While reviewing my involvement with KDE in 2008 I realized that 2009 is starting in a similar way: I spent the last week or so making sure we had kdegames translated 100% to pt_BR, much like in the first days of 2008. Of course, not all things are equal. We now have several new games, and the pt_BR translation team is stronger than ever, with huge efforts driven by Boaglio mostly, and epic commit logs by Luiz Fernando Ranghetti. So we are still maintaining 100% for releases, even with several new games available, among them Kapman, bomber, Kblocks and some big ones, like KsirK!
Speaking of KBlocks, this is the first application I wrote from scratch for KDE. It is a nice exercise in using the newer kdegames API and QGV as well, and it is shaping up nicely. It still does not replace everything ksirtet had, but it is more customizable, and hopefully ready for additional expansion. It made its debut in 4.1.
At the beginning of the year I was also contacted by the guys at LTIA, at the state university (UNESP) headquartered at Bauru. They did a wonderful job in KBruch, remodeling the application almost entirely, after attending Akademy. Results are now part of the kdeedu package in KDE 4.2, and I hope this will mark only the beginning of this collaboration.
In Akademy it was great to finally meet Niels Slot, which is keeping the KTurtle app afloat while I am very busy and Cies is doing his world tour. Still we all managed to collaborate a bit and incrementally improve the application: I think the version shipped in 4.2 is better than the one in 4.1, which was better than the one in 4.0, and so on. I think this is the beauty of having a team that can take turns developing the same code, and sharing ideas.
Speaking of Akademy, in 2008 I traveled a lot representing KDE, kdegames and kdeedu. In February I had a presentation at Campus Party Brazil, which ended up putting me in contact with Fausto from the Brazilian Ministry of Education. This contact was reinforced during the first Brazilian KDE Meeting at FISL, which generated several initiatives. I also got interested in the ProInfo effort by MEC, and ended up visiting their team in Brasilia in May. Recently I have not heard much from them directly in the last couple of months, but apparently they have a new release and the project is on track. I will keep you guys posted.
Continuing the trip summary, I went to Akademy to talk about ProInfo, and then also did a talk at Bauru concerning KDE graphics and designers. To close the year we had our first Latin American KDE Forum, at LatinoWare. KDE had a huge presence there, with Helio Castro, Boaglio, Frederico, Tomaz, Sandro, Cristiano, Roberto and Alvaro. We are looking forward for the second edition! Huge thanks to the organizers for sponsoring the travel and accommodations for all involved.
Speaking of sponsorship, I also want to thank the KDE e.V., which sponsored partially my Akademy air ticket. For the oher trips I took during 2008 I was able to fund my expenses, but without their help I would not be able to be there. They will also help me go to Camp KDE, where I will co-host a talk slot with Marcus Hanwell. We will try to step in Eugene’s shoes and cover KDE Games and Edu, mixing Avogadro, graphics, community and development in a 1 hour slot. Let us see
Development-wise I did not do so much this year, other than KBlocks. I helped polishing a lot of games and kturtle for 4.1 and now in the final 4.2 sprint, and even managed to do some simple artwork for kapman at the end. I hope I will have more time in 2009 to continue working on the project. The 4.2 release is really inspiring, I am using it as my main desktop for a while now and all of the rough edges have been trimmed significantly.
So, to finish this long post, I hope to see some of you guys and girls tomorrow in Negril. After all…