Lemma's blog - KDE

Call for opinion: Widget for entering times

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:52:07 +0200

I recently developed (or rather redeveloped) a widget for entering times. It's basically a remake of the one you use in KOrganizer's "new event" window if you choose the starting or the ending time of an event (with a combobox-style popup to choose predefined times with a 15 minute range).

While writing such a widget there's a lot of things to consider, eg. how to check the input, which input formats to allow and what type of input to refuse. Just like the old widget the new one shows times in the time format you configured in your systemsettings. Additionally I made it accept times in plain 24h format (eg. 16:45) and military format (eg. 1645) as that's basically what the old widget already did.

Now as I live in a country where 24h format is regular, I have trouble understanding how users with a 12h time format enter times or rather what they'd expect the widget to do if they enter times. Luckily David Jarvie, the KAlarm developer, brought up the issue of "ambiguous" times, ie. times the widget could interpret in different ways. Now as I'm still unsure about how such inputs should be handled I'd like to get some 12h format user opinions on it.

What would you expect the widget to do, if you...

... enter "12:25"

Accept the input and resolve it to "12:25 am"
Accept the input and resolve it to "12:25 pm"
Reject the input unless "am" or "pm" is appended
Something else (please describe)

... enter "08:37"

Accept the input and resolve it to "08:37 am"
Accept the input and resolve it to "08:37 pm"
Reject the input unless "am" or "pm" is appended
Something else (please describe)

... enter "1245"

Accept the input and resolve it to "12:45 am"
Accept the input and resolve it to "12:45 pm"
Reject the input unless "am" or "pm" is appended
Something else (please describe)

... enter "0913"

Accept the input and resolve it to "09:13 am"
Accept the input and resolve it to "09:13 pm"
Reject the input unless "am" or "pm" is appended
Something else (please describe)

Please keep in mind that while I will consider your input thoroughly this shouldn't be understood as a "poll as to how it will be done".

I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Prototypical XSLT support for Konqueror

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:06:51 +0200

I've been working with DocBook XML content a lot lately and found it quite inconvenient that I had to transform it to HTML before being able to view it. As furthermore Konqueror (resp. KHTML) is still lacking support for embedded XSLT stylesheets, I started to poke at it. As a preliminary result I present you an XSLT plugin for Konqueror.

The mechanism is actually quite (mostly) simple:

Check if the current document either has an <?xml-stylesheet?> directive or is of known type (currently only DocBook 5.0)
Load the respective styles (and try to avoid Xml eXternal Entity vulnerabilities)
Pipe the document through libxml and libxslt with libexslt (unfortunately QtXmlPatterns doesn't support everything needed by DB yet)
Push the resulting file back into the KHTMLPart

Examples

This is what http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/Overview.xml looks like with XSLT enabled (using the given <?xml-stylesheet?>):

This is what http://xslt-process.sourceforget.net/docbook-example.xml looks like (using the stylesheet based on the known file-type):

Todo

Unfortunately this is still just a prototype. It has several unresolved issues and is possibly INSECURE:

Konqueror may crash on closing (it sometimes does for me)
Level of integration is pretty low. You still see the raw XML content before it switches to the transformed HTML. I still have to figure out if this is suitable as a plugin, if I should create some XML KPart or if this should be integrated into KHTML
No XInclude support
Support for more XML schemata
Possibly vulnerable to XXE (XML eXternal Entity) attacks which basically means a remote XSL could import a file on your harddrive

That said, interested developers can find the current version here. Please be sure you understand the security risks installing this plugin bears before you proceed!

KAppTemplateCli: Quick application templates for the command-line

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:11:29 +0200

While coding I often have the need to create small sample-apps for debugging some library-code I'm writing or for figuring out what library code others have written does. Usually creating such a sample application not only involve creating and compiling some main.cpp as in a KDE context you also need some KAboutData, KComponentData as well as some basic CMakeLists.txt to actually be able to compile it.

While I could of course just construct some directories containing templates and just copy them to wherever I need it, I've lately been enjoying the power of KAppTemplate. This nifty little application uses pre-defined templates for various kinds of projects like KDE4 Applications, Qt4 Applications, Plasmoids and even PyKDE or KDERuby apps and a graphical assistant to get you going.

Now, I like doing stuff on the command-line and don't use all of the features KAppTemplate gives me (eg. filling the author or version part of the assistant is not needed of this particular use-case). So I decided to rip the template handling part of KAppTemplate to create my own little KAppTemplateCli to fit my needs.

Basic usage

Listing available templates

lemma@quechua:/tmp/tests$ kapptemplatecli --list
C++/KDE                                                     
  kapp4                - KDE 4 GUI Application
  plasmoid             - Plasma Applet Template
  runner               - Plasma Runner Template
  kpartapp             - KDE 4 KPart Application
  akonadiresource      - Akonadi Resource Template
  akonadiserializer    - Akonadi Serializer Template

C++/No GUI (CMake)
  cmake_plaincpp       - Simple CMake-based C++ application

C++/Qt (cmake)
  cmake_qt4core        - Qt4 CMake Core application
  cmake_qt4gui         - Qt4 CMake Gui application
  cmake_qt4core_qtest  - Qt4 CMake QTest Core application

[... stripped ...]

Showing template information

lemma@quechua:/tmp/tests$ kapptemplatecli --info=kapp4
Category   : C++/KDE
Basename   : kapp4
Name       : KDE 4 GUI Application
Description: KDE4 simple template based on CMake, inherits from XMLGuiWindow and demonstrates how to use KConfig XT

Creating an application from a template

lemma@quechua:/tmp/tests$ kapptemplatecli --template=kapp4 MyTest
lemma@quechua:/tmp/tests$ ls mytest
CMakeLists.txt  doc  icons  README  src
lemma@quechua:/tmp/tests$ mkdir mytest/build && cd mytest/build && cmake .. && make
lemma@quechua:/tmp/tests/mytest/build$ src/mytest

Download location & notes

You can get KAppTemplateCli from: http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/devtools/kapptemplatecli
You'll need kdesdk and/or kdevplatform installed to get some templates it can use.
KAppTemplateCli is not mature. Use at your own risk!
It's not meant to be the same as legacy KAppTemplate by Kurt Granroth (which is command-line but takes an assistant-like approach like KAppTemplate)

Enjoy.

Needed: Singaporean and Macanese time formats

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:39:30 +0200

While testing some code that formats a time in the user's preferred format, I stumbled upon invalid formats in the Singaporean and Macanese time formats. Unfortunately I don't know the correct formats, so that's where I need your help. If you live in any of the 2 areas, please send me information on how times are usually formatted.

It would suffice if you send me the time "19:00" in local format and additionally specify:

if your locale uses 24h or 12h (AM/PM) formatting
whether times with a value for hour less than 10 are written with a leading zero (ie. "07:00" or "7:00").

Thanks!

fd.o secret storage project

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:38:06 +0200

After having hinted at it now and then, I can finally gladly announced that we (GNOME Keyring + KDE Wallet) managed to kick off a joint freedesktop.org project with the goal of creating a common infrastructure (or more technically: protocol) for managing passwords and other secret values.

I expect several benefits for our users:

They will be able to securely store their secrets. Even if they use a mix of different applications (GNOME, KDE even plain Qt) they will only have one background service to authenticate to.
They will be able to switch your browser without having to reenter your passwords if the browser supports the API - unfortunately no word from Mozilla if they're interested.

If you're an application developer, don't worry. While I expect a new client-side API (which I imagine to be more OO style than KWallet::Wallet), I'll keep an eye on providing something the current class can wrap so even applications using the old API will be able to use the new system.

In case you're interested in joining the drafting process, you can find the current working draft as well as more information inside the freedesktop wiki.

Bugsquad logo contest

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:49:49 +0200

Having gathered a quite nicely numbered group of core-triagers during the last 12 months we thought it was time to reflect that by putting together a nice website for collecting some bits of our wisdom and promoting our triage and krush events. This is currently still a work-in-progress but one thing we can't do properly ourselves is to design a logo.

Therefore I'm hereby announcing the Bugsquad logo contest. Details:

The logo is going to be used on a site using the Oxygen website scheme (like http://techbase.kde.org)
It wouldn't hurt if it looked good on a T-Shirt
More information about what we do can be found here and gathered on our IRC channel
Send your submission to bugsquad@kde.org
Deadline is the 25th of May

Unfortunately we're not sure if we can provide a prize yet. If you decide to join the competition you're currently only in for the fame (and probably a beer at Akademy). I'll keep you posted if we come up with something.

Bugsquad Plasma triage

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:20:52 +0200

Bugsquad's 1-year reinstatement celebration was a blast. We managed to triage around 330 KMail bugs! Without investigating any further I guess that's a new record for one of our Bug Days. Thanks go out to everyone in the party crowd (Blauzahl, FiNeX, dtritscher, lytenyn, jtamate, Dario_Andres, CondorDes and Ruchir - who apparently partied harder than anyone else ).

This weekend we'll be having a closer look at Plasma's bugs. After having a slow start during KDE 4.0 and 4.1 Plasma has hit the bugs.kde.org shelf with the 4.2 release and is currently approaching the 600 bug-report mark. Time to have a closer look and weed out the duplicate and invalid ones - especially now the hardening phase for KDE 4.3 is just around the corner. So instead of making the Plasma developers wade the Bugzilla swamps all by themselves we thought we'd lend them a hand to make KDE 4.3's bling even blingier, nice and stable.

As more eyes make more bugs inspected I invite all of you to join us for our little bug triage:

This weekend, 25th/26th of April
All day long
#kde-bugs on FreeNode IRC
You'll find more information on http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute/Bugsquad/BugDays/PlasmaDay1 - at least once that page is ready.

Bugsquad turns 1. Celebration lasting all weekend...

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:23:55 +0200

As you might already have read on the dot, Bugsquad (or rather this incarnation of it) will turn 1 this weekend. Our very first Bug Day was held on April the 6th 2008 (proof). Incidentally this will also the 1 year anniversary of the day I started contributing to KDE It has been a nice year and I while we haven't achieved either of our goals (0 open bugs in KDE or world domination) yet, it has still been an awesome time. I'd like to say everyone working on bugs and especially everyone who helped me getting started a big thank you.

Enough of that retrospective.

Everyone knows Bugsquad parties hard (admittedly a little softer then Amarok people but still harder than most of you non-Bugsquatting fellas). As such you're all invited to our big Bugsquad 1 Year Anniversary Party we're having all weekend long (BYOB). The party is themed "KMailDay4: Let the triage ~~begin~~ continue" and will run from Saturday 10:00 CET to Sunday late at night.

KMailDay3 details

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:30:05 +0100

I managed to finish tomorrow's KMail triage page just in time. For anyone who's not on #kde-bugs (which you should be if you're planning to join the triage currently, here's the url: http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute/Bugsquad/BugDays/KMailDay3. If you're still pondering wether to join, just do it. Any helping hand - be it developer or user - is welcome and helping hands we need a lot

A krush on KOffice && revisiting KMail

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:31:22 +0100

While our KOffice krush day is already more than a month ago (25th of January) it still deserves someone blogging about it. It was a great pleasure to see 9 people working hard on finding issues in KOffice and - no surprise - issues we did find. In total we identified about 100 separate crashes, general bugs as well as some ways to improve usability. I was also happy to see some of the most important ones be fixed while we were still finding new ones. Time to send a big thankyou to jtamate, grundleborg, blauzahl, m4v, dtritsched, JLP, Enkithan and brot as well as all of the hard-working KOffice developers who spent their time coaching and answering questions. On to the actual topic. I'm happy to announce (another) beginning of the bug triage season. Since the KDE 4.2 came out, the general bug count on bugs.kde.org has pretty much been skyrocketing. Of course we're regulary introducing new bugs with every release but I guess that 4.2 also marked the point where a lot more regular users were joining the KDE4-using crowd. This does not only lead to more bugs being found but - sadly - also to more people reporting the same bugs or reporting simple support issues on our bugtracker. That's where our next Bugday will come into play. We'll be revisiting KMail once more hoping to find duplicate bug reports, already resolved issues and generally clean up. If you're willing to help, you're very welcome to join us on #kde-bugs this Sunday (the 15th) starting around 10:00 CET. I think I mentioned it before but I'll do it again just for the record: No programming skills needed. All you'll have to bring are a recent version of KDE (preferably trunk), some time to spare and the will to make a little difference. Of course we'll have senior Bugsquadders around to help newcomers get started.

KOffice krush reminder

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:24:11 +0100

Just in case you missed the announcement on the dot (or chose to forget):

This sunday, January the 25th, we'll be having our second KOffice Bug Day. It will all be about finding as many of the remaining bugs in KOffice Beta 5 as possible. To contribute, just read the bug day's techbase page, check the requirements and visit #kde-bugs somewhen on sunday (starting around 10am CET). As always, no programming skills required.

Is it worth it?

Most definitely. Our last KOffice bug day was a what I'd call a big success with the KOffice developers starting to iron out the bug while we were still triaging and krushing. They are really passionate about delivering good quality release.

Bugzilla->{speed}++;

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:29:27 +0100

During the last week I've been working hard on the Bugzilla sources (I've even been learning some Perl ) trying to make searchers faster. It made a rather lengthy blogpost (containing some big pictures though) and I wasn't sure if the general Planet KDE audience was that much interested in it as it's only partly related to KDE. So to avoid spamming the Planet all over I decided to make it a separate post which doesn't get syndicated. It might be interesting to you if you're into Bugzilla, full-text search or semi-fancy benchmarking graphs.

Here you go...

KDE Wallet improvements in 4.2

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:52:24 +0100

Albeit having the kwallet category on my blog for quite a while now, I never really bothered to put anything in there. With the advent of KDE 4.2 I thought I'd share what I've been up to.

Bad news first...

Unfortunately I didn't quite get around improving the manager. I actually planned and started this but other things seemed more pressing. Thus KDE 4.2's kwalletmanager will continue to be not-quite-pretty

Good news for everyone

Some things have happened under the hood though. I've mostly been busy fixing bugs, including long withstanding ones like concurrency issues and lockups. Changes and fixes include:

kwalletd has moved from kdelibs/kio to kdebase/runtime (actually pretty much invisible to anyone but packagers)
Improved open wallet calls: Open calls can no longer timeout, open Path uses asynchroneous transaction handling.
Detect exiting/crashing applications: The daemon will now detect applications that exit without closing the wallet or even crash and automatically close the wallet.

Important: If you're using trunk, be sure to svn up both kdelibs and kdebase next time you recompile either. Otherwise your wallet might cease to work.

Good news for some

Apart from that, good news for all KDE Windows users: Starting with KDE 4.1.3, KWallet works fine on Windows. Thanks go to Patrick Spendrin for helping me fix this (and helping me compile when my VirtualBox decided to crash instead of compile) and to Fujisan for providing me with the screenshot to prove it works:

kwalletmanager on Windows

The outlook

One of the major tasks I have in mind for 4.3 is finally redoing the manager UI. Another thing I'm currently on about is making the GNOME Keyring and the KDE Wallet systems interoperable. Unfortunately that's still at a very early stage so I can't really tell you a lot about it yet. I'll keep you posted though.

KMailDay2: Sunday 9th of November

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:23:03 +0100

As you might have read on the dot, Bugsquad is having a KDE PIM party tomorrow, and you're all invited

Techbase page for the triage
IRC Channel
We'll be starting at around 08:00 UTC.

I usually try to be more elaborate but as I'm currently quite busy the bare facts will have to do. I also still want to do a follow-up to our previous KOffice Triage + Krush day so expect more during the next few days.

KOfficeDay1: Krush mastery

nospam@example.com (Michael Leupold) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:55:28 +0200

As you might have read on the dot, we'll be having our first ever (?) KOffice Bug Day this Sunday the 26th. KOffice 2 has just reached its beta2 release and I for my part can't wait to check it out - user- as well as bug-wise As a special bonus BugSquad won't just triage bugs but also do some krushing. Now as I heard that "Krushing is a confusing term" I thought I'd put together some information about it similar to what I wrote about The Art of Bug Triage. This time I did however put all of it on the accompanying techbase wiki page which I assembled in preparation of Sunday. So here I present you:

KOffice Bug Day 1: Triage
KOffice Bug Day 1: Krush (aka Krush Mastery)

(Please note that some parts of those pages are still subject to change.) As always we'll be starting at around 07:00 UTC (beware of summer time! don't miss out on your extra hour of sleep). I also heard that quite some of the KOffice developers will be hanging out with us on #kde-bugs so we can bug them with our questions. I'm looking forward to it