I use Hugo to build my website (which you can explore the source code to
on GitHub.) And because I love using
KDE applications whenever I can, I do all of my editing - from config files, CSS
and Markdown for posts - in Kate.
My song & dance when I want to edit my website is a bit inefficient. I
would use Kate, then manually navigate to my folder. Or I would invoke Kate from
the command-line to do the same. Then I would open a separate Konsole window
(and sometimes the integrated terminal) in order to launch Hugo to build the
site. I would then open up a separate terminal to perform git operations.
So I have created a neat workflow that I think is worth sharing, in case you
didn’t know Kate had these features. This also serves as documentation to myself
whenever I want to re-create it.
Sessions
The first and easiest improvement is to use
sessions. You can manage these under the “Session” menu item at the top of Kate.
Instead of opening a fresh Kate session each time, the folder I was in (which is
always my site’s folder) and the open documents I have are saved automatically.
Note that you probably need the Projects plugin enabled to have access to the
“Projects” tab where it’s state is also saved in the session.
External Tools
The next thing to tackle is making it easier to launch Hugo. We can accomplish
this by using External Tools, which is managed under Settings or under the Tools
menu item. I have two, one for launching Hugo and the other for stopping it.
These external tools are self-explanatory, but I set the working directory to %{Project:Path}
to ensure it’s running at the site root. I also have it set to spit out the Hugo
output into the pane, but it doesn’t actually display until the process quits
which seems like a bug in Kate.
It’s not a huge deal, as the output is displayed when I use the “Stop Hugo” action. I suggest using the “-O” argument of hugo server to automatically open your default web browser when Hugo completes initialization.
Ideas
It would be cool to have a preview pane that automatically finds the Markdown file
you’re editing and navigate to it, which seems possible. Another nicety would be
a native Kate plugin to handle launching/stopping/configuring the Hugo server. But
this workflow is already a big improvement over what I had before.
The Amarok Development Squad is happy to announce the immediate availability of Amarok 3.2 "Punkadiddle"!
2024 was the year that finally introduced a Qt5/KF5 based Amarok 3 release in April, and it was followed by a number of 3.x bugfix and feature releases.
Now, to conclude 2024, it is time for Amarok 3.2.0. The most interesting change is probably the ability to build the same codebase on both Qt5 and Qt6.
Qt5/KF5 is still the recommended, tested configuration, for now. Qt6 version should be usable, but in addition to any unknown issues, there are a number
of known issues documented in README.
Additionally, 3.2.0 includes e.g. collection filtering and Ampache related features and fixes, oldest resolved feature request being from 2013.
Multiple long-standing crash bug reports have been closed lately, and probable fixes for various issues observed in crash report data have been introduced.
Amarok 3.2.0 should thus feature slightly improved stability.
Some 3.2.x bugfix releases are to be expected in 2025, before the focus shifts to preparations for an "Amarok 4".
Changes since 3.1.1
CHANGES:
Building an experimental Qt6/KF6 Amarok version is now possible
Allow filtering collection by lack of tag / empty tag (BR 325317)
CHANGES:
Amarok now depends on KDE Frameworks 5.108
Show current track context applet by default
BUGFIXES:
Probably fix occasional crashes when filtering collection (BR 492406)
Probably fix occasional crashes when clearing CompondProgressBars
Fix context view applets on Qt6/KF6
Fix Ampache login on server version 5.0.0 and later (BR 496581)
Fix crash if Ampache login is redirected (BR 396590)
The git repository statistics between 3.1.0 and 3.2.0 are as follows:
In addition to source code, Amarok is available for installation from many distributions' package
repositories, which are likely to get updated to 3.2.0 soon, as well as
the flatpak available on flathub.
One of the much requested feature for Kdenlive was a modern background removal tool.
Among the many features and enhancements that will come in 2025, we are excited to announce a preview version with a background removal tool using object masks. The feature is based on SAM2‘s object segmentation. You can download the Kdenlive test alpha version from the links at the bottom of this page.
Since this is a testing preview version, the binaries are not signed and you might need to manually allow the install on Windows.
Here is a quick demo of how the feature works in screenshots:
Add a clip to your project
Select a zone to apply the background removal
Click on the Mask button
Select Configure to setup the tool (to be done only the first time)
Click on Install in the Object detection setup
Go drink a coffee while the module is being downloaded and installed (between 5 and 15 minutes depending on your internet connection). Currently there is not much feedback from the install, we will improve this so just be patient.
Kdenlive downloads the smallest model by default. Once it shows up, you can close the dialog and start using the feature.
Click on the Create new mask button
Click on the object you want to keep (foreground)
When the white mask appears, click on Generate Mask
The video mask task starts, drink another coffee
When the video mask is created, it will appear in the mask manager dialog (2).
Drag your clip zone from the clip monitor to timeline
Select the newly created mask
Click on Apply Mask
Success, you can now enjoy your video without the background.
Of course, this feature can also be used for other exciting things like applying an effect or a color correction to a specific object only.
Keep in mind that this is an alpha version, we will enhance and polish it for the upcoming 25.04 version. Happy editing!
Screen magnification is an accessibility feature that enlarges the screen to make text, images, and other user interface components easier to see or read. It is not something that requires constant developer attention, however, in Plasma 6.3, the zoom plugin received some improvements that I’d like to go over quickly.
Pixel grid
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
Arguably, it will be too hard to read text if the screen is “too” zoomed in. There are several ways how this case can be handled. For example, the magnification factor can be capped (e.g. to x8 or x10), or do nothing and just display blurry upscaled screen contents… or display something else.
With the old behavior, the zoom plugin used not to do anything special when the magnification factor reaches a high value, but with the new behavior, it is going to display the individual pixels on the screen. This can be very useful to developers, designers, etc.
System settings
In addition to the new pixel grid mode, the system settings for the zoom plugin received minor polishing to look more consistent with other config modules.
Future improvements
Keyboard shortcuts are not the only way how the zoom plugin can be triggered. For example, it can be also triggered by pressing Meta and Control keys and scrolling the mouse wheel to zoom. However, it is not exposed anywhere in the user interface and some people may prefer zooming with just the Meta key pressed. In order to address the discoverability issue of the mouse wheel gesture and allow using a different combination of modifier keys, there is already a patch to add the corresponding system setting, but it’s 6.4 material. It would be also nice to move screen magnifier settings from the desktop effects config module to the accessibility config module.
Last but not least, the zoom effect currently uses the bi-linear magnification filter, which produces okay-ish visual results, but it’s worth looking for alternative upscaling algorithms that handle edges better so zoomed in text looks less blurry.
I need your help. I’ve created a first version of Skrooge that can be built on KF6 and Qt6 (Its temporary number version is 2.33.8).
I use it daily for managing my own accounts. However, before releasing an official version, I’d like some of you to test it and provide feedback by reporting any issues you encounter.
I’m counting on you! To get started, check out the download section and the README.md.
After almost a year, I finally found some time to dive back into Krita. I stumbled upon the Memileo Impasto Brushes bundle, which mimics the texture and thickness of real paint—perfect for adding depth and dimension. Inspired to try them out, I created this quick one-hour painting.
I started this blog back in 2010. Back then I used Wordpress and it worked reasonably well. In 2018 I decided to switch to a static generated site, mostly because the Wordpress blog felt slow to load and it was hassle to maintain. Back then the go-to static site generator was Jekyll, so I went with that. Lately I’ve been struggling with it though, because in order to keep all the plugins working, I needed to use older versions or Ruby, which meant I had to use Docker to build the blog locally. Overall, it felt like too much work and for the past few years I’ve been eyeing Hugo - more so since Carl and others migrated most of KDE websites to it. I mean, if it’s good enough for KDE, it’s good enough for me, right?
So this year I finally got around to do the switch. I migrated all the content from Jekyll. This time I actually went through every single post, converted it to proper Markdown, fixed formatting, images etc. It was a nice trip down the memory lane, reading all the old posts, remembering all the sprints and Akademies… I also took the opportunity to clean up the tags and categories, so that they are more consistent and useful.
Finally, I have rewritten the theme - I originally ported the template from Wordpress to Jekyll, but it was a bit of a mess, responsivity was “hacked” in via JavaScript. Web development (and my skills) has come a long way since then, so I was able to leverage more modern CSS and HTML features to make the site look the same, but be more responsive and accessible.
Comments
When I switched from Wordpress to Jekyll, I was looking for a way to preserve comments. I found Isso, which is basically a small CGI server backed with SQLite that you can run on the server and embed it into your static website through JavaScript. It could also natively import comments from Wordpress, so that’s the main reason why I went with it, I think. Isso was not perfect (although the development has picked up again in the past few years) and it kept breaking for me. I think it haven’t worked for the past few years on my blog and I just couldn’t be bothered to fix it. So, I decided to ditch it in favor of another solution…
I wanted to keep the comments for old posts by generating them as static HTML from the Isso’s SQLite database, alas the database file was empty. Looks like I lost all comments at some point in 2022. It sucks, but I guess it’s not the end of the world. Due to the nature of how Isso worked, not even the Wayback Machine was able to archive the comments, so I guess they are lost forever…
For this new blog, I decided to use Carl’s approach with embedding replies to a Mastodon. I think it’s a neat idea and it’s probably the most reliable solution for comments on a static blog (that I don’t have to pay for, host myself or deal with privacy concerns or advertising).
I have some more ideas regarding the comments system, but that’s for another post ;-) Hopefully I’ll get to blog more often now that I have a shiny new blog!
In recent weeks we have been working on transferring LabPlot’s documentation to a new format.
We decided to move the documentation from the DocBook and MediaWiki format to the Sphinx/reStrcutredText framework. In our perception Sphinx offers a user-friendly and flexible way to create and manage documentation. Easy math typing and code formatting also come along. Additionally, Sphinx supports basic syntax checks, and modern documentation practices, such as versioning and integration with various output formats like HTML, PDF and ePub.
The new user’s manual is available on a dedicated page: https://docs.labplot.org. Please check it out and let us know what you think.
The manual still needs to be supplemented with new content, so we encourage you to contribute to the documentation, e.g. by fixing and adding new sections, updating images, as collaborative efforts can lead to a more comprehensive resource for everyone. Please check the Git repository dedicated to the documentation to find more details on how to help make it better.
We are happy to announce Kdenlive 24.12. This release focuses on bug fixes, improved stability, and usability enhancements across the board. Numerous crashes and glitches have been addressed, including issues with audio capture, effect zones, high DPI display rendering, and subtitle editing. Proxies, rotoscoping, and project management workflows have been significantly refined, resolving lags, incorrect EXIF orientation handling, and archiving problems. We’ve managed to sneak in some little nifty features as well like the ability to resize multiple timeline items, Shift + Del shortcut to extract clips from the timeline, added actions to quickly add Marker/Guides in a specific category and mixes (same track transitions) can be 1 frame long.
Under the hood, we’ve dropped support for Qt5 and now require Qt6, alongside updated dependencies (MLT 7.28 and KF 6.3). This release comes with a lot of code cleanups and refactored Whisper settings. Optimized threading and memory management. Additionally, fail-safe measures have been taken to prevent invalid project profiles and script names.
Subtitles
We’ve added support for Advanced SubStation Alpha (ASS) subtitles, a widely used text-based format renowned for its flexibility in creating highly styled and customizable subtitles. ASS subtitles support advanced features such as font family, size, and color; text outlines and shadows; alignment and positioning; scaling and rotation; margins and spacing; and effects, including masking and other enhancements. This feature was developed by Chengkun Chen as part of Google Summer of Code (GSOC).
Subtitles
Subtitle Manager
The new subtitle manager is now integrated with style management and has been divided into four sections: Files, Layers and Content, Style, and Info, which correspond to the four main components of ASS subtitles.
Files – create, import and export subtitles
Layers and Content – create/remove subtitle tracks and apply styling
Styles – create and manage styles
Info – displays information about subtitles
Subtitle Style Editor
The new and powerful Subtitle Style Editor allows you to control all the styling capabilities of the ASS format.
Animated Subtitles
The ASS format supports three types of effects: Banner, where the text scrolls sideways across the screen; Scroll, where the text moves vertically; and Karaoke, where each word is highlighted in sync with the audio.
Currently, only the Banner and Scroll effects are accessible through the user interface, but additional styling, including Karaoke effects, can be applied using ASS tags.
Speech-to-Text
We’ve polished the Speech to Text features ensuring a smoother and more reliable experience. Seamless installation, GPU translation and threading issues have fixed. We’ve also resolved issues with the display of Vosk, Whisper and Seamless model folder sizes on Windows. Added the ability to update all virtual environment packages have updated to the latest version of Whisper. Lastly, the Whisper settings interface has been refactored.
Effects
With this version, we complete the final task of our fundraiser: builtin effects and a redesigned effects interface. Rendering of keyframe types like Bounce, Circular, and Exponential has been improved, alongside fixes for zone-based effects, rotoscoping lag, shape filter rendering, improved precision for time remapping, motion tracker models and prev/next seeking in monitor. It is also now possible to have single-frame mixes (same track transitions).
Interface redesign
The new Effect Stack redesign enhances usability with clearer organization of keyframeable and non-keyframeable parameters, improved layout consistency, more compact and clean. We’ve also added info buttons in effect headers for quick access to documentation.
Built-in Effects
To make your workflow much more fluid, the new effects panel gives direct access to effect parameters, allowing to quickly and easily adjust them. Currently built-in effects are Transform and Flip for video clips and Volume for audio clips. Built-in effects can be enabled/disabled in the settings.
New Effects
As usual there is always room for some eye candy, so we’ve added two color correction effects, HSL Primaries and HSL Range as well as GPS Effects (Images below displaying Distance, Altitude and Speed among many other values).
Other Highlights
Fix audio capture issues
Added Shift + Del shortcut to extract clip from timeline
Fix clip monitor history menu not showing up on audio clips
Fix spacer tool leaving a few frames after last clip
Implement resizing multiple timeline items
Fix Pexels Videos provider
Fix Alt+click to loop between clips using an effect in project monitor
Titler: ensure only plain text can be pasted
Titler: added support for tabulations
Add Actions to quickly add Marker/Guides in a specific category
Give back to Kdenlive
Releases are possible thanks to donations by the community. Donate now!
All of the Maui repositories have the newly released branches and tags. You can get the sources right from the Maui group: https://invent.kde.org/maui
MauiKit 4 Frameworks & Apps
With the previous version released, MauiKit Frameworks and Maui Apps were ported over to Qt6, however, some regressions were introduced and those bugs have now been fixed with this new revision version.
Currently, there are over 10 frameworks, with two new ones recently introduced. They all, for the most part, have been fully documented, and although, the KDE doxygen agent has some minor issues when publishing some parts, you can find the documentation online at https://api.kde.org/mauikit/ (and if you find missing parts, confusing bits, or overall sections to improve – you can open a ticket at any of the framework repos and it shall be fixed shortly after)
A brief list of changes and fixes introduced to the frameworks are the following:
For MauiKit Controls
MauiKit is now no longer dependent on MauiKit-Style, so any other QQC2 style can be used with Maui Apps (other styles are not supported).
MauiKit fixes the toast area notifications. The toast notifications can now take multiple contextual actions.
MauiKit Demo app has been updated to showcase all the new control properties
New controls: TextField, Popup, DropDownIndicator,
MauiKit fixes the template delegates and the IconItem control
MauiKit fixes to the Page autohide toolbars
Update style and custom controls to use MauiKit Controls’ attached properties for level, status, title, etc.
Display keyboard shortcut info in the MenuItems
Update MauiKit Handy properties for isMobile, isTouch, and hasTransientTouchInput and fixes to the lasso selection on touch displays
Added more resize areas to the BaseWindow type
Check for system color scheme style changes and update accordingly. This works on other systems besides Plasma or Maui, such as Gnome or Android
The type AppsView has been renamed to SwipeView, and AppViewLoader to SwipeViewLoader
Update MauiKit-Style to support MauiKit Controls attached properties and respect the flat properties in buttons
Fixes to the MauiKit bug in the GridBrowser scrollbars policy
Fixes to the action buttons layout in Dialog and PopupPage controls
Refresh the icon when a system icon-theme change is detected – a workaround for Plasma is used and for other systems the default Qt API
For the MauiKit Frameworks
FileBrowsing fixes bugs with the Tagging components
Fixes to the models using dates. Due to a bug in Qt getting a file date time is too slow unless the UTC timezone is specified
Update FileBrowsing controls to use the latest Mauikit changes
Added a new control: FavButton, to mark files as favorites using the Tagging component quickly
Update and fixes to the regressions in the other frameworks
ImageTools fixes the OCR page
TextEditor fixes the line numbers implementation.
All of the frameworks are now at version 4.0.1
All of the apps have been reviewed for the regressions previously introduced in the porting to Qt6; those issues have been solved and a few new features have been added, such as:
Station, now allows opening selected links externally
Index fixes to the file previewer and support for quickly tagging files from the previewer
Vvave fixes to the minimode window closing
Update the apps to remove usage of the Qt5Compat effects module
Fix issues in Fiery, Strike, and Agenda
Fix the issue of selecting multiple items in the apps not working
Clip fixes to the video thumbnail previews and the opening file dialog
Implement the floating viewer for Pix, Vvave, Shelf, and Clip for consistency
Correctly open the Station terminal at the current working directory when invoked externally
Among many few other details
** Index, Vvave, Pix, Nota, Buho, Station, Shelf, Clip, and Communicator versions have been bumped to 4.0.1
*** Strike and Fiery browser versions have been bumped to 2.0.1
**** Agenda and Arca versions have been bumped to 1.0.1
And as for Bonsai, Era, and other applications still under development, there is still not a ported version to Qt6 as of now
Maui Shell
Although Maui Shell has been ported over to Qt6 and is working with the latest MauiKit4, a lot of pending issues are still present and being worked on. The next release will be dedicated fully on Maui Shell and all of its subprojects, such as Maui Settings, Maui Core, CaskServer, etc.
That’s it for now. Until the next blog post, that will be a bit closer to the 4.0.1 stable release.
redstrate
@redstrate:pyra.sh
GSoC
