power manager thingy) in the Intrepid pockets. Problem is: currently it only ships with one profile, which actually screws more stuff up than it could possibly improve :S
You can find Intrepid and Hardy packages in the experimental archive (I'd like to remind, that this repository is dangerous, so you should either remove it from your sources.list once you got the desired package(s), or download/install the packages manually). If anyone tries it - I would like some feedback

kdesvn-kde4 is also available in this repository. It's a SVN snapshot from yesterday, seems to be working quite well though. If you choose to test it, please also install the -dbg package and give feedback at it's kde-apps page.

Intrepid's quassel(-core) package got a make over and is now creating a fancy log file + it doesn't die on upgrades + configurable loglevel/port in /etc/default/quasselcore.

kubuntu-restricted-extras doesn't depend on sun-java6-plugin anymore (we switched to -jre)... a workaround in kubuntu-default-settings is making it actually work without doing anything.

Snapshot of the day:

Dragons, DVDs and New Device Notifiers

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Some days Dragon Master Ian aka eean asked me to have a look at integrating Dragon Player into the New Device Notifier thingy. While I was pretty sure it's not meant for actual use yet (didn't seem like it afterwards either ) I jumped into it and came up with dragonplayer-opendvd.desktop.

The magic behind that stuff is that one actually can define very clearly when the desktop file should apply (using information provided by Solid).

X-KDE-Solid-Predicate=[[ StorageVolume.ignored == false AND OpticalDisc.availableContent == 'Data|VideoDvd' ] OR [ StorageVolume.ignored == false AND OpticalDisc.availableContent == 'Data|VideoDvd' ]]

Meaning unless the volume is set to be ignored somewhere from something and if it is an optical disc providing video dvd data this cool application can launch it.
The line above might seem a bit strange ... actually it is ... apparently whatever is parsing that desktop file (some solid dataengine I guess) doesn't like 2 ANDs or no AND or no OR => simply put: x = ? AND y = ? OR x = ? AND z = ?
No more and no less than that

Also I think the new device notifier needs some changes to increase understandibility:
The usual action is 'Open with ApplicationName' (e.g. Open with Dolphin), in my opinion an approach like in KickOff would be much better => use the generic name and only provide the application name as minor information. As a new user I might not know what Dolphin or Dragon Player is and what it does (ok, for Dragon it's pretty obvious so using 'Open with File Manager' and 'Open with Video Player' seems much more reasonable to me.

Anyway, get the new dragonplayer and check out the new device notifier integration

BTW: kde-nightly is pretty broken apparently

Le KDE sprechen ?????

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Kubuntu users now also can get a localized KDE

Just install you language's package, e.g. kde-l10n-de for german, then do the following:
Kickoff -> System Settings -> Regional & Language
there you can select Country/Region which should auto-adjust a couple of stuff to your local preferences (for example the date formatting) in addition to that it should also select the installed language. If this fails for whatever reason, use the "Add Language" drop-down menu instead.

Beside l10n, we also uploaded a couple of extragear packages like KTorrent, Skanlite and KFax.

Pimp my Konqueror
Installing konqueror-plugin-searchbar-kde4 will add the world famous google searchbar to your konqueror again
Also checkout the other konqueror-plugin-* packages, maybe you want to install some of them.

KDE 4.1.0 + Kubuntu Ninjas

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Finally KDE 4.1.0 got released *hoooray*.

... since I am sure there are going to be plenty blog posts about the beauty of and awesomeness of 4.1 I want to move the spotlight a bit (as if I ever had it put right

The Kubuntu Ninjas
While I was doing the rc1 packages on my own I noticed that this is just too much work for one mind to deal with and it is impossible to prepare the Hardy backports (which are more important on a short-term base) as well, within the given amount of time. As a result of this some guy stated on ubuntuforums.org that apparently Kubuntu's QA is pretty bad. Reasonable assumption considering we didn't get KDEPim built in time and thus caused some problems for early upgraders.
As a result of this we know have certified Package Ninjas(tm) for KDE releases. Using super nifty infrastructure we managed to provide a pretty flawless transition to KDE 4.1.0 on Hardy and almost the very same for Intrepid. Note the word 'pretty' in that sentence . There were some minor quirks which have to be worked out in future release preparation, but I am confident we are on the right way.

So who are these guys providing Kubuntu users with the awesomest KDE 4 packages ever?

JontheEchidna (aka Jonathan Thomas) likes to play XBoing and is best in forgetting to exchange files necessary to build on Hardy
vorian (aka Steve Stalcup) is the one leading us to World Domination or at least helps us take over #amarok to throw one awesome party, meanwhile he tries to archive karma by packaging all of extragear and preventing kdebase-runtime from building
smarter (aka Guillaume Martres) is the Blue Knight who is pretty much ready to become a MOTU (Master of the Universe = the guys who keep the majority of Ubuntu packages in shape) but does not know how to become one (maybe someone can help? I really don't know how I became MOTU either...
Arby (aka Richard Birnie) seems to be our personal merge (debian+ubuntu packaging = new ubuntu packaging) monkey and does backports in the shortest amount of time I ever measured
Riddell (aka jr or Jonathan Riddell), the almighty Kubuntu robot, who's sponsoring the Intrepid uploads ... he also can transform into an oracle if someone might have unanswerable questions
and me, myself and I, sitting in my deckchair, sipping Captain Morgan with Coke and partying until 5:30 in the morning

So join some strange IRC channels on Freenode, apparently they hang out in #kubuntu-devel and #kubuntu-kde4, and give them some cookies or similar.

And now... for the spotlight... KDE 4.1.0 is so awesome, I just love folderview, Plasma is the most beautiful piece of software I have ever seen.

KWin and the capseo thingy

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Since some people already asked what to do with the mysterious .cps files:

KWin in KDE 4 offers the possibility to record one's desktop. The resulting files have a .cps suffix (cps = capseo = video codec created by the same developer as the underlying library [called captury] of the recording feature). I actually know no player which supports native playback of capseo, which is why you most likely want to convert it.
Here comes the trick part, the website moved from captury, to captury, to captury (yes this is just for giving google some context

On the most current location of the website you can find:

cpsrecode -i screen-capture.cps -o - \
| mencoder - -o screen-capture.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=xvid:autoaspect=1

This binary is on Kubuntu part of the capseo package, and probably something similar on other distributions.

Have fun.

Fire has three needs: ignition, fuel, and OXYGEN

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Light years ago work on an Oxygen theme for Firefox started. Meanwhile the maintainer changed, a new major version of Firefox got released and people noticed how ugly Firefox can be without gtk-qt-engine

To fight this ugliness, I stopped sleeping for 2 days and uploaded the Oxygen theme for Firefox, version 1.0, a couple of weeks ago.

Even though it didn't quite make it through the public nomination process yet, I am quite certain that it works like a charm so grab the first release and don't forget to give a review to get it out of that awful sandbox/experimental area.

Grab it ---> HERE <--- F.A.Q.:

Why do I have to login to download?

Version 1.0 isn't yet approved for public use and experimental downloads are only available after login.
Logging in also gives you the possibility to leave a review (which is highly appreciated as every review probably reduces the time until this version can leave the experimental status).

Why is it only available for Linux?

The Windows and Mac versions of Firefox expect the drop down arrow for recent pages to be themed and have an icon assigned manually, since I don't have a Windows or Mac around I can't get it to work and I have no idea how/whether this change effects the Linux version. Windows and Mac support is target for 1.1 though.

Why does this only change the icons?

Desktop integration, which is what the Oxygen crew is trying to provide here, means for one that an application uses the current icon set. This is however prevented by the fact that Firefox doesn't rely to 100% on the GTK-defined icon set (thus even with gtk-qt you wouldn't get a complete Oxygen experience). But desktop integration also includes widget style and colors, even though we could make the theme look somewhat like the real Oxygen, it would remove the style and color integration. This is really where software like the gtk-qt-engine should fill in.

Project Neon - Ask Harald (FAQ)

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

Note to me, myself and I: FAQs should be listed somewhere to save me the daily headache....

Is amarok-nightly for openSUSE published yet?
No, I'll try to get a repository outside of my personal home one and build for openSUSE 11.0, after a couple of tests amarok-nightly for openSUSE can go live.

Why is there no amarok-nightly for openSUSE 11.0 to be tested?
Because I am preparing for exams, so I have no time for build-dependency magic, and because I will only build for openSUSE 11.0 once the above stated reason is sorted out. However, apparently the 10.3 packages work just fine on 11.0 as well (hooray for good packagin

Why is amarok-nightly for openSUSE not built nightly?
No neon package gets built nightly as long as it is being tested. Nightly builds will start once openSUSE packages are published in an own repository.

Does kde-nightly for Kubuntu include debug symbols?
No, neither does amarok-nightly. The packages are built with debugging enabled, a packaging script however strips them for some reason I forgot. In fact I tried adding -dbg packages earlier on, but that didn't work for some strange reason. The good news however is: I will digg into this soonish. After all a good description on how to reproduce is almost as good as a good backtrace

Can we get a foobar package for kde-nightly?
Feel free to drop ideas at the mailing list, but keep in mind that the build resources on Launchpad are pretty limited, so kdepim or koffice are probably not going to get in... at least for now. In general the current amount of packages is not going to grow a lot - I might only add kdeplasmoids some time soon, but that's about it.

Do you plan to integrate more applications into kde-nightly?
See above.

How do I compile stuff against kde-nightly?
This is a bit tricky - you can take a look at the neonmake script in amarok-nightly-tools to get an idea. I will include some proper buildscripts later on for use with kde-nightly and amarok-nightly.

Why is there no kde-nightly for openSUSE?
The openSUSE KDE guys do a great job on maintaining their own KDE snapshot packages. So launching a kde-nightly stack would be rather pointless, right? Duplicated effort and all..

Project Neon - KDE Nightly Builds

nospam@example.com (Harald Sitter) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:32:09 +0000

..it's that time again, when I announce something new, which isn't new at all due to testing

Since amarok-nightly is a huge success ....

Project Neon now also includes kde-nightly builds for Kubuntu!

Currently available are kdebase, kdemultimedia, kdegraphics, kdenetwork and kdesdk

Now my dear Kubuntu users, you can: develop, debug, fix, test, promote and break your system
Have fun, and in case something goes wrong: blame KRF in #amarok.neon.

Misc:

Thanks to everyone who helped testing kde-nightly!
As seen above, Neon now has a shiny IRC channel - YAY \o/
amarok-nightly for openSUSE is undergoing testing, if you want to join the fun -> #amarok.neon
I am now member in the elite Oxygen Club -> Video
Because I got loads of stuff to do this post is quite short