On the other side of cloud

Tags:KDE linux multimedia thinkpad

I supposed that my T40’s built-in microphone was ruined(for this is a second-hand thinkpad). But accidentally, I found it works well…
And here are some tips for laptop’s built-in microphone on KDE(KMix):
1. You can test if you microphone works by click the green point below the mic icon(Input tab) to make it light and connect the input of microphone to speaker, then flap your Mic. But be careful, if you use built-in speaker, the treble voice would be generated if you adjust the volume to more than level 3. So, in the normal use, please close the microphone output to speaker(except you use headphone).
2. You can enhanced the microphone output. Click Switches tab in KMix, and select Mic Boost +20dE. But don’t make microphone connect to built-in speaker with this.
3. If you still not content with the result, you can set the Capture of Input tab to maximum.
4. You can also use vumeter -r to see the recode volume level.

I got very perfect result with disable Mic to output, using Mic Boost and using built-in speaker.
Good luck!

Tags:KDE KNotes SoKI want to build a convenient ui for user to choose categories. Probably, one note has more than one category. At first, I try to put something like checkbox in the KMenu, so the menu shouldn’t close after being clicked. The standard way is put a KToggleAction or set KAction::setCheckable(). But they all would close the QMenu after being clicked.

Then I tried QCheckBox. It appeared in the up-left of menu, but only one is putted. QCheckBox requires a QWidget in constructor, so I can set it to QMenu. The QCheckBox can keep menu open after it was clicked, but I think there will be difficult to implement it well like this.

The qt-4.2 add a QWidgetAction. At first, I think using QWidgetAction can slove this. But later I realized the QWidgetACtion is still a action, and menu may still close after it send clicked signal to QWidgetAction.

Brade told me check QMenu’s code to find reason. I found the source of closing menu after a action was click, and trying to override the mouse event now. If I success, I may commit a update to KMenu.

When I look into QMenu’s source code, I am feeling the power of Open Source….

If I failed, I will choose a traditional way : a category dialog.

Tags:KDE KNotes SoKIt’s amazing…

Just two days ago, I was anxious about if I can complete it on time. But after two days work, the process far beyond my imagine.

Now I completed the classified note menu. The categories information was stored in journal object, as it was. So I only set the categories and classified it.

Now click the icon in systray will show sub menus, with different categories name. There is a “Default” categories, which was provided for note with no category. The next step was adding setting function of category. I supposed to implement it as a sub menu with can be checked and unchecked. Also a function provide adding.

In fact, I didn’t store category information. If there is no note with this category, the one will be deleted automaticlly. This design may be changed later. But I think it is proper for no delete function.

Tags:KDE KNotes SoKMaybe it is too late for this.

I am very sorry about the delay of KNote development. I am trying to find a balance between my intern job and KNote development. But it seems I am failed in the last serveral weeks. Intern job makes me very tired.

I set a schedule now in order to catch up with process:

8.31 Complete function experiment 9.10 Complete categories first version in KNote 10.10 Complete categories function in KNote 11.10 Complete update in Kontact

The time before Sep 10th is few. I even a little doubt about if I can complete first version on time. But on the other side, I don’t think it is difficult if I am more familiar with KDE development.

I will have a try.

Tags:KDE KNotes SoK

It is so slowly. I almost can’t bear endless problems in compiling KDE4 and kdepim. It’s a nightmare, and the reason I didn’t find yet.

I wasted two weeks on setting up enviorment, partly because of my intern takes me much time. It also because of my inexperience. In fact, in these day, I was so dispirited…

I will speed up on development.

That’s all by now.

Tags:KDE KNotes SoK

The KDE e.V. annouanced “Season of KDE” formally these days. And the site is opened for introducing and progress tracking. I’m very glad to be one of the twelve persons which were chosen to attend this job.

I got the basicly idea in my preparing period for SoC. So it’s much easier to implement it. It seems that the time(about three months) is more than enough. And my mentor - Michael Blade will be help me to complete it. All the things seems well.

But there is a little trouble. I am doing my intern job in Beijing now. The only available time is weekend and nights. What is lucky is the leader allowed me to install enviorment on my computer in company - I didn’t take a laptop. Now the debian is ready. I will compile knotes with KDE 4.0 before this weekend. Then development will begin.

I discarded the idea about write a gadget for Google Desktop which I mentioned before. Though only submit a gadget successful can get a T-shirt, I don’t have enough time to do it. I think my intern and SoK is more important.

So, please look forward to my progress.

BTW: The trouble which is bother me these days has been sloved temporary. I found a place to live in for one month. But what’s going on next month, I don’t know. The Beijing is at least 2 times prices of commodities of Wuhan. What a pity…

Tags:KDE soc

The KDE e.V. sent me a message told me that I will continue my working on KNotes in “Season of KDE 2006″. Michael Blade told they were planing such a kind of thing several weeks ago, now it’s finally announced.

This year KDE has participated in Google Summer of Code program. You were one of the candidates who had sent their proposals to Google under KDE’s mentorship.Google does only support a small selection of the project proposals mentored by KDE. Sadly, your application was not selected in this process.

However, we think that your project proposal was very interesting and had potential to become an important part of the KDE development. Thus, we offer to mentor you without the help of Google in the “Season of KDE 2006” .

We do not have the same financial means like Google does. Thus, we cannot promise you a “reward” for a successful completion of your project. We will, however, try our best to gather sponsors for this event to be able to invite you to this year’s akademy - the annual KDE conference - at Dublin. If nothing else, the Season of KDE 2006 will be a brilliant opportunity for you to become a part of the KDE community while being mentored by an experienced KDE developer that is open for all your questions.

What is out of my expect is there may be no T-shirt but a chance to take part in “aKademy 2006″! Oh, goddness me… Let me calm down for a while…

By the way, I found there are two Chinese person’s project was accepted in KDE Projects of “Google Summer of Code 2006″ : Commenting tools for KPDF by Xiaodong Chu, and QQ - A new protocol for Kopete by Hui Jin.

Tags:KDE socToday is timeline of approved list show. After wishing me good luck, I wrote down these last effort I made. If I failed, this maybe the last post about SoC. And I will send these data to the people who in charge of the knotes improvement project. But I am still eagar to get this project, so WISH ME GOOD LUCK^_^

I send a survey to kde-linux and kdepim-user yesterday in order to find users thoughts of knotes’ categories.

Thanks to Grahma Cobb in kdepim-user. He not only give me useful suggest on categories, but also spent time on correcting my English. That’s very kind of him. I am appreciate him.
Cobb says he didn’t mind only one level category, and not mind no “new”/”delete” button. He suggested a very useful feature: filter for categories. He wrote:

I think the most important feature, however, is to be able to filter the notes view by category. For example, in Outlook I have notes which I want to keep but which I don’t want to clutter up the view normally. I have a category called “Obsolete” which I assign to the notes I don’t want to see and my normal default view only displays notes which do not have the Obsolete category.

I am thinking over this. This is a very useful feature I believe, but not clear in details. For example, how to show all notes? KNotes didn’t provide another view of notes. Maybe Kontact can help. Or you must change filter every time. But it’s really a good idea. I am willing to implement it.

Thanks to Jim Philips in kde-linux.
He suggested that KNotes/Kontact can be associated with GTD, a influential time management technique
formalized by David Allen. Last year, there is a SoC KDE project called GTD,
targeted on “make Kontact much more efficient and comfortable as “the system you can trust'’”. And he provide MonkeyGTD as a example for GTD Application. I also found some articles on GTD, which is very helpful for understanding.

Tags:KDE soc

I have just finished my midterm exams, so I didn’t update blog for several days. But I am continue working on knotes in my spare time.
Now I have basicly completed the knotes code’s analyzing.

The improvement will effect following class at least:

I am planning to carry out the improvement in the following way:
1. Left click on the icon will generate a menu with sub menues(categories). In fact, one note can be displayed under different sub menues.
2. When right click on the icon, you can find a way to manage all categories, like rename. I don’t think the new and delete action is needed here. Because I preferred( so did my mentor ) Method B, which means if there is no note with this tag, the tag won’t exist. I don’t know if it is properly, and if it is can be accepted by most people. But I know the idea of tag is very popular with web2.0 like delicious. At least, I think this method has very good flexibility.
3. When you editing a note, you can setting its tags by right click on the title or something other. The exist tags will be provided to choose, you can also create a tag.

I have send a survey to mailinglist(kdepim-user and kde-linux). I want to know if tags-style can be accepted.

The other thing is about knotes in kontact. I skimmed the source code, and it is seems another story… I am planning to add something like QListWidget for users to choose categories.

Tags:Google KDE socI heard about Google Summer of Code 2006 last month. After scaning the ideas, I feel terrible, for it seems too difficult for me to solve any of them. Although I have spend more than ten years on programming, my improvement is so limited that I cannot claim that I am an experienced programmer. However, it is the my learning skills,which enabled me to keep pace with the rapid software development,that strengthen my confidence to solve a large number of problems in the learning process. I believe that I am a bright and passionate learner , and dedicate myself to the practise of programming. Nevertheless, destiny always avoid me to achieve my goals—for example,I was defeated in NOI five years ago，and then missed three chances of attending the Department of Computer Science & Technology so that I have to fight alone in my campus life, which is the best period to improve myself.

There is no deny that I donot satisfy my ability now and eager to have greater advancement. Unfortunately, I doubt if I can successfully apply for a soc project before last night. But I decided to have a try at last when an idea striked my mind that it is surely that no result if you don’t try, isn’t it?

I have applied for “KNotes Improvement” in KDE projects,which is very similar with a toy of mine. In addition,this project request a catalog function, which I would like to carry out by using tags that I wrote to organize the information—-what is my incipient design.

Last night, I almost failed to submit application. When I decided to apply, I found that the timeline of proposals due by 16:00 Pacific Daylight Time May 8th(now update to 11:00 Pacific Daylight Time May 9…) and the school network would be down in 2 hours . Futhermore, I was shocked because I had not prepared anything yet. Two hours later, I was exhausted, but submitted my application successfully, just 8 minutes before network down.

That is why the application I submitted last night is full of errors. (I even mistakenly turned GMT for UTF … )I will try my best to finish the task if I get it. Bad beginning, but ending must be fine. The more work will be done in the following days, for instance,I have to set up a page for soc, use a better way to express my idea, read source code, contact the KNotes developer, and so forth.

Although there are four exams in this week, I will do my endeavor to win the task.