My Road to Learning German

Recently been attempt at learning German, it's been okay so far, I still suck at trying to figure out how to pronounce some works but most of the time it's fine. I still take forever to read it's like 10 seconds a word depending on how long it is. But mainly just running in to issues about trying to figure out the genders of words. I memorised some of the rules so far but I doubt it's really helping. I'm trying to reach intermediate level sometime next year. But I doubt it if I cannot figure out a way to help me memorise the der, die, das on the nouns. :(

Aki's New Shell mockup

I'm back :). Sorry, I have not posted in a long time. Been working on a new shell for Aki and though it's still in development right now. I wanted to show you what I have done so far and to make you drool ;P. This shell is a copy of KDevelop4's sublime but it doesn't use sublime (yes I know I should have used sublime but it had some quirks so I had to write my own). It's written completely from scratched, just borrowed two functions from sublime for rotation of button. :).

Currently there is a few little quirks due to having limitation due to Qt's neglect of the QDockWidget. But I'm currently trying to figure out a way around them. This is just a current sample mock up. As you can see in this video, I borrowed the idea of the tabs at the top of KDevelop4 for the servers. This will give more view of the channels since it won't be a tab in tab and auto hideable docks (Qt doesn't offer this and I don't know why).

I haven't decided if I will just have just tabs for the channels or I will have the option of tabs or channel list in a dock, or just both. Hopefully with this new design it will give a much easier user interface, better performance and easier development with.

If you have suggestions or anything, just leave comment or come in #aki. If no one is in this or not talking just idle and I'll respond when I get back.

KPackageKit woes

I remember recently trying the latest version of Kubuntu simple because I was getting sick of compiling with Gentoo. Well Kubuntu was fine and dandy. But when it came to install software I had to use the new KPackageKit and that was fine, it didn't bother me. What came to bother me was that it's a bloody pain in the arse to mess with.

First of all, when trying to install the latest version of a package. You would come across multiple versions of it. And it's hard to navigate when there is multiple versions of the same package. Because you might accidentally install the older version and what not. So I looked through the interface for an option to show me the latest version. Okay it says show update versions or something like that. Find, I clicked it. But does it show me the latest versions, bloody no.

If you change any option in the drop down list to like show only package not installed to something else. Does it update the list? Bloody no. I have to basically either close the application and do it again with no packages listed or change the other drop down list. This was a few months ago. I just recently tried Fedora 12 out. It has KPackageKit also. So I tried to love KPackageKit again. And it was the same complete mess again. Same exact problems.

So without further ado. I think I'll just go stick with OpenSuse with it's nice install interface application YaST or simple just deal with Gentoo's portage. Because I cannot understand how distros can just go install a bloody buggy application like KPackageKit. I have no time to mess with such tool like that. It's nothing wrong with the distros. The distros are fine. Just KPackageKit. I just want to stab it over and over again.

AkiIRC Python Bindings

AkiIRC has Python bindings now. So if you prefer to use AkiIRC in Python you can do it now. Please remember this is very experimental right now. Though I have not ran in to any issues yet. There might still be some floating around. There are two versions of it. the PyKDE4 and the PyQt4 version. There is an issue, though it is stylistic bug if you want to call it. Where if you are the type to not do from PyKDE4.aki import *. You would need to specify PyKDE4.aki.Aki.Irc when doing the Socket class and other classes. Since it's using the C++ namespace of Aki::Irc.

You can find the tutorials on Aki's Wiki.

C++ version: http://wiki.akiirc.org/Development/Tutorials/HelloWorld
Python version: http://wiki.akiirc.org/Development/Tutorials/HelloWorldPython

Aki Webkit

Webkit has finally been integrated in to Aki. Had to hack some things to get it to work just like it did with the buggy KTextBrowser. Webkit offered more features than KTextBrowser. It is quite fast at what it does. Easily change the elements to update based on the configuration dialog, Javascript support, searching, and in a later release offer theming support as you would find in Colloquy. Sorry for no screenshot as it just looks no different from the other one :P.

Aki has a site now

Aki finally has a website with forum, and wiki. You can access it from http://www.akiirc.org/. The site isn't all that grand looking because I lack the html/graphics knowledge to make it sexy looking ;).

Aki IRC Client v0.0.3 released

Well it's been 4 months since my last release. Yes, really long time due to rewriting the base code to optimise a lot of the client and to add more support for additional features. It's becoming more stable and more feature wise with each release and really happy about it.

Updates:

* KonsoleDock and ChannelMonitor have been added as plugins. Channel Monitor is just as you would see in Quassel to view all the servers and channels as also having the split view to view two channels at once.

* Ctcp support was redesigned as a class to enable and disable what Ctcp modes you want to allow others to able to do. Mainly to help prevent annoyance from some people.

* All the default colours are finally added. So no more grey text everywhere ;)

* Smilies support just like you would see in Kopete, XChat (very limited in there). They use the settings from SystemSettings in KDE4. Next version will have an option to disable/enable it if you don't care for it.

* Channel logging is now added and works great. Not really customisable yet but it's only the beginning of it.

* The main menu bar as been reworked to obey the rules of HIG.

* Message log has been changed from a table view (made it too messy).

* Channel mode bar was added for easy access to changing modes of the channels. Next version will enable/disable it

* Conference mode was added to hide parts, nick changes, etc.. Which is also configurable

* Nick completion was implemented.

* Plugin support has finally been added. Currently there are 4 plugins available be default (KonsoleDock, ChannelMonitor, Browser (not really functional), Amarok Remote Control (control amarok from Aki). Plugin tutorials will be added soon but you can always look at these plugins for help right now.

* Amarok Remote Control is now configurable in the Configuration dialog

* Quick connection dialog is added to quickly join a server.

* Server tabs are now movable and closable.

* When connecting to the server. You are able to see which identity you are using to connect to it. Some more information was added.

And too many bugs have been fixed to list. And there are still bugs out there right now.

Here are some screenshots to help

Here is how to create the split view by right clicking on any tab and selecting Split View.

Here is the look after completing it

Here is dragging and dropping a channel from the bottom view to the top view by clicking the middle mouse button and dragging it to the top view. When the tab has entered the area of the top view it will accept it. You can do the same from top view to the bottom view.

Here are views of the plugins currently available in Aki by default. KonsoleDock, ChannelMonitor and the Amarok Remote Control (in the channel)

Aki's browser with the KonsoleDock and Channel Monitor so you can browse the web and keep an eye on IRC :P. A little ridiculous but I like it ;)

Aki's trunk was moved to Gitorious from KDE's svn. But KDE's svn will still be there with the latest version for translations.

git clone git://gitorious.org/aki/aki.git for Aki

git clone git://gitorious.org/aki/akiirc.git for AkiIRC

Please critism, ideas, patches, etc. are welcome :) Also join #aki on Freenode. I'm always on :)