I can’t believe it’s already the end of May! This month turned out a little meatier than last month I think, but I still have a large backlog of merge requests and TODOs to go through.

Plasma

[Feature] Now when there isn’t enough space to display the QR code in the clipboard applet, there is a clearer message of what to do next.

[Bugfix] On the topic of QR codes, the menu is now a menu of radio buttons and not checkboxes which didn’t make sense because it’s an exclusive option.

[Feature] There is now a separator above the “Close” action in the window menu!

[Feature] I added a metadata extractor for Krita files, which means certain information about your Krita artwork can show up in Dolphin, Baloo and other programs that can take advantage of it! This includes helpful information such as canvas width, height and creation date.

[Feature] Soon, the Language and Region settings will support the $LANGUAGE environment variable. This only affects users who did not configure the language explicitly from KDE, like those coming from another computing environment. We already supported loading your pre-existing language from $LANG. Included in that merge request is a fix that stops an erroneous warning message telling you that your language isn’t supported, even though it clearly is.

Plasma SDK

[Feature] For new users of the Plasma SDK, there is now a clearer and more helpful message when you start plasmoidviewer without an applet specified.

$ plasmoidviewer
An applet name or path must be specified, e.g. --applet org.kde.plasma.analogclock

[Feature] I proposed making the icon name selectable, because I can’t stop myself from clicking on it!

Gamepad KCM

Jeremy Whiting has been hard at work improving the backend code, and I finally took a shot at creating a proper art prototype of the controller that will be featured in the KCM.

This will be the base image for the different controller types, and it will change depending on what controller we detect. Neither of us are experts in Inkscape, so we plan for the this to be easily tweakable by actual designers who do not need to know the fine details of the KCM. This is possible because we’re also developing an Inkscape extension to automate exporting SVG files into QML templates that describe button, trigger positions and so on.

The concept is already working in the KCM, but it looks a little off right now and isn’t ready for showcasing yet :-)

Tokodon

[Feature] Many users (including myself) have been experiencing crashes because of the video support added in the last release. QtMultimedia - the library we used for video support - in Qt5 is frustratingly buggy, but has improved in Qt6. Unfortunately, we still have a few more months before KDE Gear applications like Tokodon can switch to Qt6 only and we need a solution for the crashes now. I started porting Tokodon’s video support to mpv which is also used in PlasmaTube!

Playing videos and GIFs should be less crashy, but with worse scrolling performance. However, I worked hard to make sure this only affects auto-play, so if you don’t that option enabled then you shouldn’t notice a difference. This change is almost ready and should appear in the next release, but it lacks testing on Android.

[Feature] You can now change certain account preferences, but the selection is limited due to lack of a proper API. These are preferences that were supported before, but now you can change them from within Tokodon.

And a whole slew of smaller stuff, some which are appearing in the next bugfix release:

• [Bugfix] Link previews are no longer broken.
• [Bugfix] When switching between toplevel pages (Home, Explore, etc), clear the entire page stack instead of part of it.
• [Bugfix] The duplicate account bug should finally be fixed!
• [Bugfix] Fix icons on non-KDE environments, such as GNOME.

[Feature] For the current and future contributors, I started working on better and more detailed documentation. The first two areas I covered was timeline models and the account classes!

[Feature] In terms of starting even more future work, I started implementing QtKeychain support, and rewriting the current, and buggy, account saving mechanism with KConfig. This will hopefully land in the next release, and fix a whole slew of nagging security and account duplication bugs.

qqc2-desktop-style

If you’ve been noticing that qqc2-desktop-style on Plasma 6 is spitting out some weird stuff in your logs:

Warning: file:///home/josh/kde6/usr/lib/qml/org/kde/desktop/private/MobileCursor.qml:33:13: Unable to assign [undefined] to bool (file:///home/josh/kde6/usr/lib/qml/org/kde/desktop/private/MobileCursor.qml:33, )
Warning: file:///home/josh/kde6/usr/lib/qml/org/kde/desktop/private/MobileCursor.qml:33:13: Unable to assign [undefined] to bool (file:///home/josh/kde6/usr/lib/qml/org/kde/desktop/private/MobileCursor.qml:33, )
Warning: file:///home/josh/kde6/usr/lib/qml/org/kde/desktop/private/MobileCursor.qml:33:13: Unable to assign [undefined] to bool (file:///home/josh/kde6/usr/lib/qml/org/kde/desktop/private/MobileCursor.qml:33, )
Warning: file:///home/josh/kde6/usr/lib/qml/org/kde/desktop/private/MobileCursor.qml:33:13: Unable to assign [undefined] to bool (file:///home/josh/kde6/usr/lib/qml/org/kde/desktop/private/MobileCursor.qml:33, )

[Bugfix] I fixed that! It also needs these ECM changes to work. It turns out ECMQmlModule didn’t handle singleton types, and other nagging problems that qqc2-desktop-style needed. I’ve been dabbling in this module for the past month or so so it’s exciting to be able to help here.

Kiten

I took some time to improve the codebase of our Japanese reference tool Kiten, because it seems to have not been very active the past few years. I think it was written before we used C++11. I found a bunch of places where 0 was used to set pointers to null!

I started replacing the old foreach macro, use auto to prevent duplicate types and other modern C++ gardening tasks.

Websites and Documentation

The go.kde.org Matrix redirector update is now merged, which I started in February. This means NeoChat is now preferred right below Element Web (which is still pointed towards https://webchat.kde.org/ ). Thanks to Thiago Sueto, the Community Wiki has been updated already and I sent two merge requests to update kde.org and the footer.

To finish off more February work, I got around to working on the two big pieces of API documentation improvements for KDE Frameworks 6. If you don’t remember, I wanted to add import statements for components meant to be used in Qt Quick. Doxygen already gives us hints for C++ headers, so QML users shouldn’t be left in the dust. For example, how are you even supposed to use this component?

In order to accomplish this, subclasses of QQuickItem need to have their doc comments modified. The first library to get this treatment is plasma-framework, see the merge requests for PlasmaCore, PlasmaQuick and hiding ToolTipDialog.

For regular QML-based components, doxyqml (the tool to auto-generate QML documentation, because Doxygen lacks support for the language) needed to spit these out too. The merge request to add import statements is cleaned up, the tests fixed and ready for final review!

I also spent some time cleaning up the Community wiki, which just means I roam around and make sure links aren’t dead and the formatting looks nice. If you’re interested in some wiki improvement, join us in #kde-www and the Issue board!

Packaging

I was recently researching how well Tokodon works out of the box on other desktop environments. It turns out 90% of issues with Kirigami applications can be solved by installing breeze-icons and qqc2-desktop-style! We might be enforcing this soon, so if you are in charge of packaging Kirigami applications, please make add them as weak or required dependencies! I will probably start filing packaging bugs soon.

In terms of KDE packaging issues in distributions, I opened up two this month:

• On Fedora, Tokodon depends on QtMultimedia and will fail to launch.
• On Arch Linux, add khtml as an optional dependency for HTML preview.

Akademy 2023

I’m also attending Akademy this year in Thessaloniki! My passport was delivered this month, which is strangely hard to get in the USA (currently.)

redstrate @redstrate@mastodon.art

I finally got the passport today! Pretty happy that I no longer have to worry about this little book :bunhdgoogly:

9:19 PM • May 18, 2023 (UTC)

I booked my accommodations last week, so I’m excited to see everyone in-person in July! This is my first time traveling outside of the North American continent, and to Europe no less. I’ll be documenting my experience traveling and at Akademy, but I’m not sure what format it’ll be in yet.

Hello, Tech enthusiasts! I am beyond excited to introduce to you my first project on GitHub – a Bash-based Telegram Bot that allows you to monitor and control a remote computer!

The idea behind this bot is pretty simple, yet powerful – you can command your PC, retrieve important system information, perform updates and even control system processes directly from your Telegram app. I’ve designed this bot with KDE Neon in mind, but it can be adapted to other Linux-based systems.

Here’s a sneak peek into some of the key functionalities provided by the bot:

function getBattery {
local percentage=$(upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0 | grep percentage | awk ‘{print $2}’)
echo “Battery level: $percentage”
}

function getCpuUsage {
local usage=$(top -bn1 | grep “Cpu(s)” | \
sed “s/.*, *([0-9.])% id.*/\1/” | \
awk ‘{print 100 – $1″%”}’)
echo “CPU Usage: $usage”
}

The bot responds to a set of predefined commands that range from simple system status checks like /battery, /status, /uptime, /memory, /disk, /cpu_usage to more complex functionalities such as /shutdown, /upgrade, /screenshot, and so on.

For the bot to run, it requires some prerequisites like curl, jq, bc among others. Some commands also require specific programs to be installed on your system.

The code is still in its initial version (0.1) and there might be some bugs on certain commands. But I am enthusiastic about making it better with every iteration. Future enhancements include multi-language support and other features based on user feedback.

I encourage you to give it a try, and would greatly appreciate your feedback. Feel free to report any issues, or suggest enhancements on the project’s GitHub page.

Here’s the link to the project on GitHub: telegram-remote-bash

Happy Coding!

Hello world,

This is my first blog post for Google Summer of Code 2023.

During the Google Summer of Code timeline, I will be working on implementing the admin APIs in Tokodon. These APIs will provide mastodon moderators with a suite of moderation tools within Tokodon. I would like to thank Carl Schwan ❤ for mentoring me during Season of KDE and once again for this project. I am really grateful to work under his guidance. By implementing this new feature, Mastodon moderators will be able to easily adopt Tokodon and utilize moderation tools within the application.

I haven’t come across any Mastodon client that implements the admin APIs so by implementing this feature in Tokodon, we can ensure wider adoption. I’ve already started working on implementing the feature and have been maintaining regular communication with my mentor.

I will be writing regular blog posts on my website. You can follow my progress here

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-21.

Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network - The Atlantic

Tags: tech, social-media, politics, twitter

Indeed… things have been changing very rapidly.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/

Patterns in register map design

Tags: tech, hardware, programming, cpu

Very thorough overview on how registers are used when you get closer to the hardware. Very good resource to use as reference.

https://www.devever.net/~hl/regmap

Memory Allocation

Tags: tech, memory

Everything you always wanted to know but didn’t dare asking about memory allocators. OK, maybe not “everything everything” but this gives a very good overview on how they work and the trade-offs they have to make.

https://samwho.dev/memory-allocation/

How Much Memory Do You Need to Run 1 Million Concurrent Tasks? | Piotr Kołaczkowski

Tags: tech, multithreading, performance, memory

Doesn’t give the whole picture (memory isn’t the only important parameter) but interesting results nonetheless. A few surprises in there, Java and C# do much better than one might assume for instance.

https://pkolaczk.github.io/memory-consumption-of-async/

Stop Saying C/C++ | Bryce Vandegrift’s Website

Tags: tech, c++, c, programming

Indeed, the times when we could pretend one was a superset of the other are long gone.

https://brycevandegrift.xyz/blog/stop-saying-c-and-c++/

``Rewrite it in Rust” Considered Harmful?

Tags: tech, safety, security, memory, c, c++, rust

Indeed, the story of integrating C and C++ with Rust isn’t a simple one right now. It might introduce larger attack surfaces. Some improvements are proposed in this paper.

https://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/hotos-ffi.pdf

Writing Python like it’s Rust | Kobzol’s blog

Tags: tech, programming, python, rust

Nice list of patterns leveraging the Python type hints for richer and safer interfaces.

https://kobzol.github.io/rust/python/2023/05/20/writing-python-like-its-rust.html

GitHub - Xfennec/progress: Linux tool to show progress for cp, mv, dd, … (formerly known as cv)

Tags: tech, linux, tools, command-line

Looks like a smart and interesting little tool. I definitely needed something like it more than once.

https://github.com/Xfennec/progress

5 Things Founders, Investors and Recruiters Should Know about the CTO role | by Marc van Neerven | CTO-as-a-Service | Medium

Tags: tech, business, cto, management

Interesting insights about the minutiae of the CTO role.

https://medium.com/cto-as-a-service/5-things-founders-investors-and-recruiters-should-know-about-the-cto-role-a65d7bb66264

Writing summaries is more important than reading more books — Andreas Fragner

Tags: book, note-taking

Definitely something I learned way to late. I wish I had started with such summaries and book notes earlier.

https://www.andreasfragner.com/writing/writing-summaries

Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control

Tags: tech, economics, history, capitalism, automation

Very interesting explorations of the early days of automation and computation. This shows another face of Babbage which is often ignored. It is a cruel demonstration on how his machine were first and foremost encroached on division of labor as inspired by plantations.

https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/origin-stories-plantations-computers-and-industrial-control/

The Fastest Maze-Solving Competition On Earth - YouTube

Tags: tech, robots, competition, funny, mathematics

The fascinating world of micromice competitions. There’s a lot of thinking leading to those really smart designs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMQbHMgK2rw

Bye for now!

Overview

If you’ve been following my previous blog posts, you may recall that I’ve been working on enhancing the user interface of the Bundle Creator in Krita. The new Bundle Creator is to be designed similar to an installation wizard. By compartmentalizing the functionality into four separate sections, users can effortlessly navigate through the various aspects of bundle creation process.

My Progess so far…

I spent the last two weeks working on the Resource Chooser section. The Resource Chooser page allows users to users to handpick the resource items they wish to include in their new bundle. The most notable enhancement is the transition from a traditional list view to a more intuitive grid view for the list of available resources, similar to the Resource Manager layout.

In the previous version, users were required to individually select each resource item and use the > key to add them to the list of selected resources. However, now users can simply click on resource items directly to add them to the selected list. This seamless integration of the grid view and the ability to click-to-select greatly streamlines the workflow, especially benefiting tablet users of Krita.

One can also filter resources by tag or name before choosing resource items to be added to the selected list. This allows users to swiftly select resource items that serve a similar purpose when creating a new bundle. Gone are the days of scrolling through the entire list of available items; now, users can easily narrow down their options through efficient filtering.

And finally, to remove a single resource item, users can now simply select it by clicking on it. Similarly, for removing multiple items, users can hold down the Ctrl key and select multiple items imultaneously.Once the desired resource items are selected, users can easily remove them by clicking on the Remove Resources button .

Merge Request

You can view my merge request here.

Plans ahead

In the upcoming weeks, I would be working on the Choose Tags section. This requires some UI related feedback, and if you’re interested to help out, please feel free to drop a comment on this post I created on Krita Artists Forum!

And just to add a splash of colour to my blogpost, this is just a very quick artwork which I made using Ramon’s impressionism brush bundle. It’s super easy to use, do check it out! :D

MauiKit: A Toolkit for Multi Adaptable User Interfaces.

Today, we bring you a new report on the Maui Project’s progress.

Community

To follow the Maui Project’s development or say hi, you can join us on Telegram: https://t.me/mauiproject.

We are present on Twitter and Mastodon:

• https://twitter.com/maui_project
• https://floss.social/@mauiproject

Thanks to the KDE contributors who have helped translate the Maui Apps!

Downloads

You can get the stable release packages [APKs, AppImage, TARs] directly from the KDE downloads server at https://download.kde.org/stable/maui/

And if you are feeling a bit curious about the Maui DE, you can download a new Manjaro-based image for **testing** the project’s current state.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/nulogicos/files/maui-shell/ISO/manjaro-maui-shell-23.0.0-minimal-230606-linux515.iso/download

Note: Please be aware that this is an ISO image from a third party.

What’s new?

​​​

A few custom CSD button styles added. I’ll probably move them to a new package maui-csd-styles.
If you have a favorite window control button style- from back in the days of emerald and metacity – leave a comment with a link and I’ll add it. #mauikit@maui_project pic.twitter.com/713rE9B1iI

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 2, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

MauiKit Frameworks

At the core of the Maui Project lies its foundational framework, MauiKit Controls, which provides a comprehensive set of template controls for creating user interfaces. In this latest release, we have made significant improvements to MauiKit Controls, focusing on enhancing its configurability and overall consistent user experience.

One of the notable advancements is the increased configurability of MauiKit Controls, allowing developers to adapt the interface to user preferences more effectively. For example, new color styles have been introduced specifically tailored for E-Ink and AMOLED displays, ensuring optimal readability and energy efficiency on these screen types. This level of customization empowers developers to create interfaces that cater to the unique needs of users and their device preferences.

Furthermore, we have worked to establish a more consistent look and feel across all graphical elements within MauiKit Controls. This coherence ensures a seamless user experience, where controls harmoniously blend together, providing a polished and professional interface. Users will appreciate the enhanced visual consistency and intuitiveness of the controls, resulting in a more satisfying and engaging interaction.

Controls & Style – [3.0.0]

• Make the ToolActions have a uniform height for all the children.
• Style fixes to the ComboBox and SpinBox.
• In the Handy object check the clipboard for an image.
• Allow opening ContextualMenu and the cursor position.
• New control TextFieldPopup: a text field that expands to a popover for listing elements; a use case is for presenting inline searches and filtering.
• Fixes to the minimum ApplicationWindow size constraints on mobile.
• Tweaks to the TabView tabs, supporting now color and icon. Fixes the interactive property for touch-swiping gestures.
• Fix padding of elements such as custom CSD buttons, FloatingButton, SelectionBar, and others.
• Refactor the ToolActions control, no longer based on indexes, but rather relies on the Action children for setting the states.
• Fixed the crashing issue on Wayland when performing a DND action.
• The ListBrowserDelegate and GridBrowserDelegate now expose the autoExclusive property for such usage.
• Start using the new MauiMan Accessibility module properties for the scrollBarPolicy and playSounds preferences.
• Style the CheckBoxItem control for better contrast and consistency with the rest of the elements.
• Fix binding loops on some controls, such as ToolBar.
• Added a constrained width for the SideBarView sidebar to never exceed the width of the available screen width.

True Black and Inverted for e ink displays? @maui_project pic.twitter.com/1EWDJ4aEoh

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 13, 2023

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FileBrowser, TextEditor, ImageTools, and Accounts – [3.0.0]

MauiKit FileBrowsing, has also received refinements in this release. The dialogs within MauiKit FileBrowsing have been redesigned to be more compact and visually pleasing, providing a cleaner and more user-friendly interface for managing files. Drag and drop operations have been fine-tuned to ensure smoother file manipulation, simplifying the organization and transfer of files.

MauiKit FileBrowser now has support for pasting raw images and text buffers into a new file. This is Index File Manager in action:#mauikit@maui_project pic.twitter.com/nn4wwjrQVz

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 18, 2023

A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.

Additionally, the API of MauiKit FileBrowsing has been cleaned up, resulting in a more consistent and developer-friendly experience. These improvements streamline the integration of MauiKit FileBrowsing into applications, allowing developers to leverage its power more efficiently.

The frameworks received the necessary fixes for supporting translations via KI18n and the KDE’s infrastructure.

• Check if the clipboard has any content that can be pasted into the FileBrowser.
• Allow pasting images and text streams into a new file in the FileBrowser.
• Added a readOnly property to the FileBrowser to avoid performing modifying actions, such as deleting, creating, or moving.
• Allow selecting large amounts of files – still not good [TODO]
• Do not count “.” and “..” entries in the directory count info.

Documents & Calendar – [1.1.0]

Updated to the latest MauiKit Controls changes. MauiKit Calendar has been updated to the latest changes in the Akonadi Frameworks.

Terminal – [1.1.0]

MauiKit Terminal serves as a terminal emulator control, powering the MauiKit Station app. In this new release, MauiKit Terminal has gained several exciting features to improve its functionality and usability. Users can now easily search through their command history, making it more convenient to reference past commands and outputs. Additionally, notifications for finished processes ensure users stay informed about completed tasks, enhancing multitasking capabilities.

To prevent accidental closures, MauiKit Terminal now includes alarms that warn users before closing any running processes. This helps avoid unintended disruptions and gives users the opportunity to save their work or take necessary actions. Furthermore, the adaptive color scheme of MauiKit Terminal has been refined for better readability and visual comfort, catering to various devices and screen types. The improved touchscreen support makes it even more intuitive for users to interact with the terminal using touch-based gestures.

• Do not trigger a signal for the process name if it has not changed.
• Refine Adaptive color scheme references.

MauiMan

Configuring Maui

For those who prefer smaller sizes for common elements: #mauikit@maui_project pic.twitter.com/FTdnzM7QWc

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 15, 2023

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Maui Apps

The Maui Apps cover a wide range of essential functionalities, including a file browser, music player, text editor, image viewer, notes taker, video player, web browser, and calendar. In this latest release, our focus has been on expanding and refining the app stack, ensuring consistency, and bringing newer apps up to par with the established ones.

Among the recent additions, we have introduced an archive manager, providing efficient handling of compressed files. A GIT version control manager has also been included, streamlining collaborative software development. The new colors utility app helps users manage and explore color palettes effectively, while the camera app offers a convenient solution for capturing and managing photos.

It’s worth noting that some of these Maui Apps are also available on Android, making them accessible across multiple platforms. Furthermore, these apps are designed to work flawlessly on Linux phones, tablets, and desktop computers, ensuring a consistent and seamless user experience regardless of the device being used.

Index & Nota

• Index PathBar delegates now mask the content item to the arrow shape for more precise clicks.
• Index now allows pasting raw image and text buffers into a new file.
• The main context menu now pops up on the cursor position if triggered with a right-click on the desktop.
• Check if there are items in the clipboard that can be pasted.

Fiery & Vvave

• Fiery now can download files and notify about them.
• Fiery has a more compact look with merged tabs and toolbars.
• Fiery has a more adaptive interface on mobile mode.
• Vvave now has preference properties for toggling album titles.

Fiery web browser with a more compact & responsive layout + detaching tabs. now can also download files etc…#mauikit pic.twitter.com/MUZLvnwzK4

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) May 13, 2023

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Buho & Pix

Bonsai & Clip

• Bonsai refactored with a new backend for performing GIT actions.

Arca & Station

• Arca can now create new compressed archives.
• Correctly prevent closing active processes and correctly accept to stop them.
• Station now has a new shortcut bar for signals.
• Station now checks the current program being executed and sets the best-fitted shortcuts bar, for example for Nano the nano bar.

Station with fixes for text rendering with Zsh themes. added more configuration options in settings. and support for alerts on finished processes and prevent closing running processes too… also configurable.#mauikit @maui_project pic.twitter.com/7ZoF8SlTUQ

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 4, 2023

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Agenda & Strike

• Updated to the latest MauiKit changes,
• Updated to the latest Akonadi library changes.

Booth & Shelf – Communicator & Paleta

All are updated to the latest MauiKit changes.

Maui Shell & Maui Settings

Cask

• Fix bugs on dragging around CSD surfaces.
• Now uses the new MauiMan InputDevices keymap properties.
• Now uses the new QPA Theme and set the right env var to make use of it.
• Other Qt applications now look better with the new Maui QPA Theme.
• Tweaked the padding of the Chrome title bars.

Maui Settings

• The Theme module view has been refactored and split into subpages for better readability.
• Added a new sub-page to support picking custom color schemes.
• New QPA Theme plugin.
• Added a new Fonts subpage in Theme.
• Added entry to pick a custom wallpaper source directory in the Background module view.
• Organize the sidebar modules by categories.
• Can now filter the sidebar categories with keywords.
• Display an error message when a module could not be loaded correctly.
• Added the new InputDevices modules view with initial support for keyboard keymap options.
• Tweaked the About module view.
• Added a filter field for the Icons subpage.

Maui Core & Maui Wallpapers

More settings preferences…@maui_project pic.twitter.com/iXoKkgLR7J

— Camilo Higuita (@cmhiguita) April 13, 2023

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```
stable/maui/agenda/0.5.0/ c75197601b15d7816153027ea3b4d090816365d7c6c9f6ed2c8011a31a3b68aa agenda-0.5.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/agenda/0.5.0/ cddbf790d71712e1389caac49a794f2b1c2c96bd4df1166d383e36717949abea agenda-0.5.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/arca/0.5.0/ 131a0e55834ac9d764cca4451aa5d18ac6fafe9fd5cf60e4b23807d85b997889 arca-0.5.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/arca/0.5.0/ 9d7dcbf34598aecd192307b294445d2376de3c7a2a80ee31188d647c8389aceb arca-0.5.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/bonsai/1.1.0/ 5ba6178b4267f8d263d7cc97ee5dd5085bdfde92a2176874521321835fb2a995 bonsai-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/bonsai/1.1.0/ 4297606dddcc18f6c00f78b4ecf8b263f2800e07ee1a7f0c14da2c96c2603178 bonsai-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/booth/1.1.0/ ec594127fac21cee8e10921a47002297cb526f411d64bdb1375f8646bc886558 booth-1.1.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/booth/1.1.0/ 384cbfa64ee0abedb4c62d224959801eb7619a05661a9f04d4166f1a148c25cb booth-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/booth/1.1.0/ 1c825949e760747ce26a577c46befd61b78c15771b555f3f68ed31b3dfed870f booth-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/buho/3.0.0/ c4034244e57273fa0d7bbb86616500973fde7276cefc9379e37a18a7e2095453 buho-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/buho/3.0.0/ 07145d1581b49aaee450df96dccac7f735d2d2868c42e55fff195194795a4690 buho-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/buho/3.0.0/ 08dbfe1df8e20d792812930af5179a230c4e0bd4963164a060c08440e607da23 buho-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/clip/3.0.0/ ebb49d2ae2225d8c091d1441ebd797eaf21416d5fe13d4857f4a409c653d917c clip-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/clip/3.0.0/ 93e52de3473b15a8054f5a4f193a34ade3b59702ae9d716ff1758e9b0b24df28 clip-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/clip/3.0.0/ 16d93db2184428263e92ccda7d77950f587e2f92212d42c5c01c792d55fbee8a clip-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/communicator/3.0.0/ 8ffce2e2e8b2bc0ea3a9c0a90fd9c8b4376ef745996d2b4b9061ec4b45f32eb6 communicator-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/communicator/3.0.0/ 206e4129029024a91eee59d2819ed7e2a67fafa16d0494ac4674742573c40f07 communicator-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/communicator/3.0.0/ 017f83366c8ac9d8518417a91c6411e77b44f26f6f69c17f7194a5cdf5cfc61f communicator-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/fiery/1.1.0/ fd9215a225a75975bd71515c3dfe90606ceaf48a27e9d411132bffce9f897c9a fiery-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/fiery/1.1.0/ f7fc6c416a4c215b2dd65c080eb82908687dbbd4c9c655ff01c1f422c9bc93e6 fiery-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/index/3.0.0/ 5beccbb39f0ef00ca7bb3dc0cc0e23b738e408a4b3d6d790d460343c8345506b index-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/index/3.0.0/ 1ca0ed4b4af6bfe6bbdd8165872756ff9774c682185d004642c36f7f2c6f2ef1 index-fm-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/index/3.0.0/ 324995147d2c18c8dd5e7e263e98fc088347e5581f7dab6d14bc1d50e02bac26 index-fm-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit/3.0.0/ de7381e957d61f6e81bca1349f12f4a992ded3010083c4aa4b35a9f6387325d9 mauikit-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit/3.0.0/ d864414f58a060141238640a9d813a2f4ae584b8ab7f474cac0df8add19b0d5f mauikit-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-accounts/3.0.0/ fb39a0ae0ac89e991ef952299a13a0bdd1fef6f8abdce516b7da61b869fec739 mauikit-accounts-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-accounts/3.0.0/ c80d030b7d41012d9431d3eb736f8407e53789e4aa3eb084e4f3d5a6852f6472 mauikit-accounts-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-calendar/1.1.0/ fdd57eee74a67859756182acd306a89f350f269ce5c2fe03d75128c37bb36294 mauikit-calendar-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-calendar/1.1.0/ 160d68cd9bbad197e6a07a16bfc4f568d52567772e17cb2374cc2a605b5cfb8b mauikit-calendar-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-documents/1.1.0/ 3af374204aa86225c3289cbf37a76f281707d4305fae071a4c3ee79a8193251b mauikit-documents-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-documents/1.1.0/ 1a17541156f502591127551b0d498fb1d17305d3b43750c508ce2cb2e0aad921 mauikit-documents-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-filebrowsing/3.0.0/ d3df8154a156d14f83367d609eafd5cf0f57cb06ef57e8348bd7c046388f0d0f mauikit-filebrowsing-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-filebrowsing/3.0.0/ 7d43f85f78ff461c8c28f19cfc912a8d16259039d43173a3ce806ec24d3fc420 mauikit-filebrowsing-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-imagetools/3.0.0/ 2d3b7ad6a611c03a29db0d20515294bb5cc0dbc6104ac1181f3e7674a6694852 mauikit-imagetools-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-imagetools/3.0.0/ 875eb5ba66227495ea1d40226bcda4b3d3d27e63ebc817216519bac8e7a07879 mauikit-imagetools-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-terminal/1.1.0/ ca18baf4ca158d856179659f86cb0497ead1e8f7af55b307b64c789f4635712a mauikit-terminal-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-terminal/1.1.0/ 66fb8e0d8cd6385f51f86c786418e167f18eaa0989ee0f78e6241ff134c1a436 mauikit-terminal-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauikit-texteditor/3.0.0/ ee6902ce23fa7f25ba1503a5330f8824e9399ed59fee1e6adacf8574b37e8bba mauikit-texteditor-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauikit-texteditor/3.0.0/ 67fa61e504ae2e7d5dd1f19fa643d8537516e154013a003f2efd6ef6d85146ef mauikit-texteditor-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/mauiman/1.1.0/ 6523705d9d48dec4bd4cf005d2b18371e2a4a0d774415205dff11378eee6468f mauiman-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/mauiman/1.1.0/ c84083254f5fcceba2529aa111d47f39bcb87e958d6de79057c24fb3c8ab801c mauiman-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/nota/3.0.0/ 3f6533194fcf732677251b19f898d791e1c4072c108898960c0dfd289dc26d30 nota-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/nota/3.0.0/ 31b8ee1b703d9329e30c99a9ad9886074468ef16b9926a2f29d674363b46614a nota-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/nota/3.0.0/ 9cff3b22653b4457c209e9bfe603d10527b5f5177034bc127721eb87b420e989 nota-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/pix/3.0.0/ 41efab544465f584c0cabcd77ecea6e058f0007f7d79e279070f63fff7faca95 pix-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/pix/3.0.0/ d186edc1d993922398510b4595d5efeb6d1b532b58d5e04a8c43871bfb6002c1 pix-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/pix/3.0.0/ 545d26cd625a2ec19d17cbd1031db9d2e530cd47f1dd2d13df4a752a86aaf43a pix-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/shelf/3.0.0/ c97f2379be4f83c41dbb789f534bea7f77b552cb2a42008bd98b273dbdc8a2ad shelf-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/shelf/3.0.0/ cd3770580732801f2589d5d6de6cf9d34bba6705403bad505bde778f8d3084a4 shelf-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/shelf/3.0.0/ a792580de49a9f081b8501b9d2016966a37a943328273d4addbd8854f11d83aa shelf-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/station/3.0.0/ 2641b59ff1f3c4e19e7edf4612cff16d66f3ba5b2562930345ae33882a6e7112 station-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/station/3.0.0/ 0ee62ea885a167d54d220537c505fe4244822d35f054b21a885e40e2052d3ff5 station-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/strike/1.1.0/ cabd7046fd982bca2297d4f2328198bd656e2ea67a877072784e89b978e15fad strike-1.1.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/strike/1.1.0/ b77bcd61b0a6324826f57131a084ded901ebb560a3d5c07dd98b7f424df2fa7d strike-1.1.0.tar.xz.sig
```

```
stable/maui/vvave/3.0.0/ fc292587bd576be65dfe7f576c895f34659da569585ba1d0d5896ce8e7828c69 vvave-3.0.0-signed.apk
stable/maui/vvave/3.0.0/ c8c53df23cf9761cfa2cfb3f681db49b6e136a2f13d5464c7f534c3c585d5bf4 vvave-3.0.0.tar.xz
stable/maui/vvave/3.0.0/ d6194db2b947f716ec5728186801de2461b313736828a310a1034b20b32bdf7c vvave-3.0.0.tar.xz.sig
```

The post Maui Release Briefing # 2 appeared first on MauiKit — #UIFramework.

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2023-20.

Hector Martin: “why I chose KDE as the default desktop environment for Asahi”

Tags: tech, foss, kde

Well done team, it’s quite a lot about why the community is great!

https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/110366434912340959

Meredith Whittaker: Consciousness isn’t AI risk—it’s the corporations

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, ethics, criticism

Very good interview. She really point out the main issues. Quite a lot of the current debate is poisoned by simplistic extrapolations based on sci-fi. This distracts everyone from the very real and present problems.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90892235/researcher-meredith-whittaker-says-ais-biggest-risk-isnt-consciousness-its-the-corporations-that-control-them

LLMs and plagiarism: a case study - lcamtuf’s thing

Tags: tech, gpt, copyright

The copyright problem in all this is becoming more and more obvious…

https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/large-language-models-and-plagiarism

Introducing DevPod - Codespaces but Open Source

Tags: tech, developer-experience, tools, vendor-lockin, foss

Interesting new tool for easily setting up dev environments. The real added value to previous such tools is it’s open source nature and the fact that you can fully control on which infrastructure the environments will be created.

https://loft.sh/blog/introducing-devpod-codespaces-but-open-source/

Database Architects: The Great CPU Stagnation

Tags: tech, cpu, performance, cost

Interesting take. Will it lead to paying more attention to performance in software? Will it be the rise of the specialized CPUs? Time will tell.

https://databasearchitects.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-great-cpu-stagnation.html?m=1

Security implications of HTTP response headers | Snyk

Tags: tech, security, web, http

Interesting list. Definitely to keep in mind when developing and deploying a web application.

https://snyk.io/blog/security-implications-of-http-response-headers/

Properties | Pydon’t 🐍 | Mathspp

Tags: tech, python

Good primer on Python properties. Opens the door to lower level mechanisms in the language.

https://mathspp.com/blog/pydonts/properties

Real Multithreading is Coming to Python - Learn How You Can Use It Now | Martin Heinz | Personal Website & Blog

Tags: tech, programming, python, multithreading

Very early days and still hackish to use but that’s definitely big news for the Python ecosystem.

https://martinheinz.dev/blog/97

Ice and Fire: How to read icicle and flame graphs

Tags: tech, performance, optimization

Good explanation of how flame graphs are produced and how to read them. Gives a few tips on what to look for to optimize.

https://www.polarsignals.com/blog/posts/2023/03/28/how-to-read-icicle-and-flame-graphs/

Expand Contract for Databases and Services | Andy Dote

Tags: tech, databases, availability

Updating database schema or interfaces between services should take time if you want to limit the downtime. The extra work involved might mean you should accept a little downtime instead. It probably should be on a case by case basis rather than a blanket policy.

https://andydote.co.uk/2023/05/18/expand-contract/

You should be reading academic computer science papers - Stack Overflow Blog

Tags: tech, science

Definitely this. It takes time of course, I don’t do it nearly enough… I never regretted it though.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2022/12/30/you-should-be-reading-academic-computer-science-papers/

What is Technical Debt? — Laura Tacho

Tags: tech, technical-debt, business

Interesting points in this article. The exact definition doesn’t matter much. What really matters is the common understanding within a team of what technical debt is. It’s also a good idea to be able to link it to actual money and business impacts.

https://lauratacho.com/blog/what-is-technical-debt

Choose Boring Technology

Tags: tech, architecture, decision-making, developer-experience

Definitely this. This is an interesting talk, most thing shouldn’t be shiny. It’s not about stagnating of course, but you should think more than twice before adding a new technology to your stack. Mastery is when you know everything that’s wrong with a piece of tech, before that keep in mind the amount of unknown unknowns and the cost of exploiting something new.

https://boringtechnology.club/

🤓 “Boring” is just one strategy 🥱

Tags: tech, architecture

A good counterpoint to the “choose boring tech” which I tend to agree with. Sometimes you need to look into unusual tech and it’s fine. Just have to do it rarely and responsibly. The context matters.

https://morepablo.com/2022/04/against-boring.html

On trust in software development

Tags: tech, agile, codereview, pairing, trust

This trend around critiquing code reviews on the argument of “trust” should be challenged indeed. This is just the wrong way to approach it.

https://blog.ploeh.dk/2023/03/20/on-trust-in-software-development/

Read Every Single Error | Pulumi Blog

Tags: tech, infrastructure, safety, craftsmanship, logging

Interesting take… Is it really practical? Until which size is it viable? What are we loosing by aggregating? Also makes me wonder about alert fatigue… It clearly raises extra questions.

https://www.pulumi.com/blog/reducing-our-error-rate/

The Programmer’s Paradox: Software Development Ethics

Tags: tech, ethics

Nice piece, not perfect, good food for thought still. We definitely need more ethics in our craft.

https://theprogrammersparadox.blogspot.com/2023/04/software-development-ethics.html

Evaluating Managers: 5 heuristics to measure managerial impact – CodeKraft

Tags: tech, management, improving

This nicely goes in depth on the five domains to look at to know where you stand as a manager. Also proposes action to increase the impact. Good food for thought.

https://abdulapopoola.com/2023/01/09/evaluating-managers-5-heuristics-to-measure-managerial-impact/

Bye for now!

Finally a sprint again! The 2019 the Plasma Sprint in Valencia was my first in person KDE event and I was hooked instantly. However something mysterious happened in the next years that and in person meet ups stopped happening. While Akademy 2022 happened in person again, a sprint has different atmosphere and I was awesome to see people that couldn’t make Akademy or for whom it was their first sprint. Other attendees have blogged about the sprint as well, check them out too. Either on the planet or over on discuss Carl created a collection of a bunch of them.

So what did I do? Aside from the usual talking, discussion, planing which the others already blogged about. (And of course the live bug investigations on fellow developers’ machines who always seem to attract the weirdest issues.) I am afraid I spent the rest of the time on boring backend stuff.

For Plasma 6 we want to make use of the layer-shell wayland protocol for positioning and stacking Plasma’s own panels, backgrounds and some other windows such as krunner. This protocol was developed by the awesome wlroots people and is currently proposed for standardization. In the past we used our own plasma-shell protocol and unfortunately not only Plasma is using it at the moment but it also spread to applications with more advanced use cases than just having a normal window. As mixing windows from both systems together will be harder to layout and in general a desire to move on from the plasma-shell protocol for a more streamlined experienced I ported yakuake to use layer shell via our own Layer Shell Qt library.

Still Wayland related but probably even less interesting, I started porting libtaskmanager away from KWayland. KWayland was/is a framework consisting of two libraries (client and server side) wrapping wayland code for more straightforward consumption of Qt programs. As you can imagine this is quite some amount of boring code to maintain and with other good solutions available we would like to stop doing so. The server part of the framework was already moved to KWin in the past and we embraced qtwaylandscanner there for generating code wrapping wayland. For the client side we are now moving in the same direction. KWayland included everything but most of it was not used because Qt handles all the normal interactions with the compositor and almost all the remaining protocol interfaces were used only once because there is only a single place in our stack that needs to communicate the additional information with KWin (for example Klipper or the taskmanager). So it makes sense to move the code to the places where it is used instead of having to maintain a framework with the usual stability guarantees.

But I did not only work towards eliminating a framework, I also created an entire new one. Sorry! Enter KColorScheme. To be fair it’s not entirely new but KColorScheme and friends moved to their own library. KColorScheme was a pain point in our dependency stack since it was very central but its location in the KConfigWidgets library meant that you had to depend on a bunch of unwanted stuff just to read some colors. So we decided at the sprint to split it out to a new library and I implemented that. Afterwards I adjusted some consumers which do not need to longer depend on KConfigWidgets together with Nicolas.

As you can see it was quite the productive sprint which was possible because of the awesome people at Tuxedo Computers who hosted us and the KDE e.V that enables people from all over the world to come together and build awesome things. Consider donating so that we can continue doing so. The last thing left to say, I will be at Akademy which happens soon. See you there!

As you probably have seen from other people’s blog posts there was the 2023 Plasma Sprint last week. It was generously hosted by TUXEDO Computers in their offices in Augsburg, Germany. Many thanks to TUXEDO for that!

Other people have already well summarized what happend there, so let’s have a look at what I have been doing:

Together with Kai Uwe, Volker, and Ismael I looked at notifications. This includes internal simplifications in KNotifications, API design questions, a proposed V2 for the notification portal API, and a new UI for per-event configuration in the notification settings module.

Together with Marco I looked into some API design topics around the Applet class in plasma-framework, and worked on a proposed new API for applet actions.

Given that Wayland was a huge topic at the sprint I continued the work of mine on enabling some accessibility options on Wayland. Sticky keys is not only what happens when you spill Spezi over your laptop, it is also an accessibility feature that allows people that cannot press multiple keys simultaneously to type key combinations like Control+C/Control+V. Basic support for this on Wayland is coming with Plasma 6. Not all of the options that are present on X11 work yet though. If you are a user of sticky keys please leave your feedback on https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=444335 for which of these options should be prioritized.

Together with Natalie, KDE e.V.’s Hardware Integration Engineer, I discussed our touchpad configuration module and how to make it more robust and maintainable. We also discussed various topics around debugging and profiling KDE software.

Together with Xaver I looked into how Dolphin/KIO handles multi-GPU setups (so that apps preferring discrete GPUs will use them when launched via KIO). As it turns out there’s a few things to be improved there so we discussed approaches to do that.

With David I discussed some of my open changes to our global shortcuts infrastructure and continued working on improving that.

We also got a visit from two people from the city of Treuchtlingen, Germany. They have been using KDE software in their communal IT for over 20 years. We discussed their vision of using open source and open standards in government IT and some of their pain points with using KDE software for that.

Overall it was a very nice and productive week and it was great to meet so many fellow KDE hackers, some of them for the first time! Gatherings like this are only possible because of generous donations to KDE e.V. Please consider donating to make more such sprints possible.

About Me - I am Groot.

I’m Srirupa Datta, about to finish my undergraduate Electrical Engineering degree at Jadavpur University, India, in June. This year, I got selected for Google Summer of Code and will be working on improving the Bundle Creator in Krita.

My Introduction to Krita…

It’s been more than a year since my last blogpost where I posted monthly updates on my progress on adding the Perspective Ellipse assistant tool in Krita during SoK’22. Being a painter who’s interested in software development, I’ve been interested in Krita ever since I started using it.

What it’s all about

The new Bundle Creator

The new Bundle Creator would look like an installation wizard with four pages which can be navigated using the Next and Back buttons, as well as buttons on the left side panel.

I think the primary objective behind designing the new Bundle Creator was to organize its workflow, that is, segregate sections devoted to a particular function or job. This is what led to the idea of using a wizard, instead of simple dialogs. Hence it would have four wizard pages:

• Choose Resources
• Choose Tags
• Enter Bundle Details
• Choose Save Location

Some of the cool features you can expect in the new Bundle Creator are a gridview like that of Resource Manager’s to view all the resources, filter resources by name or tag before selecting, and an option to change back to the default listview from gridview if one wishes to stick to the previous layout.

Adding custom tags to selected resources is a feature that we wish to integrate, but it would require a redesign of the Choose Tags wizard page that has been shown below. Just to clarify, these are all mockups!

Yet another important feature would be reloading last bundle data when opened/on startup - this is particularly useful when making a bundle for other people.

Apart from these, the new Bundle Creator would be resizable(Yaay!), and a separate Menu entry called Bundle Creator would be created. We plan to move Manage Resource Libraries , Manage Resources and Bundle Creator from Menu > Settings to Menu > Resources.

And lastly, I would be working on adding the feature of editing bundles - this however needs to be discussed more and would be dealt with post my mid term evaluations.

And of course, if you want to suggest some ideas or improvements, feel free to drop a comment on this post I created on Krita Artists Forum!