KNewStuff3

In the past couple days I've been playing with the code, and have reached a couple conclusions. First, KNS::Engine isn't an engine, it's an interface the apps use to interact with the engine. Apps don't need to know anything about the engine though (and currently don't/can't anyway). Also this interface class has no signaling mechanism, so it would be good to derive it from QObject so it can send out signals and apps can connect to them. In other words some binary incompatible changes will be necessary and I'm on the way to make them happen by creating knewstuff3. Because of this decision we have the chance to make some binary incompatible changes in the library itself which I believe will help keep the design cleaner and make it easier to maintain as a whole.

I had a discussion on irc today about what to name the interface class, and after a few suggestions settled on the name KNS::Client. I'll be getting that going this week, and hope to have something basic working by next week. We'll see.

This coming saturday we'll have another meeting on #ghns on freenode if anyone else wants to come along and share their 2c with the rest of us. As I blogged last time, last weekends meeting was productive. We've got a plan and are on the road to better things.

KNewStuff2 Future

Time again to think about the future. This morning in #ghns on freenode we had a meeting about KNewStuff2 and ghns (Get Hot New Stuff) in general. There are a lot of cool things coming our way with Open Desktop (opendesktop.org) and it's use in Plasma (OCS Widget) and KNewStuff2. Before the meeting I wrote down a plan for making KNewStuff2 better prepared for these coming changes and documented it here: KNewStuff2Plan and will be working to achieve that end for KDE 4.4. Frederik will be working on the RESTProvider which will provide better access to the functionality on kde-look.org etc. sites. I'll be revamping a bunch of the KNewStuff2 library to make this easier and better also. Plus documenting my promise to do so here gives me more motivation/pressure to actually get it done =)

Want a taste of what's to come? How about the ability to rate/comment on a wallpaper from the KNewStuff2 dialog itself (something I promised back at the 4.0 release event but never got in ;) . How about the ability to see multiple pages of "latest uploaded" and "highest rated"? How about the ability to see all color schemes uploaded by that master color schemer Joe Colormakerman? I'm hoping we can get there and much further in the not so distant future. Anyone with me? =)

Utah Open Source Conference

Hey everyone,

Time has come again for the third annual Utah Open Source Conference http://www.utosc.com (I missed the first two, but will be going to this one). I'll be bringing stuff to demo KDE to people and set up a booth there, so if anyone wants to come by and say hi, or see the coolness that is KDE, well, you know where I'll be anyway.

This is also a call for help. If anyone is going to be in the area and would like to help me represent KDE and man the booth that would be awesome. I've never actually run a booth like this before, so will be my first time, but should be fun I think.

Anyway, hope to see ya there, and let me know if you'd like to help with the booth either on irc (jpwhiting) or via e-mail (jpwhiting@kde.org).