Re: 4.14 in 4 days - was- Re: 4.14 in 20 days

Dot story (Release 4.14 - KDE gets better and better)

August 20, 2014

This release is dedicated to Volker Lanz who passed away this April.
(This dedication will not be included in the announcement or Dot story without more detailed information about Volker.)

The KDE Community <a href="http://kde.org/announcements/4.14/">announces</a> the latest major updates to KDE Applications delivering primarily improvements and bugfixes. Plasma Workspaces and the KDE Development Platform are frozen and receiving only long term support; those teams are focused on the transition to Plasma 5 and Frameworks 5.

<div style="width: 360px; float: right; padding: 1ex; margin: 1ex;"><img src="https://dot.kde.org/sites/dot.kde.org/files/mascot_20140702_konqui-framework_wee_0.png" /></div>
In the past, KDE has jointly released the three major divisions of KDE software—Plasma Workspaces, KDE Development Platform and KDE Applications. The KDE Development Platform is being reworked into KDE Frameworks. The monolithic libraries that comprise the Development Platform are becoming independent, cross platform modules (KDE Frameworks 5) that will be readily available to all Qt developers. Plasma Workspaces is being moving to a new technology foundation based on Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5. With the 3 major KDE software components moving at different paces, their release schedules are now separated. For the most part, KDE Release 4.14 involves KDE Applications.

<h2>Development Platform/KDE Frameworks 5</h2>
The <a href="https://dot.kde.org/2013/09/25/frameworks-5">modular Frameworks structure</a> will have widespread benefits for KDE software. In addition, Frameworks is a substantial <a href="https://dot.kde.org/2014/07/07/kde-frameworks-5-makes-kde-software-more-accessible-all-qt-developers">contribution to the Qt ecosystem</a> by making KDE technology available to all Qt developers. <a href="http://inqlude.org/">Inqlude, the Qt library archive</a> simplifies the search for Qt libraries, while the <a href="http://rubygems.org/gems/inqlude/versions/0.7.0">alpha release</a> of the <a href="https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude">Inqlude tool</a> offers a command line interface for accessing Inqlude.

For example, applications using the KConfig Framework heavily are much faster and consume less memory. Multiple KConfig optimizations have improved the performance of The Kate/Kwrite/KDevelop/Kile group of applications that use KatePart internally. 

<div style="width: 360px; float: right; padding: 1ex; margin: 1ex;"><img src="https://dot.kde.org/sites/dot.kde.org/files/mascot_20140702_konqui-plasma_wee_0.png" /></div> 
<h2>Plasma Workspaces</h2>
<a href="https://dot.kde.org/2014/07/15/plasma-5.0">Plasma 5</a> was recently recently released after 3 years of work; it is on its own release schedule with feature releases every three months and bugfix releases in the intervening months. The Plasma team has built a solid foundation that will support Plasma Workspaces for many years.

<h2>KDE Applications</h2>
Release 4.14 is not about lots of "new and improved stuff". Many KDE developers are focused on the Next Experience (Plasma 5) or porting to KDE Frameworks (based on <a href="http://qt-project.org/qt5">Qt5</a>). Mostly, the 4.14 release is needed by aspects of our workflow (such as translations). This release offers more software stability, with little emphasis on new and less-proven stuff. People who want the latest and greatest KDE software may want to consider the Plasma 5 Workspace.

There are over 200 actively maintained KDE applications. Many of them are listed in the <a href="https://userbase.kde.org/Applications">KDE userbase</a>. Here are a few examples of the kinds of improvements that KDE developers have made in this release:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://kopete.kde.org/">Kopete</a></li>
<ul>
<li>support for SOCKS5 proxy in ICQ protocol (before only HTTP type was supported)</li>
<li>support for using system proxy settings in ICQ protocol</li>
<li>support for audio calls (both protocols google libjingle and real jingle)for *all* <a href="http://www.jabber.org/">jabber</a> accounts, enabled by default</li>
<li>updated libiris library from upstream which implements jabber/xmpp protocol in kopete</li>
<li>contact property custom name and support for preferred display name type, making it possible to distinguish and choose between custom names stored on a server list and contact custom/nick name</li>
<li>wrap PGP-signed or encrypted messages into <a href="http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0027.html">XEP-0027</a> XML block instead of the normal body of message</li>
<li>show full range of jabber priorities in account config dialog</li>
</ul>
<div style="width: 360px; float: right; padding: 1ex; margin: 1ex;"><img src="https://dot.kde.org/sites/dot.kde.org/files/mascot_20140702_konqui-group_wee.png" /></div>

<li><a href="http://edu.kde.org/cantor/">Cantor</a></li>
<ul>
<li>New <a href="http://oproj.tuxfamily.org/math/lua/kde/2014/08/04/cantor.html">New Lua backend</a> </li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8">UTF-8</a> on LaTeX entries</li>
<li>Add CTRL+Space as an alternative default code completion</li>
<li>Support to plot extension in Python 2 backend</li>
<li>Support to linear algebra extension in Python 2 backend</li>
<li>Support to packaging extension in Sage, Octave, backends</li>
<li>Support to autorun scripts in Python 2, Scilab, Octave, Sage, Maxima, Qalculate and KAlgebra backends</li>
</ul>
<li><a href"http://edu.kde.org/kanagram/">Kanagram</a> got a new QML <a href="http://debjitmondal.blogspot.com/2014/07/brand-new-kanagram.html">User Interface and some features</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://okular.kde.org/">Okular</a> bugfixes and small features, internal rework</li>
<li><a href="http://www.kde.org/applications/utilities/kate/">Kate</a></li>
<ul>
<li>new highlighting rules for languages; bugfixes and improvements to existing languages</li>
<li>improved VI mode</li>
<li>comment blocks can be folded automatically to save screen space</li>
<li>improved support and auto-generation of dark system color schemes</li>
<li>multiple bug fixes</li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://umbrello.kde.org/">Umbrello - The UML Modeller</a></li>
<ul>
<li>UML2 ports on components</li>
<li>UML2 interface ball and socket notation</li>
<li>Improved C++ import (map declarations to correct namespace)</li>
<li>Crash fixes in all language importers</li>
<li>Improved loading of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Rational_Rose_XDE">Rose models</a>: Added support for controlled units and class diagrams</li>
<li>Support for loading <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArgoUML">ArgoUML</a> files (without diagrams)</li>
<li>Support for loading <a href="http://www.embarcadero.com/data-modeling">Embarcadero</a> describe files (without diagrams)</li>
<li>Ada now can generate multiple classes per package (<a href="http://bugs.kde.org/336933">bugfix</a>)</li>
<li>New "Find in diagram" function (<a href="http://bugs.kde.org/116354>bugfix</a>)</li>
<li>Stabilized positions of activity pins (<a href="http://bugs.kde.org/335399>bugfix</a>)</li>
<li>Fixed sluggish UI reaction in state diagram (http://bugs.kde.org/337463>bugfix</a>)</li>
<li>Crash fixes: http://bugs.kde.org/256716>bugfix</a>, http://bugs.kde.org/332612>bugfix</a>, http://bugs.kde.org/337606>bugfix</a></li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://dolphin.kde.org/">Dolphin</a> has mostly bug fixes and small changes such as:</li>
<ul>
<li>Highlighting of the current item in the Places Panel is prettier</li>
<li>"free space" notification in the status bar is now always up-to-date in all windows and views</li>
<li>refactoring of the huge class that represents Dolphin's main window has been started to make the code more maintainable and easier to understand</li>
</ul>
<li><a href="http://edu.kde.org/marble/">Marble</a>
<ul>
<li>Dolphin now shows thumbnails of .gpx, .kml and other file types supported by Marble</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole_Markup_Language">KML</a> improvements: The list of supported KML features has been extended</li>
<li>The new political vector map now shows governmental boundaries in different colors ... a <a href="https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2014">Google Summer of Code</a> project by Abhinav Gangwar.</li>
</ul>
<li><a href="https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=VERIFIED&bug_status=CLOSED&chfieldfrom=2013-01-01&chfieldto=Now&f1=cf_versionfixedin&f2=cf_versionfixedin&j_top=OR&o1=equals&o2=equals&query_format=advanced&resolution=FIXED&v1=4.14&v2=4.14.0&order=product%2Cbug_id%20DESC">Many, many bugfixes</a></li>
</ul>

Thank you to all KDE Developers working on behalf of people all over the world.

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