Learn how to use Cucumber-CPP and Gherkin to implement better black box tests for a C++ library. We developed a case-study based on Qt OPC UA.

Continue reading Improved Black Box Testing with Cucumber-CPP at basysKom GmbH.

Intro

One of the largest hurdles in any job or activity is getting your resources set up. Luckily for you, Krita has one of the most detailed and straightforward documentation for setup. In this blog I will go over my experience setting up Krita and provide quick links to answer all the questions you may have during set up.

Setup

One Stop Shop for Links
Download and Install Ubuntu
Create KDE account
Fork Krita Repository
Follow build instructions
If you use QTCreator to Build and Run Krita follow this video Krita Chat - Create account, join chat room, introduce yourself and ask questions

The goal is to get Krita running on your machine. For my setup and for simplicity of instructions, I use Oracle's Virtualbox to run a virtual machine(VM) with Ubuntu on my windows machine. You can use any VM host for set up. The Follow build instructions should be straightforward to follow. The great thing about these instructions is that you don't need to know a lot of detail about docker or C++ yet, but you will need to understand some basic linux and git commands.

In the above links, follow the instruction in the hyperlink title.

My Experience

When I set up Krita for the first time, I felt a sense of accomplishment. Not only was I able to set up Krita, but I was able to deepen my understanding of git, learn about docker, VMs and QT.

I think the biggest take away from setting up Krita is to never give up, ask questions in chat, ask yourself "What do I not understand?" before moving to the next instruction.

Conclusion

Setting up Krita is as simple as you make it out to be. The hardest part is finding the resources to be successful. I hope this blog post can simplify set up for newcomers and experienced users.

Contact

To anyone reading this, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m always open to suggestions and thoughts on how to improve as a developer and as a person.
Email: ross.erosales@gmail.com
Matrix: @rossr:matrix.org

To briefly recap, Natalie Clarius and I applied for an NLnet grant to improve gesture support in Plasma, and they accepted our project proposal. We thought it would be a good idea to meet in person and workshop this topic from morning to evening for three days in a row. Props to Natalie taking the trip from far away in Germany to my parents' place, where we were kindly hosted and deliciously fed.

Our project plan starts with me adding stroke gesture support to KWin in the first place, while Natalie works on making multi-touch gestures customizable. Divvying up the work along these lines allows us to make progress independently without being blocked on each other's work too often. But of course there is quite a bit of overlap, which is why we applied to NLnet together as a single project.

The common thread is that both kinds of gestures can result in similar actions being triggered, for example:

• Showing Plasma's Window Overview
• Starting an app / running a custom command
• Invoking an action inside a running app

So if we want to avoid duplicating lots of code, we'll want a common way to assign actions to a gesture. We need to know what to store in a config file, how Plasma code will make use of it, and how System Settings can provide a user interface that makes sense to most people. These are the topics we focused on. Time always runs out faster than you'd like, ya gotta make it count.

Three days in a nutshell

Getting to results is an iterative process. You start with some ideas for a good user experience (UX) and make your way to the required config data, or you start with config data and make your way to actual code, or you hit a wall and start from the other end going from code to UX until you hit another wall again. Rinse and repeat until you like it well enough to ship it.

On day 1, we:

• Explored some code together, primarily in:
  • KWin, which recognizes gestures;
  • KGlobalAccelD, which manages global shortcut configurations;
  • the KGlobalAccel framework, which asks KGlobalAccelD to to register a global shortcut,
  • and the Shortcuts page in System Settings, a.k.a. kcm_keys.
• Figured out why Natalie's KWin session wouldn't produce systemd logs.
  • (Answer: a leftover config entry.)
• Collected a comprehensive list of gestures (and gesture variants) to support.

On day 2, we:

• Collected a broad list of actions (and action types) to invoke when a gesture is triggered.
• Sketched out UI concepts for configuring gestures.
• Weren't quite satisfied, came up with a different design which we like better.
• Discussed how we can automatically use one-to-one gesture tracking when an assigned action supports it.
• Drafted a config file format to associate (gesture) triggers with actions.

On day 3, we:

• Drafted a competing config file format which adds the same data to the existing kglobalshortcutsrc file instead.
• Reviewed existing gesture assignments and proposals.
• Created a table with proposed default gesture assignments (to be used once gestures are configurable).
• Collected remaining questions that we didn't get to.

What I just wrote is a lie, of course. I needed to break up the long bullet point list into smaller sections. In reality we jumped back and forth across all of these topics in order to reach some sort of conclusion at the end. Fortunately, we make for a pretty good team and managed to answer a good amount of questions together. We even managed to make time for ice cream and owl spottings along the way.

Since you asked for it, here's a picture of Natalie and I drawing multi-touch gestures in the air.

Next up in gestures

So there are some good ideas, we need to make them real. Since the sprint, I've been trying my hand on more detailed mockups for our rough design sketches. This always raises a few more issues, which we want to tackle before asking for opinions from KWin maintainers and Plasma's design community. There isn't much to share with the community yet, but we'll involve other contributors before too long.

Likewise, my first KWin MR for stroke gesture infrastructure is not quite there yet, but it's getting closer. The first milestone will be to make it possible for someone to provide stroke gesture actions. The second milestone will be for Plasma/KWin to provide stroke gesture actions by itself and offer a nice user interface for it.

Baby steps. Keep chiseling away at it and trust that you'll create something decent eventually. This is not even among the largest efforts in KDE, and yet there are numerous pieces to fit and tasks to tackle. Sometimes I'm frankly in awe of communities like KDE that manage to maintain a massive codebase together, with very little overhead, through sheer dedication and skill. Those donations don't go to waste.

At this point I would also like to apologize to anyone who was looking for reviews or other support from me elsewhere in Plasma (notably, PowerDevil) which I haven't helped with. I get stressed when having to divide my time and focus between different tasks, so I tend to avoid it, in the knowledge that someone or something will be left wanting. I greatly admire people who wear lots of different hats simultaneously, and it would surely be so nice to have the aptitude for that, but it kills me so I have to pick one battle at a time.

Right now, that's gestures. Soon, a little bit of travel. Then gestures again. Once that's done, we'll see what needs work most urgently or importantly.

Take care & till next time!

Display Widget Windows in Qt Quick Applications

An animation shows a small window with QML's and Widget's ComboBoxes opening for comparison purposes

// Locate libraries
find_package(Qt6 6.5 REQUIRED COMPONENTS
    Quick
    Widgets)

// Link build target to libraries
target_link_libraries(${TARGET_NAME} PRIVATE
    Qt6::Quick
    Qt6::Widgets)

// Replace ${TARGET_NAME} with the name of your target executable

QApplication app(argc, argv);

// widgetFormHandler.h
#pragma once
class WidgetFormHandler : public QObject
{
    Q_OBJECT
    QML_ELEMENT

public:
    explicit WidgetFormHandler(QObject *parent = nullptr);
};

// widgetFormHandler.cpp

WidgetFormHandler::WidgetFormHandler(QObject *parent)
    : QObject(parent)
{
}

// widgetFormHandler.h
#pragma once
class WidgetsForm;
class WidgetFormHandler : public QObject
{
    Q_OBJECT
    QML_ELEMENT

public:
    explicit WidgetFormHandler(QObject *parent = nullptr);
~WidgetFormHandler();

private:
    std::unique_ptr<WidgetsForm> m_window;
}

// widgetFormHandler.cpp
#include "widgetFormHandler.h"

WidgetFormHandler::WidgetFormHandler(QObject *parent)
    : QObject(parent)
    , m_window(std::make_unique<WidgetsForm>())
{
    // ...
}

WidgetFormHandler::~WidgetFormHandler() = default;

// widgetFormHandler.h
#pragma once
class WidgetsForm;

class WidgetFormHandler : public QObject
{
    Q_OBJECT
    QML_ELEMENT
    Q_PROPERTY(bool visible READ isVisible WRITE setVisible NOTIFY visibleChanged)

public:
    explicit WidgetFormHandler(QObject *parent = nullptr);    
~WidgetFormHandler();
    const bool isVisible();    
    void setVisible(bool);

signals:
    void visibleChanged();

private:
    std::unique_ptr<WidgetsForm> m_window;
};

// widgetFormHandler.cpp
#include "widgetFormHandler.h"

#include "widgetForm.h"

WidgetFormHandler::WidgetFormHandler(QObject *parent)
    : QObject(parent)
    , m_window(std::make_unique<WidgetsForm>())
{
    // Hide window by default
    m_window->setVisible(false);
}
WidgetFormHandler::~WidgetFormHandler() = default;
const bool WidgetFormHandler::isVisible()
{
    return m_window->isVisible();
}
void WidgetFormHandler::setVisible(bool visible)
{
    m_window->setVisible(visible);
    emit visibleChanged();
}

Qt Designer shows UI file with a button named pushButton, in camel case.

// widgetsForm.h
#pragma once
#include <QWidget>

namespace Ui
{
    class WidgetsForm;
}

class WidgetsForm : public QWidget
{
    Q_OBJECT
public:
    explicit WidgetsForm(QWidget *parent = nullptr);
    ~WidgetsForm();
signals:
    void buttonClicked();
    // Signal to expose button click from Widgets window
private:
    std::unique_ptr<Ui::WidgetsForm> ui;
};

// widgetsForm.cpp
#include "widgetsform.h"
#include "ui_widgetsform.h"

WidgetsForm::WidgetsForm(QWidget *parent)
    : QWidget(parent)
    , ui(std::make_unique<Ui::WidgetsForm>())
{
    ui->setupUi(this);
    // Expose click
    connect(ui->pushButton, &QPushButton::clicked, this, &WidgetsForm::buttonClicked);
}

WidgetsForm::~WidgetsForm() = default;

// widgetFormHandler.h
[..]
signals:
    void visibleChanged();
    void qmlSignalEmitter();  // Signal to relay button press to QML
[..]

// widgetFormHandler.cpp
[..]
WidgetFormHandler::WidgetFormHandler(QObject *parent)
    : QObject(parent)
    , m_window(std::make_unique<WidgetsForm>())
{
    QObject::connect(m_window, &WidgetsForm::buttonClicked, this,
    &WidgetFormHandler::qmlSignalEmitter);
}
[..]

import NameOfAppQmlModule  // Should match qt_add_qml_module's URI on CMake

WidgetFormHandler {
    id: fontWidgetsForm

    visible: true  // Make the Widgets window visible from QML

    onQmlSignalEmitter: () => {
        console.log("Button pressed in widgets")  // Log QPushButton's click event from QML
    }
}

The post Display Widget Windows in Qt Quick Applications appeared first on KDAB.

Qt AI Assistant v0.9.2 introduces the first agentic AI functionality and supports two additional Large Language Models.

Release notes: https://kde.org/announcements/gear/25.04.2/

Now available in the snap store!

Along with that, I have fixed some outstanding bugs:

Ark: now can open/save files in removable media

Kasts: Once again has sound

WIP: Updating Qt6 to 6.9 and frameworks to 6.14

Enjoy everyone!

Unlike our software, life is not free. Please consider a donation, thanks!

• GoFundMe Donate
• Patreon Donate
• GitHub Donate
• DonorBox Donate

Kdenlive 25.04.2 is now available, containing several fixes and small workflow improvements. Some highlights include:

• Remember title editor window width
• Fix audio thumbnails have an offset in long files
• Fix OTIO import path on Windows
• Better feedback when auto mask fails

Some last minute fixes were also included in the Windows/Mac/AppImage versions:

• Fix OTIO export tracks order and ensure .otio file extension is correctly added

See the full changelog below.

Who am I?

I'm Ajay Chauhan (Matrix: hisir:matrix.org), currently in my third year of undergraduate studies in Computer Science & Engineering. I'll be working on improving Kdenlive timeline markers for my Google Summer of Code project. I have previously worked on Kdenlive as part of the Season of KDE '24.

What am I working on for this year's GSoC?

Kdenlive currently supports single-point timeline markers, which limits efficiency for workflows that require marking time ranges, such as highlight editing or collaborative annotations. This project proposes enhancing Kdenlive's marker system by introducing duration-based markers that define a clear start and end time.

The project will extend the marker data model to support a duration attribute while maintaining backward compatibility. The UI will be updated to visualize range markers as colored regions on the timeline, with interactive handles for resizing and editing.

These markers will be integrated with key features like zone-to-marker conversion, search and navigation, rendering specific ranges, and import/export capabilities.

The problem that this project aims to solve is the need for efficient range-based marking functionality in Kdenlive's timeline (see issue #614). By implementing duration-based markers, the project will ensure that video editors can work more efficiently with time ranges for various workflows like highlight editing, collaborative annotations, and section-based organization.

My mentor for the project is Jean-Baptiste Mardelle, and I appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from him during this process.

Work Completed

Duration Handling in CommentedTime Class

The CommentedTime class, which represents individual markers, has been extended to support duration information. This change enables the range marker functionality throughout the application.

Implementation Approach

I added several new methods and properties to the CommentedTime class:

• duration(): Returns the marker's duration as a GenTime object
• setDuration(): Sets the marker's duration
• hasRange(): Boolean check to determine if a marker is a range marker (duration > 0)
• endTime(): Calculates and returns the end position (start + duration)

The class now includes a new constructor that accepts duration as a parameter, while maintaining backward compatibility with existing point marker creation.

// New constructor with duration support
CommentedTime(const GenTime &time, QString comment, int markerType, const GenTime &duration);

// New member variable
GenTime m_duration{GenTime(0)};  // Defaults to 0 for point markers

🔗 Commit: Add duration handling to CommentedTime class

Range Marker Support in MarkerListModel

Previously, Kdenlive only supported point markers - simple markers that existed at a specific timestamp without any duration. I've now implemented range marker support, allowing users to create markers that span across time intervals.

Implementation Approach

The core changes involved extending the MarkerListModel class with several new methods:

• addRangeMarker(): A new public method that creates markers with both position and duration
• addOrUpdateRangeMarker_lambda(): An internal helper function that handles both creating new range markers and updating existing ones
• Extended editMarker(): Added an overloaded version that preserves duration when editing markers

The implementation uses a lambda-based approach for undo/redo functionality, ensuring that range marker operations integrate seamlessly with Kdenlive's existing command pattern. When updating existing markers, the system intelligently determines whether to preserve the current duration or apply a new one.

// New method signature for range markers
bool addRangeMarker(GenTime pos, GenTime duration, const QString &comment, int type = -1);

// Extended edit method with duration support
bool editMarker(GenTime oldPos, GenTime pos, QString comment, int type, GenTime duration);

The model now emits appropriate data change signals for duration-related roles (DurationRole, EndPosRole, HasRangeRole) when range markers are modified, ensuring the UI stays synchronized.

🔗 Commit: Implement range marker support in MarkerListModel

How These Changes Improve Kdenlive

Improved User Experience

• Flexible Marking: Users can now create markers that represent time ranges, not just specific points
• Better Organization: Range markers help users mark sections like "intro," "main content," or "outro" with clear visual boundaries
• Preserved Workflows: Existing point marker functionality remains unchanged, ensuring no disruption to current users

Backward Compatibility

All existing marker functionality continues to work exactly as before. Point markers are simply range markers with zero duration, ensuring a smooth transition for existing projects and workflows.

Next Steps

In the upcoming weeks, with the core range marker backend in place, the next phase will focus on:

• Integration with export and rendering workflows
• UI components for creating and editing range markers
• Visual representation of range markers in the timeline

Pride Month, better MobiPocket performance and progress in Chessament

Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.

This week issue is a bit special as it is also covering the past week as last Sunday some other contributors and me were busy at the KDE booth at the Umweltfestival in Berlin.

Additionally, as it is the beginning of Pride Month, I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate and acknowledge the invaluable contributions of LGBTQIA+ members within the KDE community. Their work, creativity, and dedication continue to enrich our project and foster a more inclusive and diverse environment for all.

This celebration is especially important at a time when many large tech corporations are rolling back their visible support for the LGBTQIA+ community. KDE and other grass roots organisations have your back!

Getting back to all that's new in the KDE App scene, let's dig in!

Windows Store

Christoph Cullmann published a blog post about the state of KDE apps in the Microsoft Store. Things are looking good!

Multimedia Applications

Okular View and annotate documents

Stefan Brüns speed up the parsing of MobiPocket files considerably (25.08.0 - link 1, link 2 and link 3) and also fixed some parsing issues (link1 and link 2). These changes were implemented in QMobiPocket and improve the rendering speed in Okular for MobiPocket documents but also speed up Baloo indexing of these files and the creation of thumbnails in Dolphin.

Carl Schwan did some further improvements and reduced the number of temporary allocations (link 1, link 2 and link 3)

Carl Schwan fixed the detection of HTML inside mobipocket files (25.04.3 - link).

Sune Vuorela improved the scaling of stamps for annotations (25.08.0 - link). Now, when using a non-default sized stamp, the stamp won't appear pixelated anymore.

Haruna Media player

Victor Blanchard added an option to play the next video automatically in a playlist (link).

AudioTube YouTube Music app

Aleksandr Borodetckii added the option to sort the songs in the "Played songs" list by "last added" (link).

Travel Applications

KDE Itinerary Digital travel assistant

Volker added a departure details dialog. This dialog contains service alerts, occupancy information, vehicle amenities and the operator information when available (link), and published his bi-monthly blog post about all the changes in Itinerary, KTrip, Transitous and co.

Johannes Krattenmacher added ticket extractors for Stena, Viking and IHG (link).

KTrip Public transport navigator

Education Applications

Kig Interactive Geometry

Matthieu Carteron ported Kig to Qt6/KF6 (25.08.0 - Link).

Creative Applications

Krita Digital Painting, Creative Freedom

Freya Lupen fixed a crash when clearing the text field in text brush pipe mode (link).

System Applications

Dolphin Manage your files

Victor Blanchard added an off-by-default setting to automatically switch to icons view mode in folders with a lot of image or video files (25.08.0 - link).

Kai Uwe Broulik simplified how locations in window and tab titles for search results pages are displayed (25.08.0 - link).

Vladislav Kachegov fixed an incorrect view reset when unmounting similarly-named devices (link).

Social Applications

Tokodon Browse the Fediverse

Joshua Goins made it possible to boost your own private post (25.04.03 - link), improved the tooltips for disabled polls and attachment buttons (25.08.0 - link) and did some small improvements to the multi account handling (link).

Joshua also limited the number of poll choice using the limit defined by the server (25.08.0 - link) and fixed a crash when clicking on "Mark as Read" on the notifications page (25.04.3 - link).

NeoChat Chat on Matrix

James Graham made the view position itself correctly at the bottom when switching rooms (25.08.0 - link).

Browsers and Networking

KRDC Connect with RDP or VNC to another computer

Fabio Bas fixed a crash when the main window is outside of any screen (25.04.03 - link).

Alligator RSS feed reader

Julius Künzel fixed opening links with a relative URLs (25.04.03 - link 1 and link 2).

KDE PIM

KOrganizer KOrganizer is a calendar and scheduling application

Allen Winter fixed a crash in KOrganiser (link) and added a feature to display times in 24h format in the agenda view (link).

Games

Chessament - Chess tournament manager

Manuel Alcaraz created a new logo for Chessament (link).

Manuel also added a feature to select the color of the player. This can be set manually or be randomly chosen (link).

Utilities

KAIChat AI Chat

Laurent started working on a frontend for Ollama.

Alpaka An AI chat client

Siavosh Kasravi enabled a feature to save the prompt history in the session so that you can quickly re-execute or edit a previous prompt.

Anyone familiar with my blog will know that I like to write about incense. A reader wrote to me some time ago asking about what sticks I’ve been enjoying lately, and it occurred to me that it might be a nice thing to have a “now listening” type feature on my website, so that fellow incense heads could get a sense of the types of incense I like. After all, while I write plenty of incense reviews, they represent only a small percentage of the sticks, cones, powders, woods, and resins I’m burning or heating from day to day. (If you’re here for my incense content, feel free to skip this one and head to /now-burning to see the new feature!)

The issue of ergonomics #

While it would have been simple enough for me to build a microblogging feature into my Eleventy website, the trouble was wanting to use it after it was built. Unlike using a CMS such as WordPress to make a website, I knew of no nice interface for Eleventy, or for that matter any SSG, that would help me create a post and publish it online without opening an IDE^[1] and using the command line. Instead, the process looks something like this:

As big of a nerd as I am, I’m just not going to want to do that multiple times a day for what amounts to a status post. This lead me to scour the internet looking for a solution: something that I could run on my own desktop or laptop that could build my site locally and push changes to my website, hosted the old fashioned way: as a bunch of text files sitting on a server accessible via SFTP. No needless complexity like running Eleventy on the server, or using a host like Netlify.^[2] Surely there’d be something, right? Surely, the realm of SSGs can’t be without at least one nice, local user interface that people can use without being a web developer?

An attempt to fix the problem #

In the end, I did find one answer to the problem: Publii. Publii seems to be made predominantly with end-users in mind, however. It’s not just a local^[3] CMS, it’s an SSG in its own right, which does me no good as I can’t make it work with my website^[4]. So after coming up with nothing I could use, I gave the idea a rest for a while until I had the epiphany that I could solve the problem with a simple script using KDE’s KDialog to provide a rudimentary UI. So that’s what I did.

The idea was simple: a wizard-like experience that guides the user through the creation of a microblog / status post. Post types and the data they collect should be customized by the user via a JSON configuration file. After the post data is collected from the user, the script should execute a user-defined build command as well as a user-defined command to sync the static files to the server.

Building “Poaster” #

For some reason, I decided to write my script in Ruby, a language for which I once completed a course before promptly forgetting everything I knew about it. I would have had a much easier time using JavaScript and Node, which I am much more familiar with and have successfully used for similar purposes. Why I did not is anyone’s guess. All this to say: please do not make (too much) fun of my shitty little script, which I have dubbed “Poaster.”

I started with the JSON configuration file, /Poaster/config/config.json:

{
    "buildCommand": "npx @11ty/eleventy",
    "postTypes": [
        {
            "name": "Now Burning",
            "postUnitName": "incense",
            "contentEnabled": true,
            "frontMatter": [
                {
                    "name": "title"
                },
                {
                    "name": "manufacturer"
                },
                {
                    "name": "date"
                },
                {
                    "name": "time"
                }
            ],
            "postDirectory": "/post/output/dir"
        }
    ],
    "uploadCommand": "rsync -av --del /local/path/to/site/output
username@my.server:/remote/path/to/public/site/files",
    "siteDirectory": "/local/path/to/site/repo"
}

Here, the user can specify as many post types as they like, each with their own output directory. Each post type can also collect as many pieces of frontmatter as the user cares to specify.

The first thing the script needed to do was ask the user which post type they want to create, so I referenced the KDialog tutorial and wrote a method to handle that /Poaster/lib/spawn_radio_list.rb:

def spawn_radio_list(title, text, options_arr)
  command = %(kdialog --title "#{title}" --radiolist "#{text}")
  options_arr.each_with_index do |option, i|
    command += %( #{i} "#{option}" off)
  end
  `#{command}`
end

I wrote a few more methods in /Poaster/lib to spawn toast notifications, input boxes, create directories if they don’t exist, and write files: /Poaster/lib/spawn_toast.rb:

def spawn_toast(title, text, seconds)
  `kdialog --title "#{title}" --passivepopup "#{text}" #{seconds}`
end

/Poaster/lib/spawn_input_box.rb:

def spawn_input_box(title, text)
  `kdialog --title "#{title}" --inputbox "#{text}"`
end

/Poaster/lib/ensure_dir_exists.rb:

def ensure_dir_exists(directory_path)
  unless Dir.exist?(directory_path)
    FileUtils.mkdir_p(directory_path)
    spawn_toast 'Directory Created', %(Poaster created #{directory_path}.), 10
  end
end

/Poaster/lib/write_file.rb:

def write_file(directory, name, extension, content)
  post_file = File.new(%(#{directory}/#{name}.#{extension}), 'w+')
  post_file.syswrite(content)
  post_file.close
end

All I had to do then was tie it all together in /Poaster/poaster.rb:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'json'
require 'fileutils'
require './lib/spawn_input_box'
require './lib/spawn_radio_list'
require './lib/spawn_toast'
require './lib/ensure_dir_exists'
require './lib/write_file'

config_data = JSON.parse(File.read('./config/config.json'))
dialog_title_prefix = 'Poaster'

# Populate types_arr with post types
post_types_arr = []
config_data['postTypes'].each do |type|
  post_types_arr.push(type['name'])
end

# Display post list dialog to user
post_type = config_data['postTypes'][Integer(spawn_radio_list(dialog_title_prefix, 'Select a post type:', post_types_arr))]

# Set the word we will use to refer to the post
post_unit = post_type['postUnitName']

# Collect frontmatter from user
frontmatter = []
post_type['frontMatter'].each do |item|
  frontmatter.push({ item['name'] => spawn_input_box(%(#{dialog_title_prefix} - Enter Frontmatter'), %(Enter #{post_unit} #{item['name']}:)) })
end

# Collect post content from user
post_content = spawn_input_box %(#{dialog_title_prefix} - Enter Content), %(Enter #{post_unit} content:)

# Make sure the output folder exists
post_directory = post_type['postDirectory']
ensure_dir_exists(post_directory)

# Create post string
post = %(---\n)
post_id = ''
frontmatter.each_with_index do |item, i|
  post += %(#{item.keys[0]}: #{item[item.keys[0]]})
  post_id += %(#{item[item.keys[0]].chomp}#{i == frontmatter.length - 1 ? '' : '_'})
end
post += %(---\n#{post_content})

# Write post string to file and notify user
post_file_name = %(#{post_type['name']}_#{post_id.chomp})
post_extension = 'md'

write_file post_directory, post_file_name, post_extension, post
spawn_toast 'File Created', %(Poaster created #{post_file_name}#{post_extension} at #{post_directory}.), 10

# Run build and upload commands
`cd #{config_data['siteDirectory']} && #{config_data['buildCommand']} && #{config_data['uploadCommand']}`

Burning now #

There is a lot that this script should do that it doesn’t, but for now, it’s still a handy wee utility for SSG users on GNU/Linux systems running KDE who want to make creating quick status-type posts a little less painful. Just make sure KDialog is installed (as well as Ruby, naturally), clone the repo, create /Poaster/config/config.json to meet your needs using the example as a reference and you’re off to the races! I’ve even made a silly little toaster icon using assets from some of the KDE MimeType icons that you can use if you want to make a .desktop file so that you can click an icon on your app launcher to start the script.

My poaster.desktop file looks something like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=/path/to/poaster.rb
GenericName[en_US]=Create a post with Poaster.
GenericName=Create a post with Poaster.
Icon=/path/to/poaster_icon.svg
Name=Poaster
NoDisplay=false
Path=/path/to/repo/
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application

Here’s the script in action:

To build the new “now burning” incense microblog feature, I created two new pages. /now-burning shows the latest entry:

---
layout: layouts/base.njk
title: "Nathan Upchurch | Now Burning: What incense I'm burning at the moment."
structuredData: none
postlistHeaderText: "What I've been burning:"
---
{% set burning = collections.nowBurning | last %}

<h1>Now Burning:</h1>
<article class="post microblog-post">
	<img class="microblog-icon" src="/img/censer.svg">
	<div class="microblog-status">
		<h2 class="">{{ burning.data.title }}{% if burning.data.manufacturer %}, {{ burning.data.manufacturer }}{% endif %}, {{ burning.date | niceDate }}, {{ burning.data.time }}</h2>
		{% if burning.content %}
		<div class="microblog-comment">
			{{ burning.content | safe }}
		</div>
		{% endif %}
	</div>
</article>
<a href="/once-burned/">
	<button type="button">Previous Entries »</button>
</a>

…and /once-burned shows past entries:

---
layout: layouts/base.njk
title: "Nathan Upchurch | Once Burned: Incense I've burning in the past."
structuredData: none
---
{% set burning = collections.nowBurning | last %}

<h1>Previous “Now Burning” Entries:</h1>
{% set postsCount = collections.nowBurning | removeMostRecent | length %}
{% if postsCount > 0 %}
{% set postslist = collections.nowBurning | removeMostRecent %}
{% set showPostListHeader = false %}
{% include "incenseList.njk" %}
{% else %}
<p>Nothing’s here yet!</p>
{% endif %}
<a href="/now-burning/">
	<button type="button">Latest »</button>
</a>

…using a post-listing include built specifically for microblogging:

<section class="postlist microblog-list">
	{% if postlistHeaderText %}<h2>{{ postlistHeaderText }}</h2>{% endif %}
	<div class="postlist-item-container">
		{% for post in postslist | reverse %}
		<article class="postlist-item">

			<div class="post-copy">
					<h3>
						{% if post.data.title %}{{ post.data.title | safe }}{% else %}?{% endif %}{% if post.data.manufacturer %}, {{ post.data.manufacturer | safe }}{% endif %}
					</h3>

				<div class="post-metadata">
					<div class="post-metadata-copy">
						<p>
						<time datetime="{{ post.date | htmlDateString }}">{{ post.date | niceDate }}{% if post.data.time %}—{{ post.data.time }}{% endif %}</time>
						</p>
					</div>
				</div>
				{% if post.content %}
				<div class="microblog-comment">
					{{ post.content | safe }}
				</div>
				{% endif %}
			</div>
		</article>
		<hr>
		{% endfor %}
	</div>
</section>

And that’s about it! There’s a lot to do to make the script a little less fragile, such as passing along build / upload error messages, allowing for data validation via regex, et cetera. I’m sure I’ll get to it at some point. If Poaster is useful to you, however, and you’d like to submit a patch to improve it, please do let me know.