The usual monthly game: a new KDE bugfix release, openSUSE packages and a new Live-CD which as already said looks more and more less like KDE 4.0 but like our openSUSE 11.0 KDE4 desktop (while still being based on openSUSE 10.3):

Qt 4.4 brings lots of goodness. Packages are now entering hardy-backports.

If you want the latest unstable trunk Qt, kdelibs, kdebase and amarok on a regular basis without the hassle of compiling it yourself, project Neon has a Launchpad Personal Package Archive with regular builds.

Lastly, these were left on our doorstep today, free to a good home. Cuteness.

From the cross-blogging department, Qt 4.4 has been released and is entering Factory for openSUSE 11.0 with packages for older openSUSE releases being available in KDE:Qt44 (this will move sooner or later to KDE:Qt). Dirk Müller thinks that's boring news as "everyone has packages of it" and I should rather mention that he has created packages from Qt 4.5 development snapshot within the KDE:Qt45 Build Service repository.

Time is passing by. Sometimes I'm also amazed that it was more than 5 years ago when I wrote my first KDE application and soon after I joined the Quanta Plus project. And a few months later Quanta Plus become part of the KDE releases, I think with version 3.1.
Probably many of you know that I worked full time on Quanta in the past years, thanks to Eric Laffoon and many other supporters, who made this possible. But things have changed, and I cannot spend all my time anymore on this beloved project. I don't abandon it, just realized that alone it would take just too much time to get a release for KDE 4.x series out in time. Therefore I call for help, I'd like to ask the community, existing developers or users with some C++ knowledge, developers who would like to find a challenging project in the open source world to come, join us. Help to make Quanta4 a reality and make many users happy throughout the world. You don't have to be afraid of the size of the project, one of the goals of Quanta4 is to have a modular code, build up as KDevPlatform (KDevelop) plugins.

There are other projects inside the KDEWebDev module that need help, some even maintainers:

- Kommander: just take a look at www.kde-apps.org and you will be amazed by the number of Kommander scripts uploaded by the users. Help to have a good Kommander for KDE4 as well!
The executor is already ported, but we have lots of new ideas waiting to be implemented.

- KFileReplace: useful search and replace tool, unfortunately without a current maintainer. It works, but needs some love.

- KImageMapEditor: don't let web developers without a KDE image map editor!

Of course our priority would be Quanta Plus and Kommander, but if you are interested in either of the above, just contact us on our developer list.

Well, maybe "The Next Level" is overstating it but I improved the query API a lot. Not only can we now properly handle all sorts of literal comparisons but we can also use plain SPARQL queries. The latter allow some nice stuff like "Recent Files".

The IRC talks series Ubuntu Open Week is under way now in #ubuntu-classroom. Coming up at 20:00UTC is Kubuntu Development - Richard Johnson. See the timetable for a whole week's worth of talks.

XFig is not young. It's not beautiful either. It is still in use though.
Even on Windows, there are people setting up cygwin only to get xfig.
And that is because it has one killer feature.
Export to Postscript/LaTeX in a way that lets latex replace the text in the drawing.
That way the font and text size etc are consistent with the rest of the latex document.
And you can add LaTeX text relatively easy and comfortable to your drawing too.
Usability wise XFig is a killer...
Even though it is possible to work fast with it thanks to keyboard shortcuts and quite advanced functions below the gui.
I wish there was something like this available in a modern graphics application like Krita.
Looks like I will have to learn getting along with XFig...