A coding sprint is planned to Genoa - Italy by me and Angelo Naselli. The goal of this event is to improve KDE4 digikam and kipi-plugins code.
The event dates are set from 31 october to 2 november. We will hosted by ALID Association which will provide a room with internet connection. The event will be sponsored by KDE-ev.
Peoples who will contribute to this events are:
Marcel Wiesweg (digiKam)
Angelo Naselli (kipi-plugins)
Kåre Särs (kipi-plugins)
Aurélien Gâteau (kipi-plugins)
Vardhman Jain (kipi-plugins)
Colin Guthrie (kipi-plugins)
Andrea Diamantini (kipi-plugins)
Valerio Fuoglio (kipi-plugins)
I you want to meet us during this event, you are welcome. ALID Association is located at Genoa, Via Giovanni Torti, 35. See the map given below:
For a long time, many people asked me to implement a RAW camera image converter to Digital NeGative (DNG). Why should one support DNG under Linux? To improve interoperability with other photo-management programs such as Adobe tools, and to improve Digital Asset Management (DAM), as Gerhard Kulzer discusses in this nice tutorial and in particular in Part 2.
I have already talked about DNG in another ticket. My first viewpoint about DNG SDK from Adobe has been wrong: missing tutorials, weird API documentation, wrong source code licence, etc... But after having found this nice web site from Barry Pearson which provides a huge collection of papers about DNG, I had a second look at the DNG SDK.
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.
