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Krita Preview Available, KOffice gets ready for image manipulation! Developers aim at making a user-friendly image manipulation program where users with no computer experience or slim experience with other image programs like Photoshop and Gimp should feel right at home.

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Krita will be the paint program included in KOffice. View Bart Coppens preview videos to get impressed, or download the preview release source code and try it yourself today!

Krita, previously known as Krayon and KimageShop, is still in pre-alpha state, but is ready to be initially previewed by eager users. The first preview release is now available for download.

Krita was born in 1999 and huge efforts lie beneath the hood of this first preview, released after five years of heavy development.

Krita developer Bart Coppens has made two very interesting video showing Krita in action:

krita.mpeg (his first video, the second is better)
Alt 1: krita.mpeg (5,5 MB)
Alt 2: krita.mpeg (5,5 MB)
Alt 3: krita.mpeg (5,5 MB)

krita2.mpeg (second video, very good!)
Alt 1: krita2.mpeg (4,9 MB)
Alt 2: krita2.mpeg (4,9 MB)
Alt 3: krita2.mpeg (4,9 MB)

The video shows how Krita can be used in various ways. Take a look at some of it's new features, like the great font support shown in krita2.mpeg:

Another very interesting features demonstrated is the ability to paint using filters, shown about 1 minute into krita2:

Bart Coppens used xvidcap to create the videos.

Krita already has these features, and more will come:

  • painting with Gimp brushes or image filters
  • gradients & patterns
  • excellent tablet support
  • world-class image scaling
  • Layers: Adding, removing, reordering and merging of layers.
  • Supports loading of Gimp brushes, pipe brushes, gradients and patterns.

Developers stress this is a test-release, not meant for production use. Experienced users are welcome to try it out and write detailed bug reports if/when found.

Krita depends on KOffice CVS. You should use the CVS version of KOffice together with Krita, installing Krita will cause problems with installations of old versions of KOffice.

Packages for SuSE and a few other selected Linux distributions will be available soon.

Krita developers hope to make it a part of KOffice 1.4, scheduled to be released spring 2005.

Current Krita developer team:

  • Boudewijn Rempt (maintainer, stuff that doesn't work)
  • Sven Langkamp (GUI, especially the dockers & the color wheel)
  • Cyrille Berger (Filters, tools, core stuff)
  • Adrian Page (Painting, tablet support, gradients, core stuff, fixes all over the place)
  • Clarence Dang (zoom, shape tools)
  • Dirk Schoenberger (code cleanups, tool shortcuts)
  • Bart Coppens (Fills, previews, text tool)
  • Michael Thaler (Scaling, rotating)
  • Casper Boemann (core stuff)
  • Daniel Molkentin (Packaging this release)

Other people who have played an important role in giving us Krita:

  • John Califf
  • Patrick Julien
  • Michael Koch
  • Matthias Elter
  • Andrew Richards
  • Carsten Pfeiffer
  • Toshitaka Fujioka

Fun Facts about Krita

  • "Krita means chalk or crayon in Swedish. rita means to draw.

Learn more:

Download:

A fully functional stable Krita is still years ahead. Good fully-functional image manipulation programs available for Linux today:

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KDE Dot News
  • Camp KDE 2009: Call for Presentations and Sponsorship
    Organisation of Camp KDE 2009 is now moving at full speed and the event website is now active. The organisers are now releasing a Call For Presentations (CFP) and a Call For Sponsorship (CFS). Camp KDE 2009 was recently announced on the Dot and will be held in Negril, Jamaica from January 17-23, 2009. We are excited to continue the momentum of KDE interest shown at the 2008 KDE 4.0 Release Event in California. This new conference will be held at the Travellers Beach Resort in Negril.
    resort photo
    Travellers Resort

    Call For Presentations (CPF):

    Presentations will be given on January 17 and 18. The organisers have already begun to receive inquiries and offers, but we certainly need more. Below are several potential topics for Camp KDE 2009 speeches:

    • KDE core libraries and framework tutorials
    • KDE Pillars
    • Qt software
    • KDE applications and their communities (Office, PIM, edutainment, media, etc)
    • New concepts such as JOLIE and QEdje
    • Usability and Accessibility
    • KDE on Mac and Windows
    • Free software topics (Linux, BSD, graphics & X11, ODF, etc)
    • Free software challenges and opportunities (government, business, equality, etc)
    • Distro/vendor/corporate talks
    • Local cultural talks
    • Developer sprints topics

    Call For Sponsorship (CPS):

    Camp KDE 2009 is proud to announce two early sponsors:

    • iXsystems: You may know them because of their desktop initiatives at electronic chains, their server offerings, or their collaboration with the BSD family (notably our friends at PC-BSD).
    • Google: They were kind enough to host our Release Event in January and they are back to assist with Camp KDE 2009.

    Of course, Camp KDE 2009 is still looking for more sponsors. We are open to involvement of any kind and participation ideas are welcome.

    If you are interested in either giving a presentation or conference sponsorship, do not hesitate to contact organisers at campkde-organizers@kde.org. Help get this new KDE conference series off to the best start possible!

  • KOffice Bug Day and Krush!
    To help the upcoming final release of KOffice, Bug Squad will be having our first KOffice Day this Sunday. We will triage the old bugs, and look for new ones (krush). We will be starting at around 07:00 UTC (be aware that summer time ends in various European countries on the 26th). As always we will be gathering in #kde-bugs on freenode IRC. You do not need any programming knowledge. All you need is a copy of the new KOffice Beta from your distribution with the debug packages installed. This is an easy way to give back to the KDE community, and also an excellent way to get involved.

    Triaging just means going through the old bug reports and checking to see if they are still valid, and if they can be given new information. Often older bugs are fixed without the developers realising there is a bug report on it. Or a bug report may be poorly written, and so it gets overlooked. Triage helps to clear out and improve the bugs in the Bugzilla database. It seems simple, and it is! But it saves developers' time for coding, and is more important than you might at first think.

    Krushing is a confusing term that just means looking for new bugs, and then filing bug reports. Developers will be standing by!

    In particular, we will work on KWord, Krita, KChart, Karbon, KPresenter, KSpread, and more. Is one of these your favourite application? Or something you use a lot? Come join us and help make it better!

  • KOffice 2.0 Beta 2 Released
    The KOffice Team has announced the release of KOffice version 2.0 Beta 2, the second beta version of the upcoming version 2.0. The goal for the second beta is to show progress made since beta 1, as well as to gather feedback from both users and developers on the new UI and underlying infrastructure. This will allow the team to release a basically usable 2.0 release, demonstrating our vision for the future of the digital office to a larger audience and attract new contributions both in terms of code and ideas for improvements. Since the last beta release a significant set of issues and speed-up fixes have been integrated for all applications and this release shows the shift of focus from new features to bug fixes until 2.0 is released. More information on the full announcement while the release notes tell you how to get it.
  • Join us in Jamaica next January for Camp KDE
    In January 2008, the KDE community celebrated the release of the much anticipated KDE 4.0 in Mountain View, CA. When the event was celebrated by a packed house, we realised that there was a strong demand for KDE events in the Americas. One year later, the community will celebrate this new conference series at Camp KDE 2009, to be held in Negril, Jamaica.

    Camp KDE

    Just as the Release Event heralded KDE 4.0 and Akademy 2008 celebrated KDE 4.1, Camp KDE 2009 will be held just as KDE 4.2 is readied for release.

    Camp KDE 2009 will be held in three months time, starting on January 17, 2009 and continuing until January 23. Like Akademy 2008, the event will start with 1-2 days of presentations, followed by BoF meetings and hackathon sessions.

    After flying into Sangster International Airport (MBJ) in Montego Bay, attendees will be staying at the nearby Travellers Resort in Negril. The Camp KDE organisers have negotiated an extremely reasonable lodging rate and the event will be held on site at the conference centre. With many resorts nearby, attendees have plenty of options and alternatives.

    Conference presentations and sponsor details are currently being formed. As more information becomes available, please frequent our new Camp KDE 2009 event site. The registration system, designed by Akademy 2008 organisers, has been modified for this event and will be open shortly.

    We are pleased to announce two sponsors already: iXsystems and Google. Organisers are excited to be working with both companies and look forward to more sponsors being announced. Let us know if you are interested in sponsoring.

    Set to be held every northern hemisphere winter, the Camp KDE series will bring a much needed presence in North, Central and South America over the coming years. Help us celebrate KDE 4.2 and encourage growth of a new conference by attending Camp KDE 2009.

  • KDE Commit-Digest for 28th September 2008
    In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Continued work on PowerDevil, and the "NetworkManager" and "Weather" Plasmoids. Monochrome action icons in Plasma expand to cover KRunner. A first working version of QEdje script engine, and the import of a "Window Manager" runner. Work on new containments and a mobile internet devices (MID) panel in Plasma. Various improvements in Konsole and the Kvkbd keyboard utility. Support for adding actions implemented by Kross scripts in Lokalize. First version of a MathML presentation markup importer in KAlgebra. Start of work on a Mollweide projection in Marble. More work on integration of Jabber-based network games in KSirK. Continued work towards Amarok 2.0. Better support for LilyPond links in and the "--unique" command-line switch (similar to KDVI) in Okular. A new version of Klotz (previously KLDraw) with database update functionality is imported into playground/graphics. The Paint.net red-eye reduction algorithm is incorporated into Gwenview, using a "iPhoto-inspired" interface bar. Start of a DNG image format converter in KIPI plugins (used in Digikam, etc). Various work on filters in Kst, including Butterworth, and Linear Weighted Fits plugins. Support for auto-saving/restoring opened tabs in Akregator. A "cost breakdown" view in KPlato. The ability to create web shortcuts by right-clicking on the line edit of a search field in KHTML. Support for subscript and superscript in KRichTextWidget. Import of KDE Partition Manager to KDE SVN. Ruby and C# bindings are promoted to the KDE 4.1 release branch. Various Plasma applets move to kdereview for official inclusion in KDE 4.2. Amarok 1.92 and KDE 4.1.2 are tagged for release. Read the rest of the Digest here.
  • KDE Launches User Forums
    The KDE Community today launches the new KDE Forum. The new forum uses the bulletin board software MyBB offering users, developers and people interested in KDE a place to help each other, discuss KDE-related topics and exchange ideas. The KDE Forum complements KDE's UserBase, the home for KDE users as a valuable support resource.

    The Forums

    The forum offers a number of categories

    • Forum lists announcement and has a section for providing feedback about the forum.
    • In News Releases you can discuss the latest and greatest KDE news, and even follow commits to the KDE codebase in real time.
    • The largest category is for Users, different KDE apps and modules are covered in the sub-forums here.
    • The Operating Systems category gives those seeking to discuss platform-specific issues a place to post to.
    • Want to get feedback about your code? Need to get more detailed explanations of a certain topic? The Developers section is there for you.
    • The Other Languages has pointers to local KDE Forums. These forums are not part of the "KDE Forums" proper, but nevertheless a place you might find answers to your questions and like-minded people.

    The KDE Forums admins have set the structure up as a starting point. Sub-communities or interesting parties can request their own subforum. The KDE Forum team is working on integrating the new KDE Forum with KDE's existing infrastructure by means of IRC bots that can announce new threads and posts on IRC channels, by briding forum posts to mailinglist messages and by offering RSS feeds.

    MyBB Released as GPL

    In collaboration with KDE, the developers behind MyBB have decided to release their forum software under the terms of the GPL Version 3. Chris Boulton, project manager at the MyBB Group said "The KDE forum guys have come to us with the wish to use our forum software. In this process, we needed to clear out our licensing to make it easier for the KDE community to make use of MyBB. As a result of that, we have now released the MyBB forum under the terms of the GPL. This was very well-received by the community around MyBB". Entirely in the spirit of Free Software, the KDE Forum team has already contributed a number of plugins for MyBB, supporting the decision taken by the MyBB team.

    Rob la Lau, initiator and administrator of the KDE Forum adds "We've chosen MyBB as it stands out head and shoulders above other candidates we have considered to adopt for the new KDE Forums. We know that a good piece of software makes a lot of difference to the user, after all we want to create a nice place for everybody to chat about KDE and related questions."

    Sebastian Kügler, member of the KDE e.V. Board of Directors explains where the new KDE Forum fits into KDE communication infrastructure, "We've come to believe that mailinglist don't cut it for all users. KDE becoming increasingly widely used should also offer a place for those that aren't familiar with the use of e-mail for such discussions. The new KDE Forum complements KDE's new end-user knowledge base Userbase that was launched last month. At the same time, we're really happy to see that after our request the MyBB team has decided to release their forum software under the terms of the GPL".

    So get your account and join the discussion now.

  • Amarok 2 Second Beta Released
    The Amarok Squad is proud to announce the second beta release of Amarok 2.0. This release includes a lot of bug fixes and improvements, like the switch from SQlite to MySQL-embedded. The LibriVox service is back, as is lyrics support. Please read the release announcement for a detailed list of changes since the release of Beta 1 and more.

    The most significant change in this release is the switch from SQLite to MySQL-embedded as the database backend. MySQL-embedded allows us to use the performance increase of the popular MySQL database, while avoiding non-trivial configuration that comes with a standalone server. Most noticeably, you will see much improved performance of collection scanning and searching, especially with very large music collections.

    More generally we have fixed a huge amount of bugs, bringing Amarok 2 one step closer to the stability you would expect for your daily music needs. While not quite stable quality, we encourage our users to test this release and continue submitting bug reports. Already this beta version is good enough for daily use in many cases.

    We hope you enjoy this release which we have worked so hard to produce. Stay tuned for upcoming releases, and please do not forget to donate for Roktober!

  • PolishLinux Interviews KPackageKit Authors
    PackageKit is a system designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier. The primary design goal is to unify all the software graphical tools used in different distributions. KPackageKit is the KDE interface for PackageKit. Polishlinux.org spoke with Adrien Bustany and Daniel Nicoletti the Packagekit-Qt and KpackageKit developers, about the emerging possibilities in the process of managing software on your desktop.
  • Support Amarok This Roktober '08
    Another year has passed and the Amarok team wants to celebrate with its fans: it's Roktober again! This is the time of the year when the Amarok team reviews what they have achieved during the past year and call for your help for the coming year.

    Your donations of time and money make it possible to create the awesome music player you love so much.

    Our aim for this Roktober is to raise €10,000. Our budget is aggressive, but as costs go up, and our plans get more complex, we have to raise the goal. As in past years, for every €10 donated, you will receive one entry in the drawing for an iAudio7. This year we have two grand prizes and we will also give t-shirts to 4 second chance winners.

    At Akademy 2008 Amarok won the prestigious Best Application award at the Akademy Awards. Your donations make it possible to continue this work, producing what is the best music player for Linux, and will shortly become the best music player on any platform. Amarok 2 is about to let a second beta out of the bag and we look forward to a ground breaking final release.

  • KDE 4.1.2 "Codename" Finally Out
    Two days later than initially planned, "Codename" (or more traditionally KDE 4.1.2) was released just a few minutes ago. The delay was caused by binary incompatibility issues in the branch. Those have been resolved so we are now looking at a stable release. 4.1.2 is another one of those monthly bug fix and translation updates. No new features are allowed into the 4.x/ branches, so no new features went into KDE 4.1.2, but some nice bug fixes instead. David Faure has fixed a long-standing and annoying performance issue when deleting files using KIO, so you can now accidentally delete your home directory 32 times faster For the more faint-hearted, it will also work well with other files. You can read about all the changes that went into Codename in the changelog which offers links to the comprehensive SVN log files. KDE 4.1.2 is a recommended upgrade for everybody running KDE 4. The next feature release of the KDE workspace and applications will be in January 2009 when 4.2.0 will be upon you.

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