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List:       quanta
Subject:    [Quanta] Help the Quanta team go to aKademy!
From:       Eric Laffoon <sequitur () kde ! org>
Date:       2006-07-23 14:49:41
Message-ID: 200607230749.42023.sequitur () kde ! org
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Hi all,
This is important to the future of Quanta. In late September we will be having 
our annual KDE conference this year in Ireland. I have to confirm Jens Herden 
is coming as are other developers, but I'm chiefly responsible for getting 
myself, Andras Mantia and Michal Rudolf there. This means air fare, 
accommodations and expenses. The KDE e.V. helps, but there are always more 
costs. You can contribute here. http://kdewebdev.org/donate.php I have the 
link at the bottom too.

The following is a little information for those of you who are new here and 
also information for the usual crowd on some details you may not be aware of. 
I will structure it so you can find what you're looking for.
* What is aKademy?
* Why does the Quanta team need to be there?
* Who is the Quanta team?
* What new features could come of this?
* Why is Kommander important to Quanta?
* How slow are the developers laptops?
* How much money do we need?

=== What is aKademy?
aKademy is an annual get together of developers. It's great because it puts a 
face on the names and enables us to interact and learn more about how to 
create better software. It's also where we have our annual KDE e.V. meeting, 
which is the steering committee for KDE, which Quanta is a part of. 

=== Why does the Quanta team need to be there?
I need a vacation? ;-) Seriously, my business is insane right now and this is 
two weeks I can almost entirely give needed focus to this project and indulge 
myself to do C++ programming. Apart from my circumstance there are serious 
issues this year. For one we are beginning work on KDE 4. This means a new 
version of tools and libraries and that means we need to be plugged in. We 
can also have input where our needs can be better addressed by those people 
writing software we rely on to bring you Quanta. Even more significant, the 
next major release of Quanta will see us shift to the KDevelop framework. I 
wanted to do this years ago but we weren't ready. The new framework means we 
can plug in functionality from KDevelop with ease. We reduce redundancy 
between projects and get a lot in return. KDevelop in fact is encapsulating 
so that it will also require the same framework, so you won't have anything 
extra in Quanta, but you will be able to configure it by adding or 
subtracting some functionality. Okay, and this is the only time I get to see 
Andras, Michal and Jens face to face and they are great guys to hang out 
with.

=== Who is the Quanta team?
I'm of course insane. ;-) I oversee the project and I come from a diverse 
background which includes several years as a freelance professional web 
developer in the 90s. I run Kitty Hooch (http://kittyhooch.com) now and of 
course use Quanta in my business regularly. Right now I'm in the hideously 
painfully expensive part of a big expansion in my business. Cross your 
fingers.  I sponsor Andras Mantia, who you probably know from email here. 
Andras is a very proficient programmer, a Hungarian living in Romania, and 
all he does is work on Quanta, and occasionally projects for me. Michal 
Rudolf Lives in Poland and does web development and C++ programming. He uses 
Quanta and has coded part of it, but he is the programming lead on Kommander. 
He is sponsored part time to code for us. Jens Herden is a German living in 
beautiful Cambodia. When he has time he helps out with Quanta and he is a 
very gifted C++ coder. Jens gets very passionate about the project and his 
ideas. Like the rest of us he has a great sense of humor. I am truly honored 
to be involved with such great people.

=== What new features could come of this?
We are in the KDE release cycle and KDE 4 is going to take some time. So we 
will be able to add a lot to Quanta. There are some things I want to do, like 
better Javascript support, which should come with KDevelop, and SVN support, 
also in KDevelop. We introduced Team Development, but we haven't finished it. 
We need to make it better with handling interaction and messaging/annotation. 
It's a good start, but we want more. I would like easy emulation modes to 
work with legacy windoze tools. One feature we would like to add is user and 
task personalities to manage interface complexity and file access in a Team. 
This would work for individuals too. I'm hoping to revive the VPL team with 
the new WebCore functionality and along with a truly context sensitive 
interface I'd like to integrate XSLT on the fly visual development and the 
ability to run visual development on segments including information from 
other files. It's even possible we might incorporate PHP debugging to enable 
visual PHP loop editing... 

The really big feature I want to introduce is Object Templates. I estimate 
around 40% of my effort was repetitive drudge work and clean up. The idea 
came to me that if I had objects I could drop on a file or drag out I could 
save time, but they would need to communicate intelligently. So the main file 
would need to have the ability to mediate requests, manage data based on what 
was added or taken out. Say you have a file and you drop a Javascript object 
on it to do a flyover image or text. This object knows it needs a particular 
library in the document head and the document has data on everything in it. 
So if the library is not there it adds it where it should be. If you remove 
your Javascript object it removes the library call. This crude example may be 
only marginally interesting because it opens up questions. Who says what my 
objects are or how they work and how do I get them in there? What do I have 
to learn? That's the beauty of this system. It integrates through templates 
and allows you to define your own. You can start with offered frameworks, but 
the system will incrementally learn from you. If the front loading effort is 
high the adoption will be low. So this simply has you shift from fixing bugs 
to fixing your templates and mediation rules. Over time it can grow to 
whatever level of automation you want. So far so good, but what does it offer 
in terms of interface? Good question! Why is our interface just text or a 
visual page? We deal with sets of layouts and repetitive data all over and we 
have no interface that enables us to visualize and manipulate this in context 
where we can manipulate entire sets of data with one operation. The creation 
of this new interface that finally addresses a visual site design is part of 
this Object Template goal. We need to be together for weeks of intensive 
discussion and coding for this.

=== Why is Kommander important to Quanta?
Many Quanta users don't even know what Kommander is. Take a look at the HTML 
Quick Start dialog. It was done in the early stages of Kommander and is 
nowhere near the present potential. By KDE 4 we plan to have vastly more 
potential in Kommander. Kommander is a visual tool to develop dialogs, but it 
can do much more. It uses DCOP which can communicate with any KDE program and 
perform thousands of operations per second. We will be adding the ability to 
do main window development as well as create or load KParts for plugin 
capability. Right now Michal is working on a database plugin and I have a 
dialog built that will enable you to log in to your database and point and 
click to build SQL statements, then click to insert them into the editor 
window. This is only a start of what is possible. The really cool thing is 
that you can take a Kommander program and email it to a friend because they 
are just light weight XML, and your friend can load it in the editor and 
change it for their needs. This gives you the ability to extend Quanta, 
especially with our Project Event Actions. The Object Templates I mentioned 
above are an example of where I intend to use Kommander extensively. After 
all we will need to offer you settings dialogs for objects and these will 
need to be able to be modified, maybe even on the fly. There will be new 
things being done and you may have a better way to do something. If so you 
can share that with us using KStuff and then every Quanta user in the world 
can use KStuff to click and get your improved version. Kommander is very 
important to Quanta, even if you never design a thing with it.

=== How slow are the developers laptops?
Let me see... Andras has an old Compaq with I think a 500 MHz processor and 
enough RAM to do a little work. He is much slower when he travels. Michal has 
an old IBM Thinkpad that is as strong as a brick an twice as heavy. I don't 
remember the details, but I know it makes Andras look like a speed demon. 
Let's just say it's best not to rely on too much GUI on that notebook. Every 
time you fix a big in C++ you have to compile to test and that can add up to 
a lot of time in a day if you are on a slow system. That can make a big 
difference what we get done. As for me, I have an AMD64 notebook. I'd really 
like to get the guys new notebooks too this year. Even what can be had for 
$700 nowadays is not bad, but 5-10 times faster than what they have. If 
everything goes well with business I'd like to think I could do that... But 
when does everything go as we hope, at least on the timeline we hope? 

=== How much money do we need?
As you can see, too much money coming in is not a possible problem. In fact if 
we had too much I'd look at sponsoring full time developers for VPL, 
flash/SVG and other things. I have to get my final costs on everything. Today 
I have to pay 157.50 Euros for my accommodations and I expect that it will be 
the same for Andras and Michal. That's about $600 above sponsorships this 
month. We will be aided I'm sure by the e.V. but that is money paid back. I 
need to buy plane tickets too ASAP for everybody. I think they will be better 
than last year, but all together probably, hopefully under $2000. If we have 
money that is paid back by KDE e.V. we can look at getting notebooks for the 
guys.

I have to see what I can do to prepare. I'm not making so much money by my 
personal efforts being home right now, but some aspects of my business that 
require me could be generating a lot of money by then. Hopefully I can get 
someone trained to help keep from being so costly. Being self employed means 
I don't get paid vacations... I lose pay to take one... Okay this isn't 
really a vacation because I'm working on Quanta and Kommander, but given what 
my work load has been it will feel like one. ;-)

Many thanks to all those who have supported us in the past and continue to do 
so. If you have not supported us now would be a good time. If you read this 
far you know that your help can make a difference.

http://kdewebdev.org/donate.php
-- 
Eric Laffoon - Quanta+ Team Leader 
http://quanta.kdewebdev.org
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