04: September 2005
This month in SVN
KDE Development news
Welcome to the last issue of This Month in SVN for the KDE 3.5 series. As KDE 3.5 is in feature freeze and nearing release, future articles will be focusing on the development of KDE4 and other related projects like Plasma and Appeal. If you’ve been intrigued by the new features in these issues and are raring to try them out, please consider installing the KDE 3.5 beta packages if your distro has provided them. The more beta testers we have reporting bugs, the better our release product can be!
With 3.5 beta out, SVN is starting to show the signs of last minute touch ups and polish leading to a release-quality product. An attractive new selection of wallpapers have been added to the KDE default set, and a new throbber for Konqueror.
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Communication
MSN Messenger protocol users will be pleased to note that Kopete now has support for sending and recieving of webcam. AOL chat room support is in the process of being implemented, and is currently in an alpha state. This feature will not make it into KDE 3.5, but will be in the next version of Linspire and a future KDE release.
In response to bug 6710 Kmail now has improved support for images embedded into emails such as HTML messages with background images as sent by popular Windows clients. KMailCVT has a wealth of new import filters to help migrating from other clients. New filters allow importing messages from Sylpheed (Claws), The Bat!, Kmail maildir and Lotus Notes. The Outlook Express, Pegasus Mail, Thunderbird and Evolution mail filters have been improved to also recreate the original folder structure of the import source.
A much asked for and hotly debated new feature has finally arrived, the ability to specify online IMAP folders as filter action targets in the filter dialog. Now IMAP users can use automated filters to move or copy IMAP messages to other IMAP folders, or to local folders. Bug 50997
Edutainment
KDE’s edutainment module has added 3 new programs for KDE 3.5. Joshua Keel’s Kanagram is the sucessor to KMessedWords, a word game where you take mixed up words and put them right, with helpful hints. Kanagram has GHNS support for fetching new game resources, sound effects, and many built in vocabularies. Thanks to Danny Allen’s ui design and artwork, Kanagram is also visually appealing.
Blinken is a pattern recognition game based on an electronic game released in 1978. This game requires players to remember sequences of increasing length, by lighting up buttons and playing a series of tunes. A simple concept, but this game is surprisingly challenging - and addictive.
With a selection of maps and an attractive colourful UI, KGeography can make learning about geography fun. It includes inbuilt quizzes about countries, capitals and flags. For more information the KDE Edu developers have written up a comprehensive page detailing the new fetures in the Edutainment module for KDE 3.5 here:
http://edu.kde.org/development/3.5improvements.php
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Koffice
KDE’s efficient and streamlined office suite, Koffice, will soon see a 1.4.2 release. The changes leading up to this release are primarily in the area of bug fixes, stability improvements and usability improvements. The list of bugs fixed is enormous. OASIS Open Document format support has been strengthened, especially with regards to better compatibility with Open Office.org.
Karbon has had a wealth of various bugfixes and stability improvements. (111147, 111144, 51662). The selection tool has been improved, to include the ability to select a single object, add to the current selection, remove from the current selection and add objects within a selection rectangle to the current selection. The SVG import and export filter has become more robust, as has saving of files.
Koffice workspace has an attractive new icon that even mostly complies with physics now ;)
Right now, the most interesting development for quite a few applications is occuring in KDE4. Stay tuned for the next SVN features article, which will explore the exciting work happening in Koffice!