Since several releases, Kate Part has scripting support through javascript. So far, it seems it is not much used by users. Still, I stumbled over two extensions:

• jump to previous / next paragraph
• base64 encoding

If you have more user defined scripts, it would be nice if you let us know! For KDE5, we plan to extend this, so applications like Kile or KDevelop can reuse Kate’s internal code.

On another note, here is a nice blog about the upcoming KDE 4.8 release

Maybe a good read: On being wrong. It’s about why it’s so hard to admit that you are wrong, and more.

About half a year ago, Kate 3.7 was released as part of KDE 4.7. Now that KDE 4.8 is about to be released, let’s have a look at what Kate brings in KDE 4.8.

Bug Fixes

According to KDE’s bug tracker, about 190 issues were solved. Taking a closer look, lots of small issues were fixed, amongst them:

• improved printing support (report 1, report 2, report 3, report 4, report 5, and more)
• syntax highlighting files added and updated
• zoom in/out with ctrl+mouse wheel, scroll over folding area
• wrong active view when resuming session with split view
• ambiguous shortcuts in file system browser resolved
• improved GDB plugin
• we heavily cleaned up our bug database (bugs + wishes):

Heavily Reworked Code Folding

As part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2011, the code folding code was improved. The main goal was to eliminate wrong folding behavior and fix all crashes while making the code more maintainable. We are quite happy with the results: Given the robust behavior, it now was possible to remember code folding state past sessions and during document reload. So folded regions are not lost anymore.

Additionally, the visual appearance was changed to be rather decent.

Improved Vi Mode

Also as part of the GSoC 2011, Kate’s vi input mode was heavily improved.

Search & Replace in Files

The “Find in Files” plugin is now replaced with the new “Search and Replace” plugin: It basically contains all the features of “Find in Files,” but additionally has the following features:

• either search in files-on-disk, or in all the opened documents
• all search matches are highlighted
• replace support: matches can be (selectively) replaced with other text

Line Modification Indicators

Kate has a shiny new line modification system. Read all about it in this dedicated article. Mandatory screenshot:

Document Variable (Modeline) Editor

Kate (and thus all applications use Kate Part) can be configured by using document variables, also known as modelines. Since it’s hard to remember all the available keys and values, a dialog helps out in the config dialog. You can read about all the details in this dedicated post (screenshots).

Documentation Updates

T.C. Hollingworth put a huge amount of work into the Kate and KWrite handbook. Thus, the documentation is much more up-to-date and we hope it helps to learn using Kate effectively more quickly. The official version is available on docs.kde.org.

Current State & The Road Ahead

Apart from the upcoming KDE 4.8 release, Kate turned 10 years old this summer. All in all, we can proudly say that Kate has a solid code base in its current state. The smart ranges were replaced by the moving ranges. Code folding is more clean with less bugs. Our plugins got a lot of updates. The documentation has improved. Of course, more help is always welcome. So if you are interested in Kate development, you are welcome to build Kate from sources and join our team by sending patches.

Thanks to everyone contributing to this great release

Dominik’s video is cool, but we agreed that perhaps the names should be around and we can have a bit higher resolution to make them readable
Therefore here is a second take of the video, this time with names and 720p. (I have no luck with music, therefore, silence)

You only get to see the video if you visit our blog page here.
Direct HD link to YouTube here.

Command to create it (if YouTube eats it):

gource --multi-sampling --seconds-per-day 0.02 --auto-skip-seconds 0.1 --camera-mode track --stop-at-end -b 000000 --hide filenames,dirnames --disable-progress --date-format “%Y-%m” --viewport 1280x720 --output-ppm-stream - -r 60 | ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec libvpx -b 10000K -threads 4 kate-gource.webm

Recently, the Kate project celebrated its 10th anniversary. The gource visualization of 10 years Kate development (2001 to 2011) looks as follows. Have fun

PS: In case you do not see any video, click here.

PPS:Launch gource on kdelibs, that’s much more interesting!

Seems the Trolls made it, qt-project.org is online Grats.

At the desktop summit, many contributors got a ExoPC from Intel, but the software on it was quite a disappointment. Meanwhile, there is an official release of Plasma Active that fills the gap. So I sat down and installed it on the ExoPC. It really works quite nice and smooth. Applications like Amarok and a browser make it usable to hear music and do some quick internet surfing. I documented the steps in order to get everything up and running.

Running Plasma Active One from the USB Stick (LIVE version)

To get a quick impression, you can download the file plasma-active-one.iso from open-slx.com. Then, plug in a USB stick to your computer and run the comand

sudo dd if=plasma-active-one.iso of=/dev/<DEVICE> bs=1M

where <DEVICE> corresponds to the USB stick (in my case, this is sdc). When finished, plug the USB stick into the upper USB port of your ExoPC and press the power on button. Make sure to tap “BBS” immediately and choose the USB stick as boot device. After this, choose the first entry to start the live version of Plasma Active.

Note: As of 2011-10-15, a installation with this live version is not possible (even though some documentation at some point or the splash screen suggest otherwise).

Installing Plasma Active on the Hard Disk

In order to get Plasma Active on your hard disk, you first have to install openSUSE 11.4. To this end,

1. download the 4.7 GB DVD image of openSUSE 11.4 (32 bit), and copy it on the USB stick (in my case <DEVICE> = sdc):
   sudo dd if=openSUSE-11.4-DVD-i586.iso of=/dev/<DEVICE> bs=1M
2. plug the USB stick into the upper USB port of your ExoPC and press the power on button
3. make sure to tap “BBS” immediately and choose the USB stick as boot device
4. after this, choose “Installation” to start the install process (you need an external keyboard on the lower USB port)
5. follow the installation routine, choose the KDE desktop, do the partition setup, create a new user account and finally start the installation
6. copying files takes some time. After this, the system finally boots to proceed with the automatic configuration.
7. Finally, the system arrives in KDE. (From now on, the USB stick is not needed anymore.)

The touch screen does not work out of the box. Hence, I restarted X from the console with /etc/init.d/xdm restart. After that, the external mouse and keyboard worked (ignore the fact that you might be greeted by 6 crashed akonadi windows).

Once you have the internet up and running, proceed with 1.5 Installation on Balsam Professional or openSUSE. This updates your kernel to properly support the touchpad and replaces the default Plasma Desktop with Plasma Active.

Kudos to the Plasma Active team and all involved contributors and supporters!

PS: Although a text editor is probably not of much use on a tablet PC, KWrite is available

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie died at home this weekend.

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie

As the creator of the C programming language and one of the main developers of Unix, he impacted the life of me and other developers a lot.

Even today, 30 years after their initial creation, many people work on Unix like systems (like Linux or Mac OS) and develop in (Objective) C(++).

For me C was one of my starting languages for my real programming work and even today I analyze the whole day software written in C for embedded systems that control our modern world, be it the flight control of airplanes or engine control of cars.

Without his initial ideas and work, today there would be no Linux kernel, no Mac OS, …

We all owe him a lot. He changed the world.

Thanks for your great inventions! You won’t be forgotten.

Just two impressive Ritchie cites:

“Unix is simple and coherent, but it takes a genius – or at any rate a programmer – to understand and appreciate the simplicity.”

“The greatest danger to good computer science research today may be excessive relevance. If we can keep alive enough openess to new ideas, enough freedom of communication, enough patience to allow the novel to prosper, it will remain possible for a future Ken Thompson to find a little-used Cray/1 computer and fashion a system as creative, and as influential, as Unix.”

With some of my gimp skills, I updated Kate’s feature list. Hope you like the face-lift