I haven’t updated this topic since September, but I’m very excited about the progress so far.  You may remember that one develope, David Boddie, had done some work, with the result that I could build .png files to visualise my patterns within Dolphin, and that we were hoping that the other developer who had shown interest, Purple-Bobby, would join us.  That’s exactly what happened.  David and Robert Forsyth, a.k.a.Purple-Bobby, attacked the problem from different angles, which proved to be very informative, as they could feed on each other’s ideas.

I originally bemoaned the fact that my patterns, in the format .jef, could not be visualised without running Windows.  Some of you may have seen Linus Torvalds’ blog http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/01/embroidery-gaah.html on much the same subject.  David gave me .png, and Robert gave me .eps files to be used in the same way.  Neither developer can spare huge amounts of time for this project, but although much progress is incremental, sudden leaps forward happen.  It’s this latest leap forward that excites me.

First – an apology to the KTurtle team.  We have borrowed your icon.  This is, of course, temporary, but it reminded us of a X-Stitch pattern, so was the best available until we make our own.

So this is a representation of the pattern held in the .jef file.  It’s not so easy to see in a small image, but the pattern is contained on a white background, which denotes the actual extent of stitching, while the yellow border surrounding it denotes the size of the hoop to be used.  The application already can gather a great deal of information about the pattern.  One of the considerations to follow this is whether some of that information could be included alongside the actual preview.  We have to wait to see the practicalities of that.  Meanwhile, take a look at how much information we can already gather:

[anne@anne-laptop JEFPreview]$
./JEFPreview LydgateDesign/ArtNouveau/ArtNouveauPeonies348868.jef
JEF file: LydgateDesign/ArtNouveau/ArtNouveauPeonies348868.jef
Date/time:                                                                     
Thread count: 31                                                               
Stitch count: 56297 between 86 and 141 minutes                                 
Hoop: B 140.0mm x 200.0mm                                                      
Pattern: 123.2mm x 164.4mm                                                     
Threads Used:                                                                  
 1: 219 Olive Green 14.997m                                                   
 2: 213 Beige 14.748m                                                         
 3: 257 Cocoa Brown 21.986m                                                   
 4: 219 Olive Green 1.572m                                                    
 5: 214 Brown 9.322m                                                          
 6: 219 Olive Green 1.304m                                                    
 7: 215 Wine Red 3.264m                                                       
 8: 244 Cardinal Red 5.764m                                                   
 ......
 25: 215 Wine Red 0.594m
 26: 234 Coral 3.267m
 27: 244 Cardinal Red 0.254m
 28: 239 Sunflower 0.203m
 29: 270 Mustard 0.713m
 30: 234 Coral 1.319m
 31: 244 Cardinal Red 0.503m

So we know the number of thread changes, the number of stitches, and approximate time to stitch out.  This is always an under-estimation, because it can’t allow for how much time it takes to thread your needle another 30 times!  You’ll see that already there is a big spread in the estimation – the machine can work at different speeds, depending on the type of materials in use.  Then we have the hoop size and the actual pattern size – corresponding to the yellow and white rectangles in the preview.  Finally you have the thread identification number, name, and amount required for each colour change.

This is an impressive amount of information.  Most of it, if not all, can be obtained from the supplied Windows software, but not all in one place.  You have to access different modules of the software to find some of the information – most inconvenient.  As JEPreview stands it provides 98% of what I need.  I can then simply copy the .jef onto the CF card (the latest version of the machine has USB),  insert the card into the machine and stitch.  Of course, if I want to edit the file, change colours or move elements around, I am, for the moment still dependent on the Windows software.  Maybe one day that will be possible too.

New Year is traditionally the time when people re-assess their priorities, and all too often have to make decisions that may not be too comfortable.  So it is with CWG members.  Jucato (Juan Carlos de Torres) has struggled for some time to keep up with his commitments, and has finally and reluctantly decided that he must leave the CWG.  Martin Fitzpatrick (mfitzp), too, has found it progressively more difficult to reconcile the demands on his time, and has also decided that he must step down.  We thank both of them for the time they have given, and wish them both every success in their undertakings.  In their place we have two new members, Ingo Malchow and Jeff Mitchell.

Ingo is best known for his involvement in forum.kde.org, but is now heavily involved in all matters kde-www. The up-coming new websites have been taking much of his time recently, and he is also committed to helping advance significant improvements to userbase.kde.org.  Jeff, on the other hand, has most recently been visible in organizing Camp-KDE, where many of you will meet him in a few days’ time.  He is also deeply involved in many aspects of Amarok development and promotion.  Ingo and Jeff are both known to be good, sensitive, discrete listeners – an attribute that we consider to be absolutely essential.  Lydia, Richard and I, the remaining CWG members, are confident that they will be valuable members of the team.

I’ll end by reminding you of our contact details.  Emails can be sent to community-wg@kde.org, and messages to individual members of the CWG are acceptable.  If you use IRC, it could be useful to include your nick in the message, so that we can catch you on-line if necessary.

The Charter of the CWG is at http://ev.kde.org/workinggroups/cwg.php and the Code of Conduct can be found at http://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct

A wiki is supposed to be an easy place for all to contribute to documentation, but when we held an IRC meeting about UserBase, back in October, it was clear that not everyone found the wikis welcoming or comfortable.  We’ve started several initiatives to solve, or at least alleviate, some of the problems.

Getting Started

First, we have made sure that ‘Help’ in the navigation panel  points to http://userbase.kde.org/Help:Contents – where general guidance is found.  Then, right at the bottom of the page is a Category link.  Clicking on that takes you to a page that lists other pages that you might find helpful – some to help you quickly find what you need, and others to help you get started contributing.  At the moment the English pages are, I believe, fully represented.  Currently you will see some translated pages listed there, but work is in hand to improve this, giving languages their own Category links.  Watch this space!

Getting Help

So – you’ve found your way around a bit, and know roughly what you want to say, but you’re still finding the whole thing a bit daunting.  Well, the first thing is to remember that you are not working in a vacuum.  Sign on to #kde-www on irc.freenode.org and there will always be someone around to help.  Even better – starting next weekend we have a Klassroom course on contributing to UserBase.  Sign on at http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=84864.

Tell me about the course?

The aim is quite simple – to make you familiar and comfortable with the tools of mediawiki editing and the layout of a typical UserBase page.  This course is for you if

• You are a user without development skills and want to make your contribution by helping others to enjoy KDE software
• An application that you use frequently has little, or outdated, documentation on userbase, and you know you could help people get more out of it.
• You are a developer, and your application is under-represented, or not represented on UserBase.
• You are a developer and have documentation elsewhere but want an easier place to work with it.

You will work on a UserBase page, asking questions on a dedicated forum thread.  You will see questions asked and answers received by other students.  You will do the work at times when it suits you.  Help pages have been prepared to give you all the tools you are likely to need.  In fact, the aim is to make it as un-threatening as possible.

Sign up

This week is sign-up time.  We look forward to seeing you on http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=84864 or come along to #kde-www to ask questions.