Wednesday, June 01, 2005

lilacs and panels

this weekend i went to the calgary lilac festival. last year they estimate over 100,000 attended. this year it was bigger but just as packed, so i assume the attendance was higher. it was a nice hot day and i got a bit of a sunburn watching the various bands along the street which were positioned every couple of blocks. seeing as this year it stretched 13 blocks from end to end that was a lot of music to catch. there was no admission fee and i met a few really cool people there.



the picture above was taken near the end of the afternoon about four blocks from the end of the event. it gives you something of an idea of the scale of it.

i've started a new work project recently which marks a change in my employment schedule. i'm back working from home again; being back in an office for 18 months was more than enough. i'll miss the wicked espresso machines and some of the people, but there's no place like home. especially when it's right on one of the hottest streets in town =) this new arrangement should also work quite nicely into my kde hacking schedule. or vice versa, i suppose.

speaking of kde hacking, there is now a panel-devel at kde dot org email list where we are discussing the current KDE 3.5 and future KDE 4.0 developments for kicker and super karamba. when i picked up kicker last year i thought i must be suffering from a delusional episode. i mean, why would anyone want to maintain that codebase, esp when virtually nobody else was working on it at all? but i crazily pressed on and now there's actually a nice community of development around it. there are 12 other people on the panel-devel list now, all of whom are involved in either kicker or superkaramba development. and there are a few people still missing (that's right Hans Oischinger, i mean you ;). i feel very blessed to be able to be a part of this.

and yes, superkaramba is now KDE's svn. this is the first step down the road to full integration in KDE4. KDE4 devel of the new panel fusion stuff will start sometime in the latter half of June. to spin Marshall McLuhan a bit: the karamba is the applet. ;)

4 comments:

cloose said...

What about Slicker? Are you in contact with these guys?

I really like the idea of stackable and retractable/extendable cards. Too bad the development seem to strive for a perfect design without ever releasing a usable version.

Aaron J. Seigo said...

> What about Slicker? Are you in
> contact with these guys?

not really. i've chatted with them previously, however.

> I really like the idea of
> stackable and
> retractable/extendable cards

there is no reason someone couldn't add this to kicker as an extension. there is no need for an entirely new application that reinvents all the wheels. i basically gave up hope for slicker when i discussed the possibility of sharing applets between kicker and their project and they weren't interested.

as for the concept of stackable cards themselves, i really don't think they are very usable at all. one of the main points with panels is taking advantage of the "infinite size of the edges" allowing for quick mouse targeting. so i probably won't implement such things in the default panel system.

cloose said...

Damn if only I hadn't so much on my todo list with the Subversion support in Cervisia. ;-)

Thanks for the information Aareon!

cloose said...

BTW sorry for the typo in your name. Happened probably because the name of the company I work for is called Aareon. :)