QtZeitgeist 0.7.0 released!

Today we released version 0.7.0 of libqzeitgeist aka QtZeitgeist (the first release with a tarball) It's basically the same as 0.1.0 but with a new version, some minor fixes, and a license file.

libQZeitgeist is a wrapper library around the Zeitgeist DBus API for Qt, and is brought to you by Collabora in cooperation with the Zeitgeist team and KDE.

If you don't know what Zeitgeist is:
Zeitgeist is a service which logs the user's activities and notifications, anywhere from files opened to websites visited and conversations, and makes this information readily available for other applications to use. It is also able to establish relationships between items based on similarity and usage patterns.

To get started:

* Get the code http://releases.zeitgeist-project.com/qzeitgeist/
* Get the Zeitgeist code from http://launchpad.net/zeitgeist/0.7/0.7/+download/zeitgeist-0.7.tar.gz
* Join #zeitgeist on irc.freenode.net
* Have fun with use developing
* Follow the work on http://gitorious.org/kde-zeitgeist/libqzeitgeist

It's alive!

I'm very excited to announce that qt-atspi has seen some major progress lately. Frederik Gladhorn has been kicking some major butt and has gotten it into much better shape than it has been previously. I just tested his "experimental" branch, and I've got to say wow. Since I started testing and playing with qt-atspi my holy grail has been to try to get our qt calculator to work with orca as well as gcalctool does. Today I need to get a new holy grail. Fired up orca, fired up the calculator test app and was delighted to hear every button, every change, selection, activation all spoken to my ears through the chain from QAccessible to qt-atspi to at-spi2 to orca to speech-dispatcher to espeak (Quite the chain, I know). In the next days and weeks we'll likely get qt-atspi packaged for distros to test and I'll definitely put some polish on the how to build it yourself tutorial I put on techbase last year for those that want to play with it sooner :)

Frederik you rock!

P.S. Sorry for no pretty pictures, maybe for my next post I'll learn how to make a videocast of qt-atspi in action :p

KDE Sysadmins rock!

Hey all. I just wanted to take a quick moment to tell/remind you all that our (KDE) sysadmins rock! They have been very busy recently getting the move to git going. git.kde.org is running cgit, projects.kde.org is running Redmine, there's a web app setup to collect our ssh public keys for those of us who were using https. I spoke a bit with Eike Hein on irc today and he said "I don't think we've had an idle day this month really :-)" Sounds like the next step is setting up reviewboard. Amarok and Konversation are both migrated from gitorious.org to git.kde.org and will be used to test and setup the rest of the infrastructure we will want and need to do what we do best.

So fellow kde folk, please take a moment to thank these diligent guys and let them know how much you appreciate all they have done and continue to do for us all.

Renaming kttsd

Hey all, I thought I already blogged about this topic, but found I didn't. Anyway, one of the things I wanted to get done while in Randa was to rename KTTSD (Kde Text To Speech Daemon) to something with a meaning that is pronounceable. It's changed a lot since 4.0 (and 3.5, etc.) so a new name fits. A user suggested the name Kitty on a previous blog post, so I used that for about a day until another developer pointed out that Kitty exists (http://www.kesiev.com/kittyguide/home/) though it seems outdated/unmaintained. The next morning in Randa, we had a brainstorm session with other developers and came up with a few choices. We went with Jovie which happens to be a less commonly known and used name (and is also one of my daugther's name). So new in kde 4.5 Jovie will talk to everyone (if you or your distro setup speech-dispatcher correctly, etc. etc.)

Next step? Move the developer page from accessibility.kde.org about kttsd that's outdated to techbase and update it for D-Bus, 4.x documentation.

Multimedia/Edu Sprint day -1

I can't remember which day it is today besides that it's Monday. Tomorrow morning very early I'll hop on a train with Percy from Peru and George and go to Zurich, then fly home in our different directions from there. I believe a lot was done in this sprint. I have a longer todo list than I did before, that's for sure. I'll also be blogging more hopefully about the things I do going forward.

One thing I did last week but didn't blog about was to move the workspace tab from the application style area of system-settings down into desktop style area instead. I as many others I've heard were confused when we opened the desktop theme details settings and couldn't set the global plasma theme from in there. I combined that one with the existing workspace tab of the other kcm and call the combination desktop style. I hope this will be more usable and discoverable.

Multimedia sprint

Today lots of people arrived for the first day of the Multimedia/Edu sprint including myself. 2 hours drive to Las Vegas, 4 hour flight to DC, 7.5 hour flight to Zurich, then another 3 on the train. I would have slept on the plane, but there were crying babies (and I was excited to get here). Mario is a great host and has all our needs taken care of, it's great to be here. I've met a few developers I've only known on irc so far, so it's been good though I am tired.

On one flight I did make a todo list of stuff I'd like to get done while here so will start to work away at that now. The plan so far is tomorrow to get all together and decide what we each want to do (and do the same each morning I believe). Anyway, enough for now, just wanted to get my 2 cents in about the day 1 :)

Headed to Randa, Switzerland

Hey all. It's been a while. Lots of good things are happening in KDE land these days. I wish I were helping with more of them but will be this week anyway. I'm waiting for a flight to Zurich right now then will hop a train to Randa where the Multimedia/Edu sprint will take place. Thanks to my sponsor and employer Collabora Ltd.

What do I hope to achieve while there? I will definitely be helping with whatever needs help in Edu land. I will also be presenting and discussing any possible tie ins between Edu and accessibility. Plane boarding soon will report more soon.