I think it’s time now to reveal my secret project. Though I didn’t make so much progress, mostly because I was busy with other projects and school.

The idea is to make a KDE module(like kdenetwork or kdeedu) dedicated to emulation. The module will be named KEmul. It offerts kfile plugins, applications and others things to integrate Emulation into the KDE desktop.

Applications planned for now:
-Kamefu (KDE All-Machine Emulator Frontend for UNIX, also a collection manager in his spare time which is the core application of the module.
-Audio plugins for chiptune formats like NSF, SPC, PSF, etc…
-KFile plugins and mimetype for ROM image.

Kamefu Prototype application that list a directory and retrive metainfo from KFile plugin. Note that SNES KFile plugin is not complete.

What is Kamefu ?

The main idea behind Kamefu is to manage a collections of ROMS from various systems. Also to serve as a frontend to differents systems which use differents emulators. Think amaroK but for your ROM collection
Which means that Kamefu will be able to:
-Build a collection manager based on ROM kfile_plugins you have installed on your system.
-Display the collection mostly like amaroK does, allow to filter by various criteria like “Editor”, “Year”, “System” and “Genre”.
-Configure system and his emulator directory into Kamefu.
-Handle list of your favorities (so called playlist in a audio/video application)
-A little application like “kfmclient” that take a rom path in input and launch the required emulator for the system.

And to fulfill this dream I will need developers I have put some information below how to be involved. I don’t have yet a entry in KDE SVN playground since real Kamefu coding haven’t started yet. I have also 3 KFile plugins done(NES, SNES and GBA).

I rediged a early rought draft of Kamefu design here:
http://kemul.sourceforge.net/DESIGN

The devel mailing-list for those interessed in the project:
KEmul-devel mailing list

The IRC channel on Freenode: #kemul

The sourceforge project which is registred since 2004, when I got the idea:

Sourceforge project page.

Tomorrow I’m back to school, at my third year on my “DEC en Informatique de Gestion”(Cegep Diploma in IT). I’m kind glad to back to school to be once again with all my friends making fun.

Man that was such a summer. Ok I lived a geek life. First of all, I got a IT summer job paid 15$CAN/hour I even developped a C++ Qt4 GPL application, which you can found here.
And of course all my KDE development I have done in my spare time. In Kopete mostly in core app, MSN plugin, a bit of work in Jabber plugin, work in NowListening plugin. And lately some janior jobs in libkicker that will become libplasmecore and libplasmaui.

Prevision for Fall: Lots of work at school, in KDE while continuing my current Cegep social life

I wasn’t quite polite. I made my first post published on Planet KDE without making the traditional “who am I post” ;). Sorry about that, so there is it.

So my name is Michaël Larouche (ok that’s was easy to guess :P), I’m 19 year old and I’m living in Sept-Iles(Moisie sector), Quebec, Canada. My nickname on IRC is DarkShock. I’m getting a “DEC” (Collegial Study Diploma) in Computer Science (IT), next I’m planning going to University in Computer Science. I’m been programming various languages since I’m 15 year old. I have made several small projects in C, C++ before moving to C# with a big project(a IRC client). During that time, I have a small Mandrake linux install with KDE of course. My main reason because I wasn’t using Linux full time was because of my winmodem(damn those crap piece of hardware). Yep I’m (still) stuck on dialup because the DSL and Cable provider doesn’t offer their service in the part of my city. Some day I buy a external 56k modem, and I’m using Linux full time since :). I’m using Gentoo Linux AMD64 now btw.

One day in May 2005, I have seen a journal post on Da Linux French Page about Kopete seeking for new developpers. I always wanted to be a part of KDE project and that was my chance :). Before, I have many trial with Qt and KDE in C++. After 3-4 months, I’m now a Kopete developer. I have worked on the global identity stuff. We sync the MSN plugin with MSN 7 features both I and Gregg Edghill(CodingSlave). Also, I hacked on Jabber, plugins and core stuff. See my SVN status at CIA.

The future
What coming next for my involvement in KDE ?

-A “secret” project I’ll talk about it in a next blog post. I have this application idea since 2004. It’s still on prototype stage with 2-3 directory with trys and mockup. It’s related to emulation(gaming), that’s the only thing I can tell for now

-More Kopete development of course Of course the KDE4 porting/rewrite but also planning to hack on libkopete and Jabber plugin.

-Help to KDE apidox, tutorials and book (a promise to ade(Adriaan de Groot) :))

-I’m thinking maybe hack on kdelibs4 on randoms areas like UI, IO, Network, and for sure the new database module(database access is a core part for my “secret” project).

-and other things that I will hack wandering around all KDE

But still I need to juggle time around school, social life and KDE hacking

It seems that the latest fad in blog is thoughts about KDE4(i.e the future of KDE).I want to share my expectations and what I’m planning to work for KDE4.

Less application duplication.
Like other KDE developers, I think there are too much core applications and too similar applications in the “core” distribution.This item resume the need for a universal document viewer(no more KPDF, KDVI, KGhostView), and a only one image viewer which support slideshow.Fortunately, there is a Google Summer of Code that aim to create a universal document viewer.For me, my favorite image viewer is the one in Windows XP. I can easily move between image in a same folder. The only application that I came close to this is the new photo album KParts for Konqueror KDE 3.4, but it’s not as intuitive as the one in Windows XP.

More intregration.
That’s item depends how HAL and D-BUS will be used in the userspace. KDE need to be aware of new hardware change, when I insert a USB mass storage, a camera, etc…Also, I’m thinking about linking RSS feed(blog) to Metacontact in Kopete. There is a RSS feed field in addressbook and Akregator in KDE PIM, so I think it’s possible.

Better user interface.
Better menu, only the needed toolbar button. Less duplication. For Kopete, I’m thinking “hiring” a usability expert to redefine the menus, toolbars, etc.And of course more eye-candy Go Plasma

KDE 4.0 Development book
One think that missing from KDE 3.x series is good and complete development on the architecture, the libraries, the API, etc… Need to read source code of other applications because of lacking documentation decrease productivity. Better documentation will attire more developers. And you know like me that KDE has big potential.

Database access library in kdelibs
This is planned Can someone tell me how many times you see a copy of sqlite3 db in KDE svn ? They are more and more applications that need database access, like amaroK, JuK, Kexi. And for a future project from mine, I’ll need to have a database access so I don’t want to reinvent the wheel.

By the way, sorry for my poor english. My main language is French