Fading Memories

Krita on Windows

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:52:00 +0200

Sven posted his thoughs on the difficulties supporting Krita on Windows. I'd like to dig in a bit deeper here. The first question is, is it worth it?

Well, the highly experimental Calligra installer has been downloaded about 15.000 times. That's a lot of downloads! Judging from the ratio of referrals from krita.org and calligra.org, Krita is probably the reason for the two-thirds of those downloads.

So, apparently there is a demand for Krita on Windows that makes people download it even though we're extremely explict about its extremely experimental status!

We also know that there are bugs specific to Windows, like the slow move tool, a bug with duplicated layers being broken and so on. We know that the top toolbar looks ugly and that there are other issues where being non-native really is apparent.

Another thing I know is that developing on Windows really is no fun. As the Tomahawk Windows dude says:

We do need developers on Windows too, but no-one in a sane state of mind wants to develop there.. ;-)

So what Krita needs is to find a volunteer who completely and utterly disagrees with that quote... Someone who loves Windows, cares about the look and feel of an application on Windows, and who simply loves developing on Windows. If you're that person, contact me!

The other option would, of course, be to find the money to pay someone to work on Windows.

But we're not talking 1000 euro/month here -- we're out of the student summer job territory! At a conservative estimate, we'd need between five and seven times as much: 5000-7000 euros of regular income to hire a full-time developer. So we're out of donations territory, out of Summer of Code territory. It's a big job, which needs to be done well.

If there are 15.000 downloads of an experimental version of Krita in about three months -- maybe there is a market. Maybe we could package Krita, put it in an app store like Intel's app-up, on Amazon, sell it directly, go with a pay-what-you-like model like Ardour. Whatever -- and use the proceeds pay a full-time developer to work on the Windows version of Krita. It'll, indirectly and directly, also benefit Krita on its main platform.

I'm seriously investigating all the options here, including finding some kick-start funding.

(Note: Krita is GPL, but that doesn't stop us from charging money for a binary, even though we can't stop anyone from copying the binary around or reselling it -- and I don't even want to do that. Free software is Free software. Being GPL, proprietary extras and improvements are also out of the question. And that's the way I like it.)

Oh, and as a side-node: next to the highly experimental Calligra 2.4 installer that includes Krita next to the other apps, there's also an extremely experimental Krita-only installer that packages Krita fresh from git master. Just to help me figure out how to do it. Get yours while it's fresh at KO GmbH's download page.

Krita.org was hacked...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:30:00 +0200

Last week. We've been working frantically to restore the website and make it available again. And just when we thought we had succeeded, Google finds links to malware sites that we had missed, so krita.org is flagged as an attack site.

And of course, this is the week of the 2.4 release! Which is an extremel important release because it marks Krita as not just ready for end-users, but read for professionals. And there's the experimental Windows installer...

For the record: the only thing hit was the website. Not the source code, not the mailing list, not the forums, just krita.org.

We are still confident that everything will be up again tomorrow, the day of the release. If not -- well, we'll have to do a small release party a little later on!

Call for Photoshop Documents

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:01:00 +0200

One of the new things in Krita 2.4 (soon to be released) is pretty decent Photoshop file import. Not everything is supported, but you should be able to load RGB, Lab and CMYK files with multiple layers, thanks to the work by Siddharth Sharma.

Next is filling in the missing parts, and export, of course!

But for that we need to have a good, representative corpus of PSD files, with known version numbers. A bit like the corpus we have for applications like Words, Stage and Sheets -- http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/tests/calligratests/.

These office documents are tested regularly using special tools Thorsten Zachmann built for Calligra. We need that for Krita as well.

So I want to call upon all readers here to contribute PSD files to our collection. I need to know the version of Photoshop they were created with and the files will be committed to this public subversion repository, so they must be appropriately licensed or be public domain.

Please help us out! You can send the files to boud@valdyas.org.

Public Service Announcement: DrKonqui is No Longer Broken

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:12:00 +0100

Update: Wow! I just saw this commit pass by:

Git commit 921b606383e61955829d5ee05f01fce3203311a1 by Ben Cooksley. Committed on 10/03/2012 at 14:05. Pushed by bcooksley into branch 'kde'. Allow Dr Konqi from pre-4.9 to work with our Bugzilla installation M +1 -1 attachment.cgi M +8 -0 buglist.cgi M +7 -1 post_bug.cgi

George Kiagiadakis, Ben Cooksley and Nicolás Alvarez fixed DrKonqui! I'm really, really happy and impressed.

Public Service Announcement: DrKonqui is Broken

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:04:00 +0100

Following the bugs.kde.org upgrade last weekend, DrKonqui is broken for every KDE application everywhere. This means no automated crash reports anymore for any user of any KDE application anywhere. DrKonqui will still popup, but will give a weird page of html output instead of logging the user in. Essentially, all KDE applications have gained an extra bug, for free.

I have been told that this cannot be easily solved on the bugs.kde.org side, so it needs to be solved on the KDE runtime side... Possibly only with KDE 4.9. George Kiagiadakis, many kudos to him, is working on that front.

Until that time, or until we figure out a way to fix bugs.kde.org, which needs Perl knowledge, KDE application developers can either enjoy the quiet on the bugzilla front, or fret and have sleepless nights about all the crash reports they won't be getting. And, of course, spend their waking time helping the users who are confused but eager enough to report issues get past this hurdle.

Krita in history...

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 21:46:00 +0100

"Azes is now being associated with the creation of the era of 58 BC that was to be known through the centures as the Krita, Malava or Vikramaditya, samvat, era. Possibly the era was also calculated for use in astronomy as the term krita, created, would suggest, but was given status by association with royalty." Romila Thapar, The Penguin History of Early India, p. 220

An e-reader

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 13:25:00 +0100

In the past two years I've travelled a lot, on average about a week a month. I usually take about six books with me if I'm away for a week, but I also started reading books on my laptop, just to have more variety. But my laptop is heavy and not comfortable for reading in a hotel bed. Then I realized that it might be a smart thing to buy a dedicated e-reader. I'm a reader, and I've got about ten thousand books, but I'm not a bibliophile, I don't care about first editions, for instance.

But which one? Kindle was out of the question, since I don't want Amazon to be able to track or even delete my reading habits. I also am quite sure that I will carry around a lot of books, so I wanted to have an SD card slot. And if the device is hackable, that's a plus.

I got the Sony PRS T1 reader on the day it was released:

I've got it for a month now, there are about 500 books on the device, I've spend quite a few hours with it and I've learned what this kind of device is good for, and what it isn't suitable for. In short, it's great if you want to read a novel from cover to cover, and it's atrocious if you're actually someone who uses books.

An advantage or disadvantage is that nobody can see what you are reading: no more peeking around you on the plain or train to see what people are reading, no more smiles of understanding between two Terry Pratchett lovers. On the other hand, since nobody sees what you are reading, no longer sharp remarks about being a poser who is just trying to impress if you accidentally happen to be reading Donne. Or sad looks about your lack of taste if you happen to be reading 1634 by Eric Flint.

Technically, my Sony PRS T1 is pretty ok. There are some bugs, especially in the touch screen which is prone to getting confused and will then turn dozens of pages in a quick succession, but nothing too serious.

The screen is good, though a the white is bit too gray, and it's too small. They tell you that your e-reader will have the same size as a paperback, but that's only true if you count the bezel and buttons. There's much less text on the screen than there's on a page of a real book.

I like the fact that this device has real buttons to go to the next and previous page -- I find that easier ot use than the screen gestures. The touch screen keyboard is pretty good, very usable.

The back is rubberized for good grip, and I wish the front was as well, but it's shiny plastic. Not so good. The whole device feels a bit cheap, which is actually a good thing, because it means I don't feel forced to be too careful with it, even though it cost 150 euros. I pop it in my coat pocket or backpack, carry it everywhere.

Battery life is wonderful, and for reading long stretched of text it's great that I can change the fontsize. When I read in bed without my glasses, I can make it small, when I'm using my glasses it needs to be bigger. But the choice of fonts is pretty limited.

It's pretty easy to add new books from Linux, I don't even use Calibre for that, I just copy them to the right location on the device. And project gutenberg is stuffed with the kind of thing I like to read.

Ideally...

The thing is, this e-reader is nearly good enough. It's tantalizing. Already ten years ago I was dreaming of a device close to this one. But an e-reader made for serious users of books.

It should have a bigger screen, at least A5, but color isn't necessary.

it should come out of the box reasonably well-formatted copies of all the classics, from the Odyssee to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, from Jane Austen to Kalidasa, from Mengzi to Layla and Majnun, both in the original language and in an English translation, and a way to show both in parallel.

The text should be searchable, but there should also be some serious smartnesss in that search facility: I want to be able to select a passage and nearly immediately get a list of places from which that passage can be a quote and where that passage is quoted. Wikipedia integration is great, but selecting a name should give me a list of all works where that name occurs. A chapter quote should link to that book, as well as books about those books.

There should be a serendipity feature, where browsing through the list of available books is replaced by "give me something that suits my mood" or "give me fiction about Tipu Sultan".

More and better fonts. I want to have Bodoni for my French books, Bembo for my books in Italian and Caslon for my books in English. I got a copy of Mengzi on my Sony, but there's no Chinese font!

It should be much easier to have a set of books open at the same time -- instead of having just one open and the reset remember their current page. Opening a new book doesn't mean closing the other one!

Text to speech -- especially in the dictionary, especially important for English, which does pose some challenges for a foreign reader.

Second Calligra Sprint, wrap-up

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:04:00 +0100

Saturday

Of course, I'd also wanted to blog on the second day of the Calligra sprint, but we were way too busy... In the morning we had the usual plenary meeting. Among other topics, we discussed an extension to the 2.4 release schedule. In view of the current state of the Quality Dashboard, we decided to have at least one more beta release, which probably will move the release into 2012. At the same time, our release manager Cyrille Berger, who couldn't join us, had come to the same conclusion.

Then SKF gave a remote presentation to everyone present on how they use Calligra Words in their application. They are developing a modelling and calculation application and using Calligra Words as the report writing component. The main application creates tables, images and plots which inserted in a document in the embedded Words component. The engineer then addes the explaining text. Those generated items are tagged using RDF, which means that if the input data changes, it become trivial to update just those items while the text the user has created remains intact. We got a remote, life demo of their application, event. It's immensely encouraging for everyone in the community to see Calligra being used in real life!

Then Nokia presented every attendee who didn't have a Harmattan device yet with one; an N9 or N950! This once again showed everyone how far along we have come, since it contains the Documents application with is built on the Calligra core office engine.

Despite giving many people new toys to play with, the commits never stopped coming in, and also from a coding perspective, the weekend was very succesful.

An extremely nice dinner in , which the seven Indians acknowledged present acknowledged tasted very authentic rounded off the day, or would have, had we not congregated in the lobby of the Radisson Seaside hotel for some more hacking. And playing with the new devices.

Sunday

On Sunday, I spent most of my time in a separate room with Pierre, Pierre, Boemann, Thorsten and Leinir, taking a step back to look at the purpose and problems of a text editing component with a goal of identifying where there are conceptual problems in the current design in Calligra's text component. And then there was a group photo (by Dmitry).

Lunch (the lunches provided by Nokia were awesome!) We also got a presentation by Nokia's Abishek on Sunday showing us how well Calligra does as the core engine for Harmattan Office -- and what could be improved still. It's amazing that in some areas, like showing embedded charts in spreadsheets, we're better than Micrsoft's mobile office on Windows Phone.

Many thanks to Nokia for hosting the sprint in their office building, providing us with lunch and dinner, and to Nokia and KO for sponsoring travel and accomodation!

Back in Helsinki!

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:06:00 +0100

Pierre Stirnweiss, Dimitrios Tanis and I arrived together this afternoon in the Nokia office in Helsinki. By coincidence, we're actually using the same room that we occupied when we first discussed putting Calligra (back then, still KOffice) inside Nokia phones! Kind of historic ground!

The usual suspects are here, but also many new faces, like Smit Patel and Brijesh Patel, who hack on Words and Dimitrios Tanis who is doing documentation and is now turning into a Kexi hacker!

We've come a long way since then... We have created at least three different applications based on the Calligra engine. It started with FreOffice, a QWidget-based office application for the FreMantle release of Maemo. The code for this application lives right inside the Calligra source repository. Then came Harmattan Office, which will also be released under GPL. Harmattan Office uses QGraphicsView and MeegoTouch. Having Harmattan Office installed by default on the N9 means that Calligra suddenly has hundreds of thousands of users, since the N9 turns out to be an extremely popular device. And then Nokia sponsored Shantanu to create Calligra Active, a Qt Quick-based document viewer based on Calligra that's part of Plasma Active.

But now it's time to go full-tilt for the 2.4 release of the Desktop applications! There's plenty of cool stuff going on, from discussions about the difference between pre-, post- and ambilactarianism, to new comboboxes for the style dockers, to attempts to get Thorsten to commit his line endings. (We're in freeze, but those arrows are smooth...) The room is already full, more people have to arrive, it's noisy, everyone is active -- this is going to be a great weekend!

Thanks go to Nokia and KO GmbH for sponsoring travel, accommodation and dinner!

Jiffy Bag Time!

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:09:00 +0100

This was one busy weekend! We had the Krita bug day, of course. But that wasn't the only thing happening: finally the printed comics were delivered! Consquently, Animtim took the train to Deventer and spent the weekend drawing dedications in the pre-ordered comics.

Meanwhile, Irina was busy preparing the list of addresses and printing the address tickers. Then it was time to start stuffing the jiffy bags:

Sort the jiffy bags

And stack them

With a huge stack as result:

Now all that is needed is to get the stamps and send them off, and everyone who pre-ordered a comic-book + dvd pack will get to see the result

If in the coming week or two you do not receive your order, or your order is not correct, please mail me! It's the first time we've done something like this...

And if you haven't ordered your copy, there are still a few left, so don't hesitate, and go to the Krita website and press the order button!