Did you know there are three different writing systems for English? That’s right - you can write English using letters that aren’t Latin characters. If you’re using KDE Plasma version 6.4 or earlier, go to the “Region & Language” system settings page and search “en_US.” You’ll see two locales in the results, and they both say they’re “en_US.” The latter en_US doesn’t seem to be English at all.
It turns out that the “weird” English is the “America English Deseret” locale, and the “normal” en_US is called “America English Latin”.
Every week we cover the highlights of what’s happening in the world of KDE Plasma and its associated apps like Discover, System Monitor, and more.
This week Plasma gained an initial system setup wizard! For a few years now, we’ve had Welcome Center, which runs after you log in for the first time. But what creates the user account you log into?
If you’re the person who installed the OS, the installer did it after you told it what username and password you wanted. But what if someone else ran the installer? Say, the company you bought the computer from. Or the last person who wiped the machine before giving or selling it you. In this case, no user acounts have been set up, so something needs to do that.
KDE Initial System Setup now takes care of it! Kristen McWilliam has brought KISS from an internal skunkworks project to a production-ready part of the OEM setup story. KISS lands in Plasma 6.5.0.
Notable UI Improvements
Plasma 6.5.0
Plasma panels now become scrollable when they contain far too much to see at once (usually due to opening lots of apps or entering Touch Mode). This scrollability doesn’t emerge immediately; first the Task Manager widget’s icons compress a little bit, but after a certain point they stop compressing and instead the panel becomes scrollable. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Improved the tone mapping curve used by KWin when displaying HDR content. Hopefully it should look even better now! (Xaver Hugl, link)
By default, system Settings no longer shows you the Drawing Tablet page if you don’t have any drawing tablets connected. Of course, us being KDE, there’s an option to show such filtered-out pages anyway, if you need them for troubleshooting purposes, for example. (Kai Uwe Broulik, link)
The output stream for volume feedback sounds no longer shows up briefly on the Audio Volume widget and System Settings page. (Ismael Asensio, link)
Improved the accessibility of System Settings’ Shortcuts page. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Added more relevant information about your game controllers to System Settings’ Game Controller page. (Jeremy Whiting, link)
The notification saying “you missed some notifications” after you leave Do Not Disturb mode no longer becomes visible in the history view after it expires, because if you can see it there, you’re already in the place it wanted to tell you about. (Nate Graham, link)
Notable Bug Fixes
Plasma 6.4.5
Fixed several related issues with Plasma panel customization: one issue that prevented the Escape key from closing the configuration dialog, and another that caused widgets to get stuck if you pressed Escape while dragging them. (Niccolò Venerandi, link 1 and link 2)
Cloning a panel now also clones the settings of its System Tray widget, if it has one. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Fixed a layout issue with the Audio Volume widget that could cause an app’s recording stream to be visually indented more than it should have been. (Christoph Wolk, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
Applied several more bug fixes for desktop icons to make sure they don’t shift around so much. One of them fixes a related issue whereby the icons would reset their positions after you switched between the Folder layout and the Desktop layout, and then back again. (Akseli Lahtinen, link)
Made a few reliability fixes for the built-in RDP server to make sure that on every distro, it can be manually enabled, and also doesn’t auto-start unless specifically told to. (Arnav Rawat and Nate Graham, link 1 and link 2)
Fixed an issue causing a standalone Audio Volume widget on a panel to sometimes take up too much space. (Niccolò Venerandi, link)
Worked around a nasty issue in the AMD GPU graphics drivers. (Xaver Hugl, link)
Fixed a case where Plasma could hang after copying files from a slow (or later inaccessible) network location and opening the clipboard popup. (Fushan Wen, link)
Plasma 6.5.0
Swiched to a more lightweight timer for KWin’s render loop, slightly reducing resource usage everywhere. (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, link)
Implemented support for version 2 of the global shortcuts portal. (David Redondo, link)
Frameworks 6.18
Further improved the speed of thumbnail generation throughout all KDE software. (David Edmundson, link)
How You Can Help
KDE has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we need your support to keep KDE sustainable.
You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved somehow. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer, either; many other opportunities exist!
You can also help us by making a donation! A monetary contribution of any size will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors, and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on an important refactor in Cantor: migrating the editor for command entries from our in-house QTextDocument implementation to the powerful KTextEditor framework. In my previous update, I described how Phase 1 laid the foundation—command cells were migrated to use KTextEditor::View, enabling basic syntax highlighting and a modern editing experience.
Today, I’m excited to share that Phase 2 is now complete! With this milestone, the migration of command entries to KTextEditor is fully in place, ensuring that all existing functionality works smoothly without regressions. This achievement provides a solid foundation for future enhancements while keeping Cantor stable and reliable for everyday use.
What’s New in Phase 2
With Phase 2 now complete, command entries are fully integrated into KTextEditor. Along the way, we introduced three major upgrades to Cantor’s core architecture, paving the way for a more consistent, powerful, and future-ready user experience.
🔹 Unified Highlighting Framework
All syntax highlighting in Cantor is now powered by KSyntaxHighlighting, the same robust engine behind Kate and KWrite. This change ensures that every backend (such as Python, Maxima, R, Octave, etc.) benefits from a consistent, accurate, and highly reliable highlighting system.
Previously, each backend shipped with its own ad-hoc rules that were difficult to maintain and often inconsistent in style. With the new centralized approach, Cantor handles highlighting uniformly, not only providing a smoother user experience but also laying the groundwork for future support of custom themes and user-defined keywords.
🔹 Unified Completion Infrastructure
Code completion has likewise been consolidated into a common framework coordinated through KTextEditor. In the past, each backend had its own incomplete and sometimes inconsistent completion logic. Now, all completion requests are handled in a unified, predictable manner, with backend-specific intelligent suggestions seamlessly integrated.
The result is less duplicated code, easier maintenance, and—most importantly—a more cohesive user experience. Whether you are writing Python scripts or Maxima formulas, code completion now behaves consistently, making Cantor feel smarter and more reliable.
🔹 Reduced Code Redundancy
By adopting KTextEditor as the core for command entry editing, we eliminated a significant amount of custom code that had been written in Cantor over the years to handle code completion and highlighting for the different supported languages.
This streamlining improves maintainability, reduces potential bug risks, and makes Cantor’s codebase more approachable for new contributors. Developers no longer need to reimplement low-level editor features, allowing them to focus on advancing high-level functionality. In short: less boilerplate, more room for innovation.
Functional demonstration: new and old comparison, take a look!
Thanks to the new KSyntaxHighlighting backend, we can now temporarily change the theme of command entries, demonstrating future possibilities.
Please note that this is currently a preview feature; global “sheet themes” (applying themes uniformly to the entire sheet,) are our next steps.
Breeze Dark
Github Dark
Breeze Light
By integrating KTextEditor, Cantor now provides a unified and reliable code completion experience for all backends (such as Python, R, and Maxima).
Cantor also supports consistent multi-cell handling, with themes and syntax highlighting applied uniformly.
Why This Matters
This migration is not just a technical change under the hood—it directly impacts how Cantor evolves:
Stability first: by ensuring no regressions during the migration, users can continue to rely on Cantor for daily work without disruption.
Consistency across backends: highlighting and completion now feel the same, no matter which computational engine you choose.
Future-proof foundation: less redundant code and more reliance on KDE Frameworks means Cantor can keep pace with new features in KTextEditor and the broader KDE ecosystem.
What’s Next
With command entries now fully migrated, the door is open for exciting new improvements:
Theming support: enabling custom color schemes and styles, giving users the ability to tailor Cantor’s appearance to their preferences.
Vi mode integration: bringing modal editing from Kate into Cantor.
Spell checking: powered by Sonnet, useful for Markdown and explanatory text inside worksheets.
Smarter backend completions: richer suggestions, function signatures, and inline documentation.
Performance work: optimizing for very large worksheets and heavy computations.
Theming support (planned)
For now, Cantor will keep the Default theme, which uses the desktop palette. This preserves the familiar look and behavior.
Next, we plan to introduce a Worksheet Theme setting. Users will be able to:
Stay with Default (desktop palette, as before), or
Choose a theme from KTextEditor/KSyntaxHighlighting, just like in Kate.
The selected theme will apply consistently across the worksheet—including command entries and results—for a unified appearance. Instead of relying on hardcoded colors or the system palette, Cantor will use the color roles provided by KTextEditor and KSyntaxHighlighting.
This approach avoids performance overhead from repeatedly reading theme files, ensures instant updates when switching themes, and lays the foundation for richer customization in the future—such as clearer distinctions between prompts, results, and errors, all within a consistent global style.
The integration of artificial intelligence into software development environments has rapidly evolved, and Qt Creator is no exception. With the introduction of the Qt AI Assistant by Qt Company, developers working with Qt Creator now have access to AI models through the IDE. This post provides an introduction to the Qt Creator plugin.
This is part 1 of an ongoing series about AI coding with Qt.
What is Qt AI Assistant?
Qt AI Assistant is a commercial plugin for Qt Creator to bring current AI models to the IDE. Features provided by the plugin include
Code completion for multiple languages (QML, C++, Python, Bash, etc.)
Contextual chat with your codebase, enabling explanations, code generation and code review
Automated test case generation, particularly tailored for QML and Qt-specific workflows
Model choice based on languages (QML vs other languages) and task (chat vs code completion)
This is a step up from the existing GitHub Copilot support in Qt Creator that was focused on code completion only.
Completing Qt AI Assistant is a publicly available set of models by Qt Group. The models are based on CodeLlama and are fine-tuned for usage with Qt 6 QML. They are not included with the plugin but need to be set up manually using Ollama.
Setting Up Qt AI Assistant
The setup process for Qt AI Assistant is more involved than some other AI coding tools. The plugin is currently available as part of the commercial Qt distribution. Installation requires enabling the appropriate extension repository within Qt Creator and activating the plugin. Once installed, configuration is necessary to connect the plugin to a large language model (LLM) provider.
Supported LLMs include OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini), and self-hosted models via Ollama. For OpenAI integration, developers must use the OpenAI developer platform to generate an API key, which is different from having an account for ChatGPT. This API key is then entered into the plugin’s settings within Qt Creator. Other models require similar setup using URLs and credentials, depending on the provider or the self-hosting method.
More information is in this video linked at the bottom of this blog post.
Features in Practice
Code Completion and Chat
The plugin distinguishes between code completion suggestions as you type and prompt-based interactions, such as asking for code explanations or generating new code. For QML, a specialized Code Llama 13B QML model can be used. For other languages general purpose models are employed.
The chat interface allows developers to highlight code and request explanations or modifications. For example, selecting a block of QML or C++ and asking the assistant to "explain the selected code" yields a detailed, context-aware explanation.
Test Case Generation
A notable feature is the ability to generate test cases from selected QML code. While the generated tests may require manual refinement, this automation can accelerate the initial setup of unit tests and reduce repetitive work. The plugin’s approach is to copy relevant code into the test, which may not always result in optimal reuse, but provides a useful starting point.
Model Choice
Developers can choose between different LLMs to use for the chat and review vs the code completion scenario. For QML model choice is separate, and offers including the fine-tuned models provided by Qt Company. This flexibility extends to hosting options, supporting both cloud and local deployments, depending on organizational needs and privacy considerations.
Further Resources
For a detailed walkthrough and live demonstrations, watch the following episodes of "The Curious Developer" series:
Additionally, the official Qt AI Assistant product page provides up-to-date information on features and availability: https://www.qt.io/product/ai-assistant.
Outlook
Future posts in this series will consider alternative coding tools useful for Qt and will bring the newest developments of the tools we mention here.
I would like to show you my first QtCreator plugin. It is an all-in-one window to test Qml Code.
How often do you run into issue about QML code; not doing exactly what you want ?
Demo:
Examples demo:
Here it a simple tool to test quickly some QML code. No need to create a new Test Project. Open the plugin, type or copy/paste your code, do some changes until it does what you want.
It is mostly inspired from some Qml online site, but it is available directly into QtCreator.
The Kdenlive team is happy to announce the release of version 25.08.0 packed with over 300 commits and fixing more than 15 crashes. This release has no major shiny new features, just a ton of bug fixes and lots of polishing to give you a pleasant editing experience in the summer heat.
Interface and Usability
Mixer
Redesign of the audio mixer bringing levels with clearer visuals and thresholds. We also did some code refactoring and cleanup. This change fixes issues with HiDPI displays with fractional scaling.
Titler
This release the titler received some much needed love like improved SVG and image support with ability to move and resize items, added center resize with Shift + Drag, and renamed the Pattern tab to Templates and moved the templates dropdown to it:
Other fixes include:
Added timecode widget with ability to drag to seek in the Titler,(Shift+drag for 1 frame, CTRL+drag for fast seek)
Fix issues when resizing images would also moves them
Fix titler selection on create / resize object
Fixed an issue where the titler's panel width was consuming half the screen
Save and restore the panel width on reopening
Fix title thumbnail not updating in timeline after change
Scopes
Improved Scope styling by using system palettes for better theme integration as well as bug fixes in artifacts on high zoom level and paint modes. Compare the old styling on the left side with the new styling on the right:
Subtitles and Speech-To-Text
Require shift + drag of a subtitle clip to create a new layer
Make the subtitle edit widget resizable to adapt to lower resolutions
Fix crash dropping media file on subtitle track
Subtitle code refactoring
Fix subtitle layer name width
Fix subtitles showing on the top layer rather than appearing in lower layers on project loading.
Fix Whisper STT using Python 3.13
Whisper: disable translation when the Turbo model is selected
Fix Vosk STT producing bad subtitles
Markers and Guides
Guides and Markers got a major overhaul this release to improve the project organization.
Clicking a marker in the list now always selects it in the timeline
When adding a new marker, it’s automatically selected in the guides list
Selecting a guide in the timeline also highlights it in the guides list
New option to show thumbnails in the markers list dialog
Added a “Show markers for all clips in the project” toggle to display markers in other sequences
Consistently use bookmark icon for guides/markers
Improves Project Notes integration
Render dialog now updates correctly when sequence offsets change
Sequence timecode offsets now propagate to the timeline ruler, monitor, and guides list
Guides are correctly adjusted when changing project profile to match a clip profile
Project Notes
Some highlights include: improve icons, automatically convert typed timecodes to links when pressing enter, fix pasting text with multiple lines, notes can create guides and markers directly, and the widget has improved icons and text handling
Monitors
Add handle to rotate an item using the Transform effect in the monitor
Fix rotoscoping shape not matching selection in monitor
Fix monitor overlay for Obscure and Alpha Shape effects
Fix Transform monitor tool resizing when rotated
Fix pattern/lines overlay of the project monitor misaligning if clip changes while zoomed in
Improved monitor snapping: added back snapping when resizing for non-rotated frames, snapping when moving a rotated frame, and added snapping support for all edges when moving instead of only top-left
Change Timecode color of active Monitor
Make sure playhead is always on top of indicators
Make transform effect monitor grid setting apply to both monitors
Fix keyframe in monitor not correctly reported on clip selection
Adjust monitor timecode for sequence clips with timecode offset
Monitor code cleanup
Video Processing
We've added work on rendering, encoding, decoding, and transcoding such as:
Decoding
Added Enable Hardware Decoding option in the Config Wizard in preparation for future hardware acceleration features
Rendering / Encoding
Added power management option to disable sleep while rendering and playing
Added Nvidia 10 bit x265 encoding
Added 10 bit export profiles in the render dialog (Do note that it will be converted to 8 bit when using compositing or non avfilter effects)
Fix image sequence render incorrectly reported as failed
Ensure audio checkbox is disabled if rendering to an image sequence
Fix possible locale issue on render in Mac/Windows
Added ability to show log files in render dialog Job Queue tab
Added option to keep log files in the render dialog options
Replace AV1 profile with faster SVT-AV1 and added preset option to control quality and speed
AddedSVT-AV1 to codecs which use CRF option
Fix canceling a render would leave Kdenlive in an unstable state
Warn when exiting Kdenlive when render jobs are running, allow to terminate all jobs
Update render dialog guides when sequence offset changes
Display timecode offset in render dialog
Under the hood
Reduced memory consumption of the background removal (SAM2) feature
Added more code tests to improve stability
Improved packaging in MacOS, Windows, Snaps and Flatpak
Cleanup plugins configuration page
Fix SAM2 use system packages hidden
Allow installing specific CUDA version for Whisper and SAM2
Fixes to undo/redo operations
OpentimelineIO (OTIO) fixes
Drop mediainfo dependency now that we can directly read timecode from MLT
Fixed platform specific issues:
MacOS: Allow opening project files by double click (3 year old bug)
Windows: Typewriter effect crash in Titler
AppImage: Fix missing / corrupted font making App unusable on Ubuntu 24.04
Upcoming events
The team will be in Berlin this September for two events. First, the Kdenlive Sprint which will include a community meetup on the 4th of September (stay tuned for more details) and on the 7th of September we'll be at Akademy, where Jean-Baptiste will give a talk about our fundraiser experience. Join us!
Today we are announcing the availability of the minor patch release 2.12.1. This release contains minor improvements and bug fixes only. The fixes are distributed over many different areas of the application and we recommend everybody update to this patch release which is available from our download page.
The full list of fixes included in this patch release is as follows:
Fix using default font for axis title
Fix build with system QXlsx (!693)
Fix build with system QADS 4.4 (!694)
Fix crash on import when no projects opened (BUG 503800)
Save rotation of axis title separately for x and y axis
Fix disappearing axis ticks (#1146)
Fix crash when creating the data spreadsheet for analysis curves (BUG 504662)
Fix crash when aspect is added and all docks in content area are hidden (BUG 504794, 502043)
Fix crash when column or row was added to spreadsheet from toolbar and no column or row was selected (BUG 504839)
Fix issue when the statistics spreadsheet was not shown if the spreadsheet was a child of workbook
Fix issue which caused the context menu of an aspect to not be shown after being re-parented
Handle Windows logical font “MS Shell Dlg 2”
Fix crash when deleting a live-data source with missing source file
Parser: Remove not required function and reuse function instead of copying (BUG 506925)
Fix the export of spreadsheets to SQLite, wrong format was selected internally in the export dialog
Fix the export to SQLite of text values in the spreadsheet containing single quotes
Fix FITS import and export issues
Don’t show any error messages and NaN values in the process behavior chart if no column or an empty column was selected
Remove unwanted entries on the undo stack that were created when modifying properties of the process behavior and run charts
Improve the quality of the fit model preview in the properties explorer and formula view in the random values dialog on hi-dpi screens
Initialize the parameters for the baseline subtraction with reasonable values on first startup and improve the appearance of the preview plot
Fix save/load of the background color for the center value label in the process behavior chart
In the area of small UX-improvements, we added the Shift+Enter shortcut in the Properties Explorer for all analysis curves (fitting, smooth, etc.) which allows to quickly re-calculate the results using the same shortcut as in the notebook. Furthermore, we improved the tab-order and layouts in multiple properties widgets.
In parallel, we are also working on the new features and improvements that will arrive in the next major release which will come with multiple big and highly awaited features. We’ll introduce these features in upcoming blog posts. Stay tuned!
An imaginary conversation, between me and my girlfriend. Now, what’s the twist here is, PyCups3 is actually very very intelligent. So, from my last blog post, I detailed how, PyCups2 got lost due to the lack of upgrades and implmentation of new APIs.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s been a while, and no blog posts yet. But hey, between wrestling with CFFI + C + Python and libcups with its 150+ APIs, blogging kind of took the back seat. But enough excuses - let’s dig into what’s been cooking.
A little history (with C in it)
Back in the day (almost 15 years ago!),
Tim Waugh
wrote the first version of pycups as a C extension module for Python. That worked well, but like all old code, it aged… let’s just say, not like fine wine. After Tim,
Zdenek
took over as maintainer, but with multiple projects of OpenPrinting and other projects in the mix, there wasn’t much room to modernize PyCups2 for him.
Welcome to the July 2025 development and community update.
Development Report
Text Tool Rework Progress
Another important piece of the Text Tool update has made it into the unstable nightly builds: Style Presets.
Style Presets allow you to save font settings and apply them quickly.
For making text bold, or a certain font at a certain size, or a huge list of settings tweaked just right, you can easily apply your favorite properties without having to remember them all.
(MR!2403)
The QML Text Properties docker now uses the same custom slider-spinbox widgets as the rest of Krita, thanks to Wolthera and Deif Lou. (MR!2428)
In the spirit of August's monthly challenge being unofficially dedicated to Krita's cybersquirrel mascot, winner @edgarej has chosen "Kiki's Summer Activities" as the theme. The optional challenge as chosen by runners-up @npc and @Mythmaker is to give Kiki a pet companion. What does Kiki like to do to beat the heat? You decide!
Featured Artwork
Best of Krita-Artists - June/July 2025
This month's Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread received 13 nominations of forum members' artwork. When the poll closed, the moderators broke a five-way tie for second place, and these five wonderful works made their way onto the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner:
Krita is Free and Open Source Software developed by an international team of sponsored developers and volunteer contributors. That means anyone can help make Krita better!
Support Krita financially by making a one-time or monthly monetary donation. Or donate your time and Get Involved with testing, development, translation, documentation, and more. Last but not least, you can spread the word! Share your Krita artworks, resources, and tips with others, and show the world what Krita can do.
Other Notable Changes
Other notable changes in Krita's development builds from July 16, 2025 - August 18, 2025.
Stable branch (5.2.12-prealpha):
Palette Docker: Fix crash with add swatch dialog. (bug report) (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):
Fill Tools: Add option to Include Current Layer in color labels reference mode. (Change, by runch r.)
Symbol Libraries Docker: Fix symbol thumbnails being pixelated, and add a thumbnail-only view mode. (Change, by Agata Cacko)
Freehand Path Tool: Remember Tool Options. (Change, by Agata Cacko)
Animation: Switch to active keyframe when inserting/removing hold frames. (CCbug report) (Change, by Emmet O'Neill)
Animation: Fix rendering GIFs that don't have the .gif file suffix. (bug report) (Change, by Emmet O'Neill)
Nightly Builds
Pre-release versions of Krita are built every day for testing new changes.
ngraham
GSoC
obiwan_kennedy
@soumyatheman:matrix.org
Representative and generated
