URL: http://dot.kde.org/118
3570401/
From: Jos Poortvliet <>
Dept: sunday-is-the-fun-day
Date: Wednesday 04/Jul/2007,  10:33
aKademy 2007: The Second Day
============================
aKademy 2007 [http://akademy2007.kde.or
g/] continues! Sunday, the
second day of the conference, brought more talks covering a
wide
diversity of topics. Read on for the Sunday aKademy 2007
Report.
Sunday was very busy and interesting, and we regret
that we were
not able to attend and cover all talks. Yet, we reported
some of the
most interesting. Luckily, you will be able to find sheets
and videos
[h
ttp://akademy2007.kde.org/conference/programme.php] of
the talks on
the aKademy 2007 [http://akademy2007.kde.or
g/] website. Lubos Lunak
about Compositing in KWin
Lubos starts by explaining that his talk will comprise
two parts:
first he will cover the 'boring' part, then continue talking
about the
'other' part. Starting with the boring stuff, he explains
how
compositing works and what it is useful for.
Konqi composited over other windows
A. THE 'BORING' PART
Normally, windows are asked by X to paint only the
parts which are
actually visible on-screen. Parts of windows which are
obscured by other
windows or outside the visible screen area are not painted.
In
compositing mode, all windows are always fully painted to an
off-screen
bitmap, and then painted on the screen. The composition
manager can do
something with the windows before they are painted, like add
shadows,
transparancy, rotate them, let them explode or draw them
multiple times.
Also, windows which are not painted for some time can still
be moved
around, without turning into a white blob - the window
contents are
still in the off-screen buffer. Windows also don't need to
repaint all
the time when you move them. Of course, there are
disadvantages - each
window needs to actually be in the off-screen buffer, which
uses video
memory. And the drawing process can be slower as well, even
if all
effects are turned off.
B. THE 'OTHER' PART
So, how to use all this? Technologies like XGL and
AIGLX are used
to do the compositing. From Lubos' point of view, they are
equivalent -
just with different bugs. Lubos started the kwin-composite
project in a
seperate branch, as he expected to de-stabilize KWin
greatly. Things
turned out to be a lot better, and in hindsight, he wouldn't
have needed
the seperate branch. The compositing stuff doesn't effect
the 'normal'
mode of KWin in any significant way.
KDE 3.x already had compositing, based on the (not so
powerful)
XRENDER extension of X.org. With the composite, XGL and
AIGLX
technologies, real compositing is now possible, and several
experiments
are going on in this area - think of Compiz and Beryl. They
mostly focus
on fancy effects, and Lubos decided it was better to add
compositing to
a mature window manager than window manager to a compositor
- hence the
work on KWin. Lubos then goes into some rather technical
details, and
then points out the current status. There is a mostly-stable
API for the
effects, which makes it pretty easy to write plugins - you
often don't
even need to know OpenGL or XRENDER stuff. He shows us a
zoom-in example
created from 50 lines of code. KWin itself is mostly stable,
and there
are some cool plugins, but there is also a lot of work to do
on the
actual look-and-feel. Lubos wants to focus on the usable,
rather than
primarily 'cool', and he needs some help writing useful
plugins. So if
anybody with graphic design skills is willing to give him a
hand, Lubos
would be appreciative!
I. JOSEF SPILLNER, GHNS2 AND GAMES
Josef held a talk about collaborative data sharing and
briefly
touched on games.
Currently, KDE has the GetHotNewStuff
[http://ghns.freedesktop.
org/] framework, which is capable of uploading
and downloading user data. Most applications only use it
for
downloading, though. The framework is missing several needed
features,
so for KDE 4, work has started on a GHNS2. This is being
done in close
co-operation with FreeDesktop.org, though unfortunately
GNOME isn't
particularly active in this specific area of the platform.
Currently, GHNS2 consists of over 3500 lines of code on
the server
side, offering all the necessary infrastructure for handling
uploading
and downloading, metadata (like ratings), and even has a
versioning
system. It is not yet complete, as there are a lot of
additional
functionality requests from application developers, but the
latest SVN
version has already incorporated most ideas, and the
GHNS2-hackers are
looking for more input and comments. Feedback from the
KDE-Edu
[http://edu.kde.org/] and
KDE-games [http://games.kde.org/]
developers
has already proven very valuable, and a lot of work has been
done on
account handling, OpenID integration and security. There are
also
initial proposals for desktop-wide single-sign-on, so we'll
see a lot of
great things in these areas throughout the KDE 4 lifecycle.
Of course, on the client-side, work has been done to
support all
new server-side things, as well as creating an easy-to-use
API and a
flexible configuration system. Josef explains that the needs
of
applications can differ enormously, thus such configuration
elements are
important, as is the simple API.
Currently integrated and (mostly) working are uploading
and
downloading, with some dialogs and buttons already available
to use in
the interfaces of applications. The backend stuff is mostly
ready, but
there is still a lot of work to do in the GUI area. Josef
also tells us
there will be close Plasma integration, and some
Plasma-related work has
already been developed.
He continues to talk about the specifics of the
architecture and
the API. As said before, the API has been carefully designed
to be as
easy as possible, and almost all basic tasks can be done in
just one
line of code, yet the system allows for very fine-grained
control for
those who need it.
Another new feature is the sharing of data between
applications,
made possible by the seperation of GHNS2 and application
configuration.
Josef continues to show us screenshots of several predefined
interfaces,
including cool 'tag clouds', and explains how they developed
a a
'daemon' mode. This allows for web services and Strigi
integration.
According to Josef, the community around GHNS2 is very
active and
innovation is happening at an impressive pace. By closely
collaborating
with the applications which need GHNS, great ideas are
turned into code
quickly. He calls for even more ideas, so everybody who can
potentially
make use of the GHNS2 framework are urged to get into
contact!
Josef uses the last few minutes of his talk to tell us
about the
GGZ system being built by the KDE Games community. Their
idea is to
allow casual online gaming: simple, good-looking and
addictive games,
easy to play online against other people. To consolidate the
protocols
and file formats, they are again working with
FreeDesktop.org to ensure
GNOME apps will be able to interoperate and play with the
KDE apps.
Encouraging multiple implementations will ensure the API's
are sane, and
allow for a lot of progress in a relatively short time. The
foundations
are laid, the big work left to do is on the GUI: creating
widgets for
the new features, and integrating them into the
applications.
Eyecandy for KDE...
II. TOWARDS A SEMANTIC KDE
Tudor Groza, a researcher from the Digital Enterprise
Research
Institute [http://www.deri.ie/],
explained the technical and social
aspects of the Semantic Desktop efforts at the Nepomuk
project. Starting
with the history of semantic research (which started in
1945!), he
explained that technical limitations ensured that the social
desktop has
not yet arrived. But now most basic of the technology is in
place, like
Wiki's, social networks and the World Wide Web, so it's time
to start
integrating these things.
Tudor went into the architectural details of the
semantic desktop,
focusing on the RDF technology and explaining what
ontologies are.
Ontologies are shared conceptualisations, defining concepts,
relations
and properties. RDF is the method of expressing them, and it
is actually
very simple. A RDF statement consists of triplets, each
having a
subject, a predicate and an object. For example, you can
have:
Subject: John
Predicate: Age
Object: "40"
Or:
Subject: John
Predicate: Likes
Object: Mary
The difficult thing, and the reason for more research,
is sharing
this knowledge, a social semantic web. Getting from personal
information
management through distributed information management to a
real social
network is a huge step. We do have the seperate technologies
for this,
like p2p applications, social networking sites, natural
language
processing tools - but we need to combine them. We now have
a Semantic
Desktop, but in time, it will evolve into a Social Semantic
Desktop.
This has the potential to accelerate collaboration,
people can
maintain shared views in a global network, but also create
sub-communities. It will further the sharing of knowledge
and data,
which is crucial in this era of information explosion, but
also a
growing gap between the light of knowledge and the darkness
of
misinterpretation.
The Nepomuk project, funded with 11.5 million euro by
the European
Union, consists of 16 different organizations. These range
from big,
commercial players like IBM, through to universities and
smaller players
like Mandriva - and of course, the KDE project. Their goals
are
defining, standardizing and implementing metadata creation
and sharing.
A. NEPOMUK-KDE
Tudor showed a few mockups and screenshots of what
should be there
and what is, and then delved further into what they are
building for
KDE. The foundation is there now, after the creation of a
shared
metadata storage with standardized ontologies. Work has
begun on basic
integration in some KDE applications and getting the
Nepomuk
technologies into the KDE core libraries. Then tools to
analyze and
search metadata have to be written, and finally work will
begin on
linking data from several sources and sharing the metadata.
B. CONCLUSION
The Nepomuk developers enjoy working with the KDE
community -
according to Tudor, we are a very open group of people. Yet,
introducing
new technology goes slowly, and people can best be convinced
to use it
if it solves current problems, rather than just providing
something
which is part of some distant vision.
On Thursday, a BoF session will be held, talking about
the usage
and implementation of Nepomuk in KDE applications, and
several hackers
expressed interest in attending.
III. OTHER TALKS
There where many other talks, ranging from KDE
platforms talks by
Holger Schröder (Windows), Benjamin Reed (Mac OSX) and
Stefan Teleman
(Solaris), talks about several distributions like Gentoo,
Fedora and
Kubuntu and a lot community talks. You can find sheets and
videos
[h
ttp://akademy2007.kde.org/conference/programme.php] of
the talks on
the aKademy 2007 [http://akademy2007.kde.or
g/] website. Don't forget to
check it out!
IV. AKADEMY AWARDS
At 6 pm, the aKademy Awards ceremony started, presented
by 2 of
last years winners [http://dot.kde.org/115
9194107/], Laurent Montel and
Boudewijn Rempt.
Like Saturday, it was a productive and interesting day,
and the
hackers are looking forward to the rest of aKademy. The
network started
to work around 2 pm, during the keynote by Jim Zemlin
[http://dot.kde.org/118
3385741/]. Immediately, many became connected to
cheers and applause.
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