So, the first week of coding period has ended. It was exciting and full of challenges. I am happy that I am on the right track and making progress as I’ve promised. This is a small summary of the work done this week.

Getting rid of compiler warnings

digiKam has a really huge codebase. It is actively developed but a lot of code is old which contains deprecated Qt code which must be fixed before introducing Qt6. These are the classes which had issues in digiKam which are now fixed :-

• QMap
• QProcess
• QHash
• QMatrix
• QLabel
• QString
• QFlag
• QTimeLine
• QTabletEvent
• QWheelEvent
• QButtonGroup
• QPrinter
• Some namespace changes like endl to Qt::endl

These patches can be found at my work branch

And these remain which I shall fix this week:

• QSet
• qrand() and qsrand()

Regression testing is important for my project. I patched an important class in the core of digiKam that was used by all filters in the image editor (The MR). This had a risk of introducing regression to filters. I wrote a new unit test to verify it did not.

In a nutshell, there are currently 6693 lines of build warnings on master. See this here

With the patches on my branch these warnings have reduced to 1830 lines! That’s a reduction of about 73%. See this here.

While this is not the best way to track progress but it still gives rough estimate. We now have much cleaner build outputs. This week, it will get smaller.

Thanks for reading!

A year ago I’d just finished my History degree and I had no idea how to code. This year, I’m taking part in Google Summer of Code! I’m super happy to get the chance to learn more about how KDE software works, and to finally contribute to a project I’ve been using for years.

Over the summer, I’ll be working with KDE developers to create productivity-focused components for Plasma Mobile that work with Akonadi, KDE’s personal information management framework. Akonadi is a super useful piece of kit: it allows developers to tap into a user’s synchronised e-mails, contacts, calendars, providing a seamless experience in productivity tools. I’ll be working on this project with my mentor Carl Schwan, who also helped me during my time doing Season of KDE, and Devin Lin.

The state of affairs

Plasma Mobile is quickly shaping up to be a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly, but it’s not quite there yet. KDE developers are hard at work, nailing the basics. KDE’s Plasma provides an incredibly solid foundation, though unfortunately many of the powerful desktop applications that the KDE community are not suitable for use on mobile devices.

This is mainly due to the fact they are built with a GUI framework called KXMLGui, which allows developers to create intricate and capable user interfaces for applications ranging from video editors to word processors to web browsers. Unfortunately, it’s not just made to be convergent — i.e., adaptable to different display sizes and interaction types (touch vs mouse and keyboard).

KDE’s projects are underpinned by Qt, an immensely powerful toolkit for C++ that lets you create UIs. Thanks to efforts by the Qt team, QML (a UI markup language) and Qt Quick (QML’s standard library) provide a new way of designing UIs that are built to adapt well to different device form factors. The big brained developers at KDE then developed Kirigami, a Qt Quick framework that makes it easy for a developer to bang out a pretty and convergent application usable on the desktop and on your phone (yes, this includes Android and iOS!).

However, Kirigami is still young, and the amount of applications that use it is still growing. Currently, there are a lack of productivity applications that take advantage of Akonadi.

Psst. Thinking of building a Kirigami app? Read the tutorials I wrote on KDE Develop.

Kalendar

Fortunately, people at KDE have already got the ball rolling. My mentor Carl Schwan started work on Kalendar, a Kirigami application that lets you display the events present in your Akonadi-synchronised calendars. However, Kalendar remains a proof-of-concept… for now.

My work for GSoC will focus on turning Kalendar into a fully-usable application that will let you view, add, and edit events in all the ways that a normal calendar application would, on both your PC and your phone. This involves figuring out how event ingestion and modification works in Akonadi, how Akonadi stores and retrieves data, and a lot of UI usability testing. By the end of the summer, we should be a lot closer to having a powerful calendar you can use with your fingertips on Plasma Mobile.

First week’s work: EventEditor merge request

In this first week, some progress has been made!

Kalendar now has an event editor sheet. While still a work-in-progress, once done, it should let you add and edit events, and let you provide dates, descriptions, reminders, attendees, and more.

Here are a bunch of screenshots of the sheet. So far, the combo boxes for the date and time fields are using custom date and time picker widgets. An upstream date picker widget should be coming in a Kirigami Add-ons package soon, and it will replace the current iteration.

This sheet is very much still a work-in-progress, from both a design and functionality perspective. So far, you can add an event through the sheet, and it will be correctly ingested into Akonadi… if you select a valid calendar (the drop-down in the event editor doesn’t make it clear which calendars are editable, yet!). You can provide an event’s name, description, start/end dates and times. The attendee, reminder, and repeat options are currently non-functional, but you can bet I’m figuring those out.

Get in touch

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any feedback, or if you just want to chat – I’m @clau-cambra:kde.org on Matrix.

See you next week!

Starting with the KDE Frameworks 5.84 release, KXMLGUI based applications will feature expandable tooltips per default.

The matching merge request by Felix Ernst got merged today after 3 months ;=)

What are expandable tooltips at all?

Good question ;=)

In short: for stuff like menu & toolbar actions, it provides an easy way to access the “What’s This?” help.

Unlike before, where you need to manually trigger that via the “Shift-F1” shortcut and click around to try out which GUI elements provide at all this additional help, you will now first get a small tooltip with the normal tooltip content (if any) and a hint that with “Shift” you are able to get more help displayed.

For more details read the merge request.

A video is better than words ;=)

Felix provided a short video in the merge request to demonstrate the basic usage (based on the first implementation, some minor details got fine-tuned later).

Why is that great?

With this feature the “What’s This?” help is a lot easier to discover. It actually makes now more sense then ever to provide it for more complex actions in your applications, people will really be able to find it.

And even nicer, as this is now done in KXMLGUI, all applications using this KDE Framework will automatically provide the new feature, like e.g. Kate ;=)

Comments?

A matching thread for this can be found here on r/KDE.

Bon venon! Herzlich willkommen! o kama pona! Tok now has an improved welcoming sequence with improved visuals and user experience.

If you want to see this for yourself, you can now log out using the new log out menu option.

Sidebars

Once you're back in Tok, why not try out the new resizable chat list?

Or the toggleable sidebar?

Photo and Video Sidebar

Tok now lets you view photos and videos that have been sent in a chat in the sidebar.

Deletion

You might realise with the help of the sidebar that there's something inappropriate in your chat.

Now, Tok will allow you to properly delete others' messages if you have the correct permissions.

You can also now choose to only delete messages for yourself in groups/chats where this is applicable.

Mentions

There's a good chance you may want to scold someone for sending an inappropriate photo in your chat. Tok now provides autocompletion for mentions, making it faster to type out someone's username.

GIFs

Tok now supports displaying GIFs in chat.

Optimisations

Tok has seen a lot of optimisations. Memory usage should now hover around or below the 100MB range idle, depending on how many photos, videos, GIFs, etc. are on your screen.

Bugfixes

A lot of Tok's crashes have been fixed, especially ones pertaining to images.

Removed unneeded drums.

Obtaining Tok

Tok can be built from source from https://invent.kde.org/network/tok.

The support/development room is at https://t.me/kdetok.

Contributing

Interested in contributing? Come on by the dev chat and say hello.

Tags: #libre

This week Plasma 5.22 was released! Overall our focus on stability has paid off, and so far there are no major regressions reported; only a few medium-severity ones which have all already been fixed in Plasma 5.22.1 :). You can read the release announcement, or check out KDE developer Niccolò Venerandi’s lovely video about it:

But something much bigger happened as well: the next phase of the Breeze Evolution initiative was merged, providing a new style for buttons, menu items, checkboxes, radio buttons, sliders, and more! It’s beautiful:

This new style also fixes several bugs plaguing the old styling for these controls, such as sliders becoming invisible when located on a selected list item, and the “default button” of a dialog not being very visually obvious.

The work was implemented by Jan Blackquill in accordance with mockups made by Manuel Jesus de la Fuente and other members of the KDE VDG. It will make its debut in Plasma 5.23. There is a lot of time left to tweak the final appearance as needed, but overall I think it’s really nice and I hope you’re as excited about it as I am!

New Features

Thumbnails for files inside encrypted locations such as Plasma vaults are now generated and displayed as expected, but not saved, to eliminate a data leak (Marcin Gurtowski, Dolphin 21.08)

Kate’s LSP support now extends to the Dart programming language (Waqar Ahmed, Kate 21.08)

Konsole now supports the DECSET 1003 standard, which means that the features in terminal software such as vim which rely on mouse tracking now work (Luis Javier Merino Morán, Konsole 21.08)

This is not strictly speaking a KDE project, but it certainly affects us: the SDDM login manager can now be run as Wayland-native software without needing X11 at all! (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, SDDM 0.20)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Konsole now correctly processes double right-click events (Luis Javier Merino Morán, Konsole 21.08)

emacs xterm-mouse-mode now works in Konsole (Luis Javier Merino Morán, Konsole 21.08)

In the Plasma Wayland Session, additional screens are now detected when using a multi-GPU setup (Xaver Hugl, Plasma 5.22.1)

The Network Speed widget once again works (David Redondo, Plasma 5.22.1)

The weather widget’s BBC weather data source now works again (they changed the API and we had to react to it) (Joe Dight, Plasma 5.22.1)

In the Plasma Wayland session, the transparent background beind Task Switchers is now always blurred as expected (Vlad Zahorodnii, Plasma 5.22.1)

In the Plasma System Monitor app, the “Get New Pages” view now opens in a nice overlay rather than a narrow squeezy column (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Plasma 5.22.1)

Custom shortcuts for “Walk through applications” (bound to Alt+` by default) now work (Andrew Butirsky, Plasma 5.22.1)

The System Settings File Search page no longer sometimes shows a weird duplicated header (Marco Martin, Plasma 5.22.1)

The re-done Autostart page in System Settings now always shows the correct icon for applications set to run at login (Nicolas Fella, Plasma 5.22.1)

When using a lot of window rules, the System Settings Window Rules page is now much faster to load and display them (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.23)

Disabled pages in System Monitor no longer temporarily become un-disabled if its sidebar is collapsed into icons-only mode (Arjen Hiemstra, Frameworks 5.84)

Other User Interface Improvements

When entering Party Mode in Elisa, the playlist now automatically scrolls to the currently-playing song if it would otherwise be out of view, and also automatically scrolls the view as needed to make sure that any newly-playing songs remain in view (Tranter Madi, Elisa 21.08)

The “Get New [thing]” dialogs now handle situations like the server being down or slow more gracefully (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Frameworks 5.84):

QtQuick apps using the Kirigami OverlaySheet component no longer let the sheet touch the edges of the window or screen (Devin Lin, Frameworks 5.84)

…And everything else

Keep in mind that this blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! Tons of KDE apps whose development I don’t have time to follow aren’t represented here, and I also don’t mention backend refactoring, improved test coverage, and other changes that are generally not user-facing. If you’re hungry for more, check out https://planet.kde.org/, where you can find blog posts by other KDE contributors detailing the work they’re doing.

How You Can Help

Have a look at https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved to discover ways to be part of a project that really matters. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE; you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to already be a programmer, either. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Saturday, 12 June 2021

KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.83.0.

KDE Frameworks are 83 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. For an introduction see the KDE Frameworks release announcement.

This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner.

New in this version

Baloo

• Embed JSON metadata in KIOSlaves
• Convert protocol files to JSON
• [balooctl] Allow clearing a document which has been deleted

BluezQt

• Add missing Qt5::DBus to qml plugin

Breeze Icons

• Added new KMyMoney icon again with some extra tweaks
• Add Goodvibes icon
• Add an icon for skanpage
• Tweaked the Rust mimetypes to better match the official branding (bug 434346)
• Made links relative
• Updated icons and added symlinks
• Separated icons to -left and -right

Extra CMake Modules

• Add LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-GPL to license compatibility Matrix
• ecm_gperf_generate(): add option for target arg to add the gen. source to
• ecm_qt_declare_logging_category: catch alias targets before failing internally
• Add module to find libmount
• Drop FindFontConfig.cmake
• Make sure that dir path exists before attempting to copy file
• Attempt to find the Play store icon if it’s not explicitly set
• Add address sanitizer for MSVC
• ecm_create_qm_loader: support target as alternative argument
• Don’t pass through list rich text elements, Google Play can’t handle those
• Fix doc build with Sphinx 4
• Use pkg_check_modules in FindTaglib.cmake
• Find PkgConfig quietly
• Handle text-less tags
• ECMAddAppIcon: support target as argument
• Fall back to English for missing translated elements
• ECMSetupVersion: phase out deprecated *_VERSION_STRING CMake variables
• Extend Android language mappings for translated metadata

KActivitiesStats

• Turns out the tier field was wrong, but not the subgroup

KArchive

• [KArchive] Use better wording for open error
• Use imported target for ZLib

KCalendarCore

• Allow sorting of todos by category (tag)
• Use UTC times when calculating the transition dates of standard and dst phases
• Remove conditional compilation for libical older than 3
• Fix Compat-libical3-eGroupware.ics

KCompletion

• Deprecate KLineEdit::passwordMode

KConfig

• kconfig_add_kcfg_files: catch alias targets before failing internally
• Don’t write position data for maximized windows (bug 434116)

KConfigWidgets

• Deprecate KTipDatabase and KTipDialog
• [KHamburgerMenu] Ignore native menus
• Add KCommandBar - a hud-style dialog for quickly executing QActions

KContacts

• Allow setting email, phonenumber, impp from QML
• [addressee] Add property for photo
• Add properties to Picture

KCoreAddons

• kcoreaddons_add_plugin: make SOURCES argument optional
• KJob: if a delegate is already attached to a job, warn when setJob() is called
• Make KAboutData::productName accessible for KCrash
• Do not return duplicate plugins in KPluginLoader::findPlugins

KCrash

• Use target_sources() to add sources to targets
• write metadata to a cache file when applicable
• Pass Bugzilla product name to DrKonqi when explicitly set in the app
• init rlp struct and don’t cast rlim_t to int

KDeclarative

• [KeySequenceItem] Display ampersands in shortcuts (bug 437718)

KFileMetaData

• [ExtractionResult] Remove automatic mimetype determination
• [ExternalWriter] Test property serialization
• [ExternalExtractor/Writer] Avoid unnecessary map value lookup from key
• [ExternalWriter] Fix infinite loop when serializing properties
• Avoid leaking a QObject in ExternalWriter
• [TaglibWriter] Fix memory leak when updating Cover images in ASF (WMA)

KGlobalAccel

• Revert “Prevent kglobalaccel5 getting activated on non-Plasma systems” (bug 437034)

KDE GUI Addons

• Fix crash in keysequence recorder due to out of bound access

KI18n

• ki18n_wrap_ui: catch alias targets before failing internally

KIdleTime

• add std::chrono overload for addIdleTimeout

KImageFormats

• avif: Adjust for libavif breaking change
• Enable HEIC plugin to save all ICC profiles
• Color profile loading/saving fixes
• xcf: Make sure offsets are not negative
• xcf: Fix Stack-buffer-overflow WRITE on broken files

KIO

• New job: KTerminalLauncherJob
• Remove the cache KCM
• Remove the Browser Identification KCM
• Fix outdated URL for RAE Search Provider
• KOpenWithDialog: expand category on selection (bug 437885)
• Support wayland’s xdg_activation_v1
• [kopenwithdialog] Show better error message when specifying a non-executable file (bug 437880)
• Updating caching logic for thumbnails, to detect encrypted devices (bug 411919)
• Port ioslave template to use JSON metadata
• webshortcuts KCM: Remove unneeded rebuildKSycoca method call
• Remove ServiceTypes property from webshortcuts
• protocoltojson: Do not create empty array for ExtraNames value
• kio_file: remove pmount-related code
• Honor the port number when fetching favicons
• [KCoreDirLister] Guard uiDelegate(), it might be null (bug 437153)
• [src/widgets/kfileitemactions] Dont try to connect non-existing plugin
• Improve strings for file/folder and URL link functionality
• TCPSlaveBase: deprecate socket() and introduce tcpSocket()
• Allow selecting directories in KFileWidget (bug 419874)
• MimeTypeFinderJob: the StatJob details should include the mimetype (bug 398908)
• kio_file: pass the absolute path to QMimeDatabase::mimeTypeForFile()
• When finding a job delegate extension, also try the uiDelegate() of its parents (bug 436049)
• Capture sender object in connect() call instead of using sender()
• MimeTypeFinderJob: Resolve symlinks for a local file
• Put compatibility code which uses KMimeTypeTrader in deprecation wrappers
• PreviewJob: Create a larger SHM when necessary (bug 430862)
• [KUrlNavigator] Improve presentation of search results
• Port KFileItemActions::runPreferredApplications away from trader constraint
• Port KFileItemActions::associatedApplications away from trader constraint

Kirigami

• Update template app
• [ActionTextField] Switch actions to use small sizing rather than smallMedium
• fix(a11y): use semantically correct ellipses instead of semantically incorrect triple period
• use ecm_generate_qmltypes cmake macro
• SwipeNavigator hotfixes
• Fix back button in layers not asking Page::backRequested first before closing the page
• Split PageTab out of SwipeNavigator
• Split TabViewLayout out of SwipeNavigator
• [ActionTextField] Add more spacing between actions and text
• Improve look of card by making border a bit more subble
• [ActionTextField] Respect actions' enabled properties
• Adapt BasicListItemTest.qml to new API
• [BasicListItem] Offer vertical fill options for leading/trailing items
• Fix non-atomic updating of PlatformTheme colours
• Add BasicListItemTest case for leading+trailing items with skinny list items
• [BasicListItem] Increase icon size when showing or reserving space for subtitle
• [BasicListItem] Fix sizing for reserveSpaceForSubtitle: true case
• Fix BasicListItem.reserveSpaceForSubtitle to take into account textSpacing
• Fix rendering of small size borders of ShadowedTexture
• Add new fadeContent property to BasicListItem (bug 436816)
• Introduce Kirigami.Heading.type
• Disconnect before destroying items (bug 436707)
• [BasicListItem] Expose spacing between label and subtitle as property
• [BasicListItem] Increase spacing between label and subtitle
• Don’t unnecessarily use the std::function overload of qmlRegisterSingletonType

KNewStuff

• Ensure XmlLoader works in the expected, asynchronous fashion
• Add functionality to have a local providers file
• Don’t show Go to… action unless it has children
• Fix opensearch parsing
• Make Syndication optional and only build OPDS plugin when present
• Change the role names in the search preset to custom ones
• Add in tagfilters and filter out entries that are not openaccess for now
• Add ‘restart’ search preset so people can go back to the search they started out with
• Add recommended and subscription to the searchpreset types
• Ensure to use the ‘self’ link relation for resolving relative urls
• Add download size if said information is available
• Add concept of search presets to hold navigation links for opds feed
• Make sure the documents are valid feed documents
• Add the start link as an entry so we can at the least always return to the root of the opds catalog
• Fix some misunderstandings with Download Link information
• Make caching work a bit better, and ensure it shows the installed entries
• Make the download links a bit prettier
• Try to implement the loading of new feeds from entries
• Initial patch for opds support
• Adjust help text for knewstuff-dialog
• Engine: Deprecate configSearchLocations and setConfigLocationFallback methods
• Make knewstuff-dialog work more reliable
• KNSCore::Engine: Add method to list all available knsrc files
• KNSCore::Question: Use nested event loop for waiting

KParts

• Deprecate BrowserExtension::actionSlotMap()

KPeople

• Expose PersonsSortFilterProxyModel header
• Fix DBus check

KQuickCharts

• Implement monotonic cubic interpolation for line charts (bug 435268)
• Prevent an infinite loop in LegendLayout when minTotalWidth equals available
• Reduce severity of column not found to debug
• Expose preferredWidth as a property on LegendLayout and Legend

KRunner

• RunnerManager::runnerMetaDataList: Do not return duplicate plugin IDs

KService

• Do not crash if there’s no Konsole
• Launch KCMs in kcmshell5 if systemsettings5 is not installed
• KToolInvocation: deprecate kdeinitExec()

KTextEditor

• Avoid bad negative search offsets
• Fix vim cursor gets stuck with ‘b’
• Limit shortcut context to active view for Reuse Word Above/Below (bug 352902)
• ensure remove trailing spaces value is in range
• Revert “Add option to keep spaces to the left of cursor when saving” (bug 433455)
• Revert “Update remove-trailing-spaces modeline”
• Revert “compute lastChar only if needed”
• Revert “Use KTextEditor::Cursor instead of ints in removeTrailingSpaces”
• Add “Transpose Words” feature (bug 436621)
• Don’t apply the offset for the quoted regexp, as it is not zero-length
• Fix on-the-fly spell checking with recent Qt (bug 436004)
• fix :e for vi-mode to properly open non-local files, too
• fix :e filename for untitled documents
• Fixup registering text hint providers
• Add a separator line after ‘Automatic Selection’

KTextWidgets

• Ensure instances of derived Private classes are properly destructed
• Un-overload KReplace::replace() signal

KWayland

• Use protocol files from plasma-wayland-protocols
• Update Plasma Wayland Protocols dependency to 1.3.0
• Do not emit Surface::leave twice when an output is removed

KWidgetsAddons

• Ensure instances of derived Private classes are properly destructed
• Fix crash in KSelectAction (bug 436808)
• KFontChooser: always prepend the default font style in the styles list

KWindowSystem

• Provide KWindowSystem::lastInputSerial
• Include API for wayland’s xdg_activation_V1
• Drop Qt5Widgets dependency if KWINDOWSYSTEM_NO_WIDGETS=ON

KXMLGUI

• Add KCommandBar to KXMLGui-using apps by default
• Remove the Attica requirement by using the store’s new links
• Use new version-controlled enumerator deprecation warning macros
• Ensure instances of derived Private classes are properly destructed
• Don’t translate urls (bug 436052)

ModemManagerQt

• Make it compile with current flags

NetworkManagerQt

• Fix missing definition for IPv6 property when building against older NM
• IPv6Setting: add option to disable IPv6
• fix(pppoe): add parent

Oxygen Icons

• high def new version printer
• more versions of the printer icon size 16x16
• more size versions of preferences-kde-connect

Plasma Framework

• Fix crash when there is already exactly 5 events displayed
• Remove call to setClearBeforeRendering
• Fix missing definition of HAVE_X11
• Change qqc2-desktop-style Units.fontMetrics property to a FontMetrics
• Support for blur behind plasmoids
• Filter configure action out of overflow menu correctly
• Allow building the project without deprecations
• PC3 TabButton: Center align text without icon, use icon property
• PC3 TabButton: Fix horizontal content alignment with max text width
• Fix events appearing in year or decade view (bug 436999)
• Check QAction enablement before triggering
• Introduce new SVG element: menubaritem
• Add sizeForLabels icon size to Units
• Fix Label having non-integer sizes
• [pluginloader] Deprecate listContainments and listContainmentsOfType
• Deprecate PluginLoader::listContainmentsForMimeType
• add missing signal is setConstraintHints
• Allow ExpandableListItem to not be expandable when it has no valid actions
• [dataengine] Emit sourceRemoved earlier (bug 435991)

QQC2StyleBridge

• [scrollview] Consider scroll bars when calculating implicit size
• User HoverHandler instead of MouseArea

Solid

• Ensure inherited PIMPL instances are properly destructed

Sonnet

• Add Malayalam trigram

Syntax Highlighting

• Rust syntax - Separate ControlFlow from Keywords
• Fix perl qw< > highlighting
• Update GAS syntax to highlight reg/instrs/jmp instrs

Security information

The released code has been GPG-signed using the following key: pub rsa2048/58D0EE648A48B3BB 2016-09-05 David Faure faure@kde.org Primary key fingerprint: 53E6 B47B 45CE A3E0 D5B7 4577 58D0 EE64 8A48 B3BB

We are pleased to announce that Plasma 5.22.0, is now available in our backports PPA for Kubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo.

The release announcement detailing the new features and improvements in Plasma 5.22 can be found here.

To upgrade:

Add the following repository to your software sources list:

ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

or if it is already added, the updates should become available via your preferred update method.

The PPA can be added manually in the Konsole terminal with the command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

and packages then updated with

sudo apt full-upgrade

IMPORTANT

Please note that more bugfix releases are scheduled by KDE for Plasma 5.22, so while we feel these backports will be beneficial to enthusiastic adopters, users wanting to use a Plasma release with more rounds of stabilisation/bugfixes ‘baked in’ may find it advisable to stay with Plasma 5.21 as included in the original 21.04 (Hirsute) release.

The Kubuntu Backports PPA for 21.04 also currently contains newer versions of KDE Frameworks, Applications, and other KDE software. The PPA will also continue to receive updates of KDE packages other than Plasma.

Issues with Plasma itself can be reported on the KDE bugtracker [1]. In the case of packaging or other issues, please provide feedback on our mailing list [2], IRC [3], and/or file a bug against our PPA packages [4].

1. KDE bugtracker: https://bugs.kde.org
2. Kubuntu-devel mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-devel
3. Kubuntu IRC channels: #kubuntu & #kubuntu-devel on irc.libera.chat
4. Kubuntu ppa bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2021-23.

We’re All Paying for Someone Else’s 4-Hour Work Week, Not Ours | by Jessica Wildfire | May, 2021 | An Injustice!

Tags: economics

I read that book out of curiosity a long while ago. This post articulates quite well why I hated it. It’s built upon selfishness and inequalities.

https://aninjusticemag.com/were-all-paying-for-someone-else-s-4-hour-work-week-not-ours-68b2168af55

Don’t let Social Media Think for You

Tags: tech, social-media, attention-economy

A good illustration on why social media are toxic for our thinking. They push us to focus on anecdotes and as such miss the big picture. No wonder everything got so polarized so quickly there.

https://www.disgustinglyoptimistic.com/post/don-t-let-social-media-think-for-you

Ban Biometric Surveillance - Access Now

Tags: tech, surveillance, facial-recognition

Very important open letter, this kind of biometric surveillance is becoming pervasive and should be stopped earlier than later.

https://www.accessnow.org/ban-biometric-surveillance/

Plasma 5.22 - KDE Community

Tags: tech, kde

Obviously thrilled to see this one released. This is a good one. :-)

https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.22.0/

Abstract Syntax Tree for Patching Code and Assessing Code Quality | Soroco Engineering

Tags: tech, python, quality, refactoring

AST tooling is great for porting code and code quality checks. Here are a couple of examples in python.

https://engineering.soroco.com/abstract-syntax-tree-for-patching-code-and-assessing-code-quality/

Don’t Feed the Thought Leaders - Earthly Blog

Tags: tech, management, forecasting, decision-making

Very interesting discussion about decision making and forecasting. I’m discovering Tetlock as he is mentioned and his findings are interesting in their own right as well.

https://earthly.dev/blog/thought-leaders/

So you messed up. Now what? - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: tech, project-management, estimates

Last part about estimates. Plenty of very good advises again on how to deal not meeting a deadline. Communicating the bad news early is key.

https://jacobian.org/2021/jun/8/incorrect-estimates/

Stockdale Paradox — Why optimists don’t survive software projects | by Ben Hosking | Jun, 2021 | Dev Genius

Tags: tech, project-management, estimates

Excellent advises on project planning and management. It explains pretty well why being optimist in those areas will just drive your project through a wall.

https://blog.devgenius.io/stockdale-paradox-why-optimists-dont-survive-software-projects-27ada5b3fec1

Bye for now!

In mid-2014 I first heard about Jolla and Sailfish OS and immediately bought a Jolla 1; wrote apps; participated in the IGG campaign for Jolla Tablet; bought the TOHKBD2; applied for (and got) Jolla C.

Sounds like the beginning of a good story doesn’t it?

Well, by the beginning of 2017 I had sold everything (except the tablet, we all know what happened to that one).

So what happened?? I was a happy Sailfish user, but Jolla’s false promises disappointed me.

Yet, despite all that, I still think about Sailfish OS to this day. I think it’s because, despite some proprietary components, the ecosystem around Sailfish OS is ultimately open source. And that’s what interests me. It also got a fresh update which solves some of the problems that where there 5 years ago.

Nowadays, thanks to the community, Sailfish OS can be installed on many devices, even if with some less components, but I’m looking for that complete experience and so I asked on the forum if there was someone willing to sell his Xperia device with or without the license… and I got one for free. Better still, in exchange for some apps!

To decide which applications to create, I therefore took a look at that ecosystem. I started with the apps I use daily on Android and looked for the Sailfish OS alternative (spoiler: I’m impressed, good job guys!).

I am writing them all here because I am sure it will be useful to someone else:

• AntennaPod (podcast app) -> PodQast
• Ariane (gemini protocol browser)
• AsteroidOS (AsteroidOS sync) -> Starfish
• Connectbot (ssh client) -> built-in (Terminal)
• Conversation (xmpp client) -> built-in (Messaging)
• Davx5 (caldav/cardav) -> built-in (Account)
• DroidShows (TV series) -> SeriesFinale
• Element (Matrix client) -> Determinant
• Endoscope (camera stream)
• Fedilab (Mastodon client) -> Tooter
• ForkHub (GitHub client) -> SailHub
• FOSS Browser -> built-in (Browser)
• FreeOTP -> SailOTP
• Glider (hacker news reader) -> SailHN
• K-9 Mail -> built-in (Mail)
• KDE Connect (KDE sync) -> SailfishConnect
• Keepassx (password manager) -> ownKeepass
• Labcoat (GitLab client)
• Lemmur (Lemmy client)
• MasterPassword (password manager) -> MPW
• MuPDF (PDF reader) -> built-in (Documents)
• Newpipe (YouTube client) -> YTPlayer
• Nextcloud (Nextcloud files) -> GhostCloud
• Notes (Nextcloud notes) -> Nextcloud Notes
• OCReader (Nextcloud RSS) -> Fuoten
• OsmAnd~ (Maps) -> PureMaps
• Printing (built-in) -> SeaPrint
• QuickDic (dictionary) -> SailyDict
• RedMoon (screen color temperature) -> Tint Overlay
• RedReader (Reddit client) -> Quickddit
• Signal -> Whisperfish
• Syncthing (files sync) -> there’s the binary, no UI
• Transdroid (Trasmission client) -> Clutch
• Vinyl (music player) -> built-in (Mediaplayer)
• VLC (NFS streaming) -> videoPlayer
• WireGuard (VPN) -> there’s the binary, no UI
• YetAnotherCallBlocker (call blocker) -> Phonehook

So, to me it looks like almost everything is there, except:

• a gemini protocol browser
• a client for GitLab
• a client for Lemmy
• a UI for Syncthing
• a UI for Wireguard

I’ve already started to write a UI for Syncthing, then maybe I could write the browser for the gemini protocol or rather the GitLab client?

Please consider a donation if you would like to support me (mention your favourite project!).

Many many thanks to Jörg who sent me his Sony Xperia 10 Plus! I hope I don’t disappoint him!