Gregory Haynes' Weblog - KDE

Kobby Beta 5

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:43:47 -0400

A new beta release for Kobby has just been tagged and uploaded. This beta version works with libinfinity 0.4, and has several bug fixes and UI improvements.

Screenshot:

Probably the most notable change (aside from using the newer libinfinity version) is the use of DockWidgets for the surrounding toolboxes, allowing a more customizable UI. Theres also a couple bugfixes relating to text insertion / removal which I think has now reached a 'stable' state.

If all goes according to plan, in the next several weeks support for document uploading will be added and then the RC phase can begin (yay!).

Enjoy!

Kobby Beta 4

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:00:42 -0500

The fourth (and hopefully final) beta release for Kobby and Libqinfinity is now available on http://kobby.greghaynes.net. This release fixes one major bug affecting editor synchronization, and has some much wanted UI improvements.

Probably my favourite new feature is the setup assistant:

Although this assistant was probably one of the most trivial additions (thanks to the API awesomeness in kdelibs) it works wonders for getting users setup properly.

Along with the new features, Kobby has moved off of github and on to http://gitorious.org/kobby and http://bugs.kde.org, so update your bookmarks.

Kollaborative Editing in (K)Ubuntu

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:53:28 -0500

In the (somewhat) recent release of Karmic (Ubuntu 9.10), Kobby Beta 3 is available to all users via apt (Horray!). For those who do not know about Kobby, it is a collaborative editor built using libinfinity, allowing it to be protocol compatible with the GTK based Gobby editor.

For those who do know about Kobby you may have noticed the lack of development progress in the past couple months. This is a result of my college workload being above normal for the past semester. With the end of year approaching and a new semester I would really like to try and give collaborative editing the push into the public spotlight I think it needs. A 1.0 release of the editor would help this greatly, but before this can happen the project is in need of some brave crash-testers. Beta releases of Koby have been available for several months, but little more than a handful of bugs have been found since then. This means there must be a whole lot of bugs still waiting to be found so please - break Kobby and tell us how you did it! Hopefully KDE land can fill the bug queue enough to keep me busy over the new year holidays coming up.

If you're looking to get up and running quickly, I have created a public server you can use at infinote.greghaynes.net.

Kobby Beta 3

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:11:00 -0400

The third and final beta for Kobby is now available for download, along with libqinfinity. This version got a major facelift (as shown in the screenshot) which will hopefully make it much more attractive to first time users. There were also several build system related bugs which popped up after the previous beta that have now been squashed. Also, joining a document with an already used username (which i'm sure is common among testers) doesn't cause the end of the world.

Screenshot:

Kobby is definately in need of some usability improvements before the 1.0 release, so if there are any suggestions (as always) don't hesitate to let them be known (kobby@groups.google.com).

Enjoy!

Kobby Beta 2

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:04:30 -0400

Version 1.0 Beta 2 of Kobby and Libqinfinity are now available. This beta features several build system fixes, among other things, which I hope will encourage more people to test the application. Please don't hesitate to voice your opinion on the mailing list or by filing a bug report.

Aside from build system fixes, this beta uses the recently released Libinfinity 0.3 and is more stable than the previous release.

Enjoy!

P.S: I was also able to get the editor functioning in OS X (portability rocks!), but I'll save that for a later post.

Kobby Beta 1

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:29:58 -0400

About a year ago I began working on a collaborative text editor for KDE during GSoC 2008. Since then, a great deal has changed in the editor and even more has changed it's supporting libraries. Now, just in time for the GSoC 2009 acceptance, I think the editor has finally reached a point where a beta release is in order.

Kobby Version 1.0 Beta 1
http://github.com/greghaynes/kobby/downloads

Libqinfinity Version 1.0 Beta 1
http://github.com/greghaynes/libqinfinity/downloads

Obligatory Screenshot:

There are still a lot of features missing from the editor I would like to have before calling it usable for the general public (undo/redo support and infinote server control), but I am going to save those for a later version as I'm sure there are plenty of bugs to squash for this version.

As with any testing release, your input is greatly appreciated. Don't hesitate to send out an email to kobby AT groups DoT google DoT com or sign up to make modifications to the Kobby or Libqinfinity wiki sites.

Konqueror Del.icio.us Plugin

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:35:55 -0400

Its been a while since I posted about my progress with Kobby, but the editor is definately making headway. I actually managed to get basic editing working again, but ill blog about this another time when I feel the time is appropriate.

Like many people, I am a fan of del.icio.us, but lately I have also started using Konqueror as my web browser of choice. Immediately after making this switch I noticed the lack of a del.icio.us plugin similar to Firefox's, which has caused my bookmaring rates to take a nosedive. Now, after a few days work, all is back to normal and I can bookmark sites for del.icio.us from inside Konqueror using the new (and barely tested) konqueror del.icio.us plugin. Its very simple at the moment (allows only for adding bookmarks), but if youre at all like me this is a huge help.

The Sreenshot:

Enjoy!

Libqinfinity: A portable/lightweight Qt interface to Libinfinity

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:18:08 -0500

For those who do not know, Libinfinity is an extensible collaborative editing library and is the core of the collaborative editor Gobby as well as my recent project to create a KDE counterpart: Kobby. In order to use this library in a C++/Qt environment I created Libinfinitymm and Libqinfinitymm this past summer which wrap Libinfinity's GObjects, and add some code for use with the Qt event system. While these libraries do what they need to, they are far heavier of a dependancy than they probably should be. It would be a nightmare to port them to non *nix platforms in the future due to the use of code generation in Libinfinitymm. As a result, when I began work on updating Libinfinitymm to work with the latest Libinfinity I decided to give writing a pure C++/Qt interface for the Libinfinity a try. So far, things have turned out much better than expected, and I can say with almost absolute certainty that I will be switching Kobby to make use of this new Library in the next couple of days.

I have noticed interest recently from several projects pertaining to implementing Libinfinity in a Qt environment, and I highly suggest anyone considering doing this give Libqinfinity a look. Unlike its predecessor, it has a very simplistic design and does not try to hide access to the Libinfinity interface underneath. It also depends only on Libinfinity and Qt, and uses CMake for building so you should not lose out on portability by chosing to use it. Although it is still being developed, all of the core features which are needed for interacting with an infinote server are complete.

Edit: It's been pointed out to me that the code generation used in Libinfinitymm (and Glibmm) is not a portability issue as I mentioned.

Kobby Inserted It's First Collaborative Text

nospam@example.com (Gregory Haynes) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:40:16 -0500

A commit was just posted to Kobby allowing users to join a note on an Infinote server and insert text. There is still a VERY long way to go before the editor can actually be called 'usable' in any sense, but this is a huge milestone in the editor's development.

Over the past week, A lot of work went into getting Kobby 'over the hump' in a development sense. At the start of the week the editor was capable of browsing Infinote servers, and not much more. After spending a few days digging through the Gobby codebase to figure out some of the session joining quirks of Libinfinity, and writing an awesome testing application for Libinfinitymm, I was able to get basic session joining working (horray!). From there, it wasnt much more work to get very basic text insertion functioning. There is still a whole lot more to be done in this area, and in order for it to function properly I had to embed some GObject code in the Kobby editor itself (yuck).

Even with the long road ahead, expect to see lots of noticable functionality being added to the editor in the coming weeks now that the development focus has moved on to the GUI side of things.

Heres a screenshot as of tonight: