Get up Stand up

As you all know there is an outstanding new application for document viewing coming together with KDE 4: okular. It is basically a modern replacement for kpdf, new from the beginning and it can support a variety of documents you wouldn't have a reader for normally: PDF, Postscript, DjVu, CHM are just parts of tons of picture formats follow.
As always there are lots of readers available on Windows already - some are free but most are probably closed source. So okular will have to compete against adobe reader e.g. at its home.
I think that the success of okular on windows will depend on the browser integration - so if somebody reads this and knows enough about firefox, opera or Internet Explorer to make okular(part) to a working plugin - just tell me.
I hopefully can integrate that into the new years packages (but I don't think I can add djvu, postscript or chm support right now) Okular is still missing an icon as do some more applications.



Ok, this picture is basically for Pino and Albert since they both helped me a lot to come to this point.

Update

There were some packages that failed to build on monday: kdeedu and another one.
I worked a bit on it and after disabling the stuff (e.g. kdeedu docs) I finally have the packages building atm.
I will work further on the kdewin-menubuilder this week, although there might not be a lot of time left for that. And perhaps I can even integrate it into either the emerge scripts or into the installer itself. Both will have to be ready for the new years release.
In kdegraphics kolourpaint is still missing: I get some strange errors about unfound constructors (they are there but not found); basically the problem is that 'kpTransformDialogEnvironment*' is not equal to 'kpTransformDialogEnvironment**(*)()' and I cannot change it it seems.

But enough for problems, I am still missing some xmas presents so I will go and get some now.

Last pre-xmas packages

Another week has gone by and I am sitting in front of two builds again. Ok, one is behaving nice and the other one tried to stop in between - and I have to restart it now, it will hopefully workout fast though (update: not working yet).
It is known already that trolltech put their phonon backends into the KDE-svn-repository and they promised to develop them over there. That meant that on monday morning shakes told me that his custom backend worked on mingw, on monday evening I made a package of a famous application and uploaded it to my server and on wednesday trolltech announced that they put their ds9 backend into the repo. So we started again and since the stuff was written for msvc only I wasn't sure I could ever get that working with mingw - but shakes did it himself (my way was right but I had again not enough patience) and so the build was ok now. It seems though that the backend doesn't want to work good enough for me. I'll see what the packages from the package mirror say, they might be better.
On the weekend jstaniek made me compile some strange libraries we'll possibly need in future but I gave up half way as well. To be honest I wanted to work on another issue (which isn't complete though yet): The automatic compilation of .lnk files out of the standard fd.o .desktop files. So I inserted a new tool into the kdewin-installer module (there are really some tools there already which are not needed for the installer itself). It is called kdewin-menuBuilder. The last remaining problem of the menuBuilder is the Categories entry: under *nix it should be a real category which is represented in the menu by a virtual folder in which the application entry will appear. Under windows it is unpossible to make virtual folders - and since I don't like the idea of duplicate entries, I decided that there has to be another way. Probably I will take KDE as the root (for now) then the fd.o "Main Category" as the second level and the first fd.o additional category (which is not called Qt or KDE) will be the third level. That should be easy todo.
Another work string I currently have in my hands are the application icons that need to be written in the cmake files - on the fly. Today I added those to the kdegames module(which has a lot of applications to build), I will hopefully be able to work on some others this week as well.

Announcement: Amarok to come

I couldn't believe it - Amarok 2.0 is working on Windows - even though with some severe problems still. It went faster then I believed. So I made a big effort to make a package as fast as possible and now it uploads to my server.

The package isn't really for early adopters - it is just a developer preview.

I hope I can work a bit more on it, to bring at least the part windows uses, into a better shape. But at the same time I still have to do some stuff for university, the other applications are calling as well (I can hear kopete's voice very distinctively) and of course my wife needs more time - it is xmas in two weeks.


So far,
SE

Another star soon to arise

After Konqueror made its step to be the new browser competition on windows, another famous KDE application is on its way: Amarok. Amarok isn't ready for linux as well, and it is supposed to be included in the KDE 4.1 release. However behind the scenes there is already some work done, and even a custom phonon backend exists.
So I started to work on the mingw version but until now, there is no output (according to shakes there is output on windows possible already, it requires the msvc build though). At this point I wanted to provide a link to a single installer package for amarok - I will have to postpone it now I think.
Okular works better now after pinotree reappeared in IRC; there was a pretty simple error - you have to run update-mime-database manually, it isn't run automatically anymore if you install with the DESTDIR option. There are some errors with pdf's still.
Right beside me, my other computer rebuilds the KDE packages for my mingw snapshot server - which got some review by Ralf some days ago.

So besides rebuilding my goal for next week will be the debug of amarok and to make some thoughts about single installers and making them available.
Another issue that is within my head for some weeks already is some kind of emerge binary package (the package could be then distributed within the installer) and probably the rest which is staying inside the svn as it already is. With a simple dependency on python and on subversion you can then install all needed dependencies for getting the newest KDE from SVN.

My second home switched its name from kde-edu to kns-ghns - fregl and jpwhiting are working quite hard to get KNewStuff make what they want. I think this is one of the most important projects for free software: you can provide user generated contents and the step from the simple user to the open-source developer gets smaller and smaller. That should be a good thing.

It is very very late again, I want to get up early tomorrow, so this is it for now.
hopefully next week with some interesting link;-)

back from Paris

I just came back today from the first KDE-Edu Developer Meeting in Paris. After the windows meeting in september, this was my second meeting with other developers and until now, I was just meeting new people. Nevertheless it was really really useful since I am currently talking to them over irc all day. I met a whole bunch of people that are very actively developing the edu apps: like Annma, Jeremy, Albert and of course Mauricio. Since I had some problems with my kde installation I had to install everything again on saturday night and sunday morning. I held a short talk that hopefully gave some idea of my work and at last I got step, the physical simulator running.
In the week before that, I was renting some space on a webserver (1.5GB) and turned it into a snapshot server on wednesday. I hope to put the new packages online every week but I still have to work a bit on the installer, as well as on emerge since there is still an error with the name of the patch emerge script: Right now the script is called patch-2.5.9.7.py; the right name would be patch-2.5.9-7.py. When I eventually changed the name in svn last weekend, building with emerge got impossible. I changed it back in r743581 and r744619.
So basically the outlines of this weeks work are drawn, my build and upload server is running, my laptop rebuilds as well.
A good week and hopefully a new post next week.
SE

grand opening of the news weekly

The idea is to collect all different personal news channels about my work and to post them in this blog. Basically a real diary.

I am currently 25 years old, studying physics and married since some months.

Nearly all my free time I am working on the KDE port to MS Windows.

I hope you'll get the informations you need, if not tell me.
SE