Schedules/KDE4/4.0 Announcements/KDE4/4.0 Final

From KDE TechBase

Aggregation of things which need going through to write the final announcement.

Previous announcements:

  • dot articles
  • Possibility to switch languages on the fly, thus alowing to fallback on an other one than english when a bit of translation is missing. Usefull for people who speack many languages but not english, or just prefer for instance fallback on german from deutch. Seen on Montel's blog in french here : https://www.aegiap.eu/kdeblog/index.php/fonctionnalite-de-kde4/
  • Integration of Kross into kdelibs,
  • SuperKaramba got ported, extended, supports Ruby and JavaScript too now, got connected with Plasma, ...

Development Related Topics


In order to show how much work has already gone into the KDE 4 series, specifically the KDE 4.0 release , list the "pillars of KDE" as well as a short description and a screenshot: Plasma, Oxygen, Phonon,Solid, Kross, Decibel,Sonnet,...

As an example, feature a couple of applications that make use of these features (Amarok, Koffice, Desktop)

In the release announcement the following questions need to be answered so that haters can't bash KDE without reason:

  • 1. Why has the development of KDE 4 taken so long? (Difference between 4 & 4.0; QT4,...)
  • 2. KDE 4 was supposed to be such a big leap forward, how come feature X is not implemented, although it was hyped so much before? (Difference 4 & 4.0, the development of the KDE 4 series is done when KDE 5.0 is released)
  • 3. Pillars of KDE sounds fancy, but should I as a user care?
  • 4. KDE 4.0 looks great, but what's in it for me as a developer?

End User Exciting Extras (the "Kool" in KDE :-)

Neat stuff in addition to the KDE4 Pillars (note this list is written by an end user, not a developer so my apologies if I mis-state a feature)

  • composition integrated with kwin
  • desktop animations
  • quicker response time (with qt4)
  • usability improvements (bigger buttons..?)
  • Cleaner look - new default icons & theme - Oxygen, SVG icons)
  • plasma "zoom" feature
  • plasma applets exist on toolbars OR desktop
  • "kickoff" style application launcher
  • improved "get hot new stuff" integration
  • Others... ? (please add)

There are probably 2 dozen more, but this is what comes to mind right now.