Randa Meetings sprint: KDE Frameworks Cookbook progress

We groaned and suffered with the up-and-down network, and had to abandon our plan to write and edit the book on Booki at Flossmanuals. So we began to create text files on Kate or Kwrite, but how to share our work?

The best answer seemed to be a git repository, and our success began there. Once created, we consulted again and again with the Frameworks developers in the room across the hall, and brainstormed and wrote, and even created new tools (Mirko). Our repo is here: kde:scratch/garg/book. If you want to see the live code examples, you will need this tool: https://github.com/endocode/snippetextractor .

I'm so happy with what we have so far! The texts are just great, and the code examples will be updated as they are updated in their repositories. So if people planning a booth at a Qt Contributor Conference, for instance, wanted to print up some copies of the book, it will be completely up-to-date. Our goal is committing every part of the book so that it can be auto-fetched for reading as an epub, pdf, text file or printed as a book.

It is a tremendous help to be in the same place. Thank you KDE community for sending me here, all the way from Seattle. Thank you for bringing all the other developers here as well. We are eating well, meeting, coding, writing, walking, drinking coffee and even some Free Beer, and sometimes sleeping too. Mario brings around a huge box of chocolate every night. We're all going to arrive home somewhat tired from working so hard, and somewhat fat from eating so well!

Exciting! Writing another KDE book: Frameworks in Randa

Returning to Randa is always tremendous, no matter what the work is. The house in Randa, Switzerland is so welcoming, so solid, yet modern and comfortable too.

KDE is in the building mode this year. If you think of the software like a house, Frameworks is the foundation and framing. Of course it isn't like a house, since the dwelling we are constructing is made from familiar materials, but remade in a interactive, modular fashion. I'd better stop with the house metaphor before I take it too far, because the rooms (applications) will be familiar, yet updated. And we can't call the Plasma Next "paint", yet the face KDE will be showing the world in our software will be familiar yet completely updated as well.

However, this year will see the foundation for KDE's newest surge ahead in software, from the foundation to the roof, to use the house metaphor one more time. I really cannot wait to get there and start work on our next book, the Framework Recipe book (working title). Of course, travel is expensive, and most of us will come from all over the world. So once again, we're raising funds for the Randa Meetings, which will be the largest so far. The e.V. is a major sponsor, but this is one big gathering. We need community support. Please give generously here:

www.kde.org/fundraisers/randameetings2014/index.php