3 weeks ago, i have received a mail from a contributor named Holger Berger. He send me a patch against dcraw implementation included in libkdcraw, to parallelize demosaicing operations using OpenMP library. After some tests on my dual core computer i have immediately felt the power of parallelized code: it's faster.
We have tried to contact Dave Coffin to include this patch officially in dcraw... without success (no response). Why ? He don't like OpenMp certainly... So we have looked for another way to use this patch.
I am currently working with Andi Clemens to improve some important usability issues in Image Editor and Showfoto.
In April, Risto Saukonpää, the designer (and photographer) who re-designed digikam.org website and digiKam logo (updates coming about those) provided a great mockup and ideas for Showfoto how to speed-up workflow during image editing.
Well, i'm happy to say that work is in progress in KDE3 branch. I have written a new API for editor named Editor Tool and it will be used for all image plugins. The goal is to remove all independent plugin dialogs and have them as embedded plugins on editor window itself. Preview is stacked over canvas and settings placed as a dedicated tab in right sidebar. The API will plug and unplug all tools automaticlally when changing between them.
The digiKam development team is happy to release version 0.9.4. The digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge. Noteworthy features added since the last stable release include auto-gamma and auto-whitebalance support for RAW files in 16bit mode, displaying the number of contained items in the overview for all albums, usability improvements, as usual a lot of bug fixes - see below for a complete list of new features and fixed bugs.
The digiKam development team is happy to release the first beta release for KDE4. The digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge.
After one year of development, porting code to KDE4/Qt4 api, and backporting new features from KDE3 branch, we have decided to make a first try with this beta release.
But take care, it's a BETA code with many of new bugs not yet fixed... To resume:
The digiKam development team is happy to release 0.9.4-rc2. The digiKam tarball can be downloaded from SourceForge.
NEW FEATURES (since 0.9.3):
General : external libsqlite3 dependency removed. sqlite3 source code is now included in digiKam core (see bug #160966). General : English words review in whole GUI by Oliver Dörr. General : Updated internal CImg library to last stable 1.2.8 (released at 2008/04/18). General : New search text filter for all metadata sidebar tabs. General : New dialog to list all RAW camera supported. A search camera model tool is available to easily find a camera from list. General : Creation of tags simplified everywhere. Multiple tags hierarchy can be created at the same time. Tags creation dialog re-designed. General : Color theme scheme are pervasively applied in graphical interfaces, giving digiKam a real pro-look when dark schemes are selected. General : Color theme scheme can be changed from either Editor or LightTable. General : Add capability to display items count in all Album, Date, Tags, and Tags Filter folder views. The number of items contained in virtual or physical albums can be displayed next to its name. If a tree branch is collapsed, parent views sum-up the number of items from all undisplayed children views. Items count is performed in background by digiKam KIO-Slaves. A new option from Setup/Album dialog page can toggle on/off this feature.
As of yesterday, and from svn checkout only, when locating images with the kipi-plugin Geolocator, the altitude information is provided in addition to the lon, lat coordinated. In the KDE4 0.10 version this works also in the tracklist mode where you can show and geolocate several images at the same time.
There is one year, Marcel and me we have started to port digiKam code to Qt4/KDE4. Yes, already one year of work...Tempus fugit...
Helped by Laurent Montel, code have been ported progresivly. This have take a while because digiKam code is huge and API changes are enormous. This is a complex task to do it : porting to new api, make regression tests, fix new bugs, an validate new code... Also, when bugs come from KDE4 or Qt4 shared libs, the puzzle become infernal to solve. Laurent, as KDE core developer, has reported all problems discovered with digiKam port. He have make an important role during this time
Since few weeks ago, the whole web site have been re-designed. The following task have been done:
Gerhard Kulzer has migrated site CMS from Drupal 4.x to 6.x.
All logo, page layouts, and graphisms have been made by Risto Saukonpää.
Gerhard has installed Captcha module to be able to post comments without to use account.
All screenshots have been updated with KDE4 release (incoming digiKam 0.10.0).
New Tour Movies section have been added with video.
Still to do more video demo and screeshots of new KDE4 version of digiKam in action. A new page to describe the new features of digiKam 0.10.0 must be done too.
