FLOSS Project Planets

Personal:

As many of you know, I lost my beloved son March 9th. This has hit me really hard, but I am staying strong and holding on to all the wonderful memories I have. He grew up to be an amazing man, devoted christian and wonderful father. He was loved by everyone who knew him and will be truly missed by us all. I have had folks ask me how they can help. He left behind his 7 year old son Mason. Mason was Billy’s world and I would like to make sure Mason is taken care of. I have set up a gofundme for Mason and all proceeds will go to the future care of him.

https://gofund.me/25dbff0c

Work report

Kubuntu:

Bug bashing! I am triaging allthebugs for Plasma which can be seen here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/plasma-5.27/+bug/2053125

I am happy to report many of the remaining bugs have been fixed in the latest bug fix release 5.27.11.

I prepared https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.27.11/ and Rik uploaded to archive, thank you. Unfortunately, this and several other key fixes are stuck in transition do to the time_t64 transition, which you can read about here: https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/64bit-time . It is the biggest transition in Debian/Ubuntu history and it couldn’t come at a worst time. We are aware our ISO installer is currently broken, calamares is one of those things stuck in this transition. There is a workaround in the comments of the bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/calamares/+bug/2054795

Fixed an issue with plasma-welcome.

Found the fix for emojis and Aaron has kindly moved this forward with the fontconfig maintainer. Thanks!

I have received an https://kfocus.org/spec/spec-ir14.html laptop and it is truly a great machine and is now my daily driver. A big thank you to the Kfocus team! I can’t wait to show it off at https://linuxfestnorthwest.org/.

KDE Snaps:

You will see the activity in this ramp back up as the KDEneon Core project is finally a go! I will participate in the project with part time status and get everyone in the Enokia team up to speed with my snap knowledge, help prepare the qt6/kf6 transition, package plasma, and most importantly I will focus on documentation for future contributors.

I have created the ( now split ) qt6 with KDE patchset support and KDE frameworks 6 SDK and runtime snaps. I have made the kde-neon-6 extension and the PR is in: https://github.com/canonical/snapcraft/pull/4698 . Future work on the extension will include multiple versions track support and core24 support.

I have successfully created our first qt6/kf6 snap ark. They will show showing up in the store once all the required bits have been merged and published.

Thank you for stopping by.

~Scarlett

Personal:

As many of you know, I lost my beloved son March 9th. This has hit me really hard, but I am staying strong and holding on to all the wonderful memories I have. He grew up to be an amazing man, devoted christian and wonderful father. He was loved by everyone who knew him and will be truly missed by us all. I have had folks ask me how they can help. He left behind his 7 year old son Mason. Mason was Billy’s world and I would like to make sure Mason is taken care of. I have set up a gofundme for Mason and all proceeds will go to the future care of him.

https://gofund.me/25dbff0c

Work report

Kubuntu:

Bug bashing! I am triaging allthebugs for Plasma which can be seen here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/plasma-5.27/+bug/2053125

I am happy to report many of the remaining bugs have been fixed in the latest bug fix release 5.27.11.

I prepared https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.27.11/ and Rik uploaded to archive, thank you. Unfortunately, this and several other key fixes are stuck in transition do to the time_t64 transition, which you can read about here: https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/64bit-time . It is the biggest transition in Debian/Ubuntu history and it couldn’t come at a worst time. We are aware our ISO installer is currently broken, calamares is one of those things stuck in this transition. There is a workaround in the comments of the bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/calamares/+bug/2054795

Fixed an issue with plasma-welcome.

Found the fix for emojis and Aaron has kindly moved this forward with the fontconfig maintainer. Thanks!

I have received an https://kfocus.org/spec/spec-ir14.html laptop and it is truly a great machine and is now my daily driver. A big thank you to the Kfocus team! I can’t wait to show it off at https://linuxfestnorthwest.org/.

KDE Snaps:

You will see the activity in this ramp back up as the KDEneon Core project is finally a go! I will participate in the project with part time status and get everyone in the Enokia team up to speed with my snap knowledge, help prepare the qt6/kf6 transition, package plasma, and most importantly I will focus on documentation for future contributors.

I have created the ( now split ) qt6 with KDE patchset support and KDE frameworks 6 SDK and runtime snaps. I have made the kde-neon-6 extension and the PR is in: https://github.com/canonical/snapcraft/pull/4698 . Future work on the extension will include multiple versions track support and core24 support.

I have successfully created our first qt6/kf6 snap ark. They will show showing up in the store once all the required bits have been merged and published.

Thank you for stopping by.

~Scarlett

This is to announce coreutils-9.5, a stable release.
See the NEWS below for a summary of changes.

There have been 187 commits by 18 people in the 30 weeks since 9.4.
Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:

  Aearil (1)                      Petr Malat (1)
  Bruno Haible (3)                Pádraig Brady (75)
  Christian Göttsche (1)          Samuel Tardieu (1)
  Collin Funk (4)                 Stephane Chazelas (1)
  Daan De Meyer (1)               Stephen Kitt (1)
  Greg Wooledge (1)               Sylvestre Ledru (3)
  Grisha Levit (2)                Ville Skyttä (1)
  Michel Lind (1)                 dann frazier (1)
  Paul Eggert (89)                lvgenggeng (1)

Pádraig [on behalf of the coreutils maintainers]
==================================================================

Here is the GNU coreutils home page:
    https://gnu.org/s/coreutils/

For a summary of changes and contributors, see:
  https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=shortlog;h=v9.5
or run this command from a git-cloned coreutils directory:
  git shortlog v9.4..v9.5

Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.5.tar.gz   (15MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.5.tar.xz   (5.8MB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.5.tar.gz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-9.5.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:

  3285114d93b39e5e4643b0846f570203a5e4c97b  coreutils-9.5.tar.gz
  dnrmoilQ7ELzul98Heed0ngA7o6bhkLaXe21l0oXQeU=  coreutils-9.5.tar.gz
  867fed7ce2ee15c5150a355a5f3a3b50578cf78d  coreutils-9.5.tar.xz
  zTKO3qyS9qZl3p8yPJO3Eq8YWLwuDYjz9xAEaUcKG4o=  coreutils-9.5.tar.xz

Verify the base64 SHA256 checksum with cksum -a sha256 --check
from coreutils-9.2 or OpenBSD's cksum since 2007.

Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify coreutils-9.5.tar.gz.sig

The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:

  pub   rsa4096/0xDF6FD971306037D9 2011-09-23 [SC]
        Key fingerprint = 6C37 DC12 121A 5006 BC1D  B804 DF6F D971 3060 37D9
  uid                   [ultimate] Pádraig Brady <P@draigBrady.com>
  uid                   [ultimate] Pádraig Brady <pixelbeat@gnu.org>

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

  gpg --locate-external-key P@draigBrady.com

  gpg --recv-keys DF6FD971306037D9

  wget -q -O- 'https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=coreutils&download=1' | gpg --import -

As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
keyring:

  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify coreutils-9.5.tar.gz.sig

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.72c.32-cb6fb
  Automake 1.16.5
  Gnulib v0.1-7293-g259829e78b
  Bison 3.8.2

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 9.5 (2024-03-28) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  chmod -R now avoids a race where an attacker may replace a traversed file
  with a symlink, causing chmod to operate on an unintended file.
  [This bug was present in "the beginning".]

  cp, mv, and install no longer issue spurious diagnostics like "failed
  to preserve ownership" when copying to GNU/Linux CIFS file systems.
  They do this by working around some Linux CIFS bugs.

  cp --no-preserve=mode will correctly maintain set-group-ID bits
  for created directories.  Previously on systems that didn't support ACLs,
  cp would have reset the set-group-ID bit on created directories.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]

  join and uniq now support multi-byte characters better.
  For example, 'join -tX' now works even if X is a multi-byte character,
  and both programs now treat multi-byte characters like U+3000
  IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE as blanks if the current locale treats them so.

  numfmt options like --suffix no longer have an arbitrary 127-byte limit.
  [bug introduced with numfmt in coreutils-8.21]

  mktemp with --suffix now better diagnoses templates with too few X's.
  Previously it conflated the insignificant --suffix in the error.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]

  sort again handles thousands grouping characters in single-byte locales
  where the grouping character is greater than CHAR_MAX.  For e.g. signed
  character platforms with a 0xA0 (aka &nbsp) grouping character.
  [bug introduced in coreutils-9.1]

  split --line-bytes with a mixture of very long and short lines
  no longer overwrites the heap (CVE-2024-0684).
  [bug introduced in coreutils-9.2]

  tail no longer mishandles input from files in /proc and /sys file systems,
  on systems with a page size larger than the stdio BUFSIZ.
  [This bug was present in "the beginning".]

  timeout avoids a narrow race condition, where it might kill arbitrary
  processes after a failed process fork.
  [bug introduced with timeout in coreutils-7.0]

  timeout avoids a narrow race condition, where it might fail to
  kill monitored processes immediately after forking them.
  [bug introduced with timeout in coreutils-7.0]

  wc no longer fails to count unprintable characters as parts of words.
  [bug introduced in textutils-2.1]

** Changes in behavior

  base32 and base64 no longer require padding when decoding.
  Previously an error was given for non padded encoded data.

  base32 and base64 have improved detection of corrupted encodings.
  Previously encodings with non zero padding bits were accepted.

  basenc --base16 -d now supports lower case hexadecimal characters.
  Previously an error was given for lower case hex digits.

  cp --no-clobber, and mv -n no longer exit with failure status if
  existing files are encountered in the destination.  Instead they revert
  to the behavior from before v9.2, silently skipping existing files.

  ls --dired now implies long format output without hyperlinks enabled,
  and will take precedence over previously specified formats or hyperlink mode.

  numfmt will accept lowercase 'k' to indicate Kilo or Kibi units on input,
  and uses lowercase 'k' when outputting such units in '--to=si' mode.

  pinky no longer tries to canonicalize the user's login location by default,
  rather requiring the new --lookup option to enable this often slow feature.

  wc no longer ignores encoding errors when counting words.
  Instead, it treats them as non white space.

** New features

  chgrp now accepts the --from=OWNER:GROUP option to restrict changes to files
  with matching current OWNER and/or GROUP, as already supported by chown(1).

  chmod adds support for -h, -H,-L,-P, and --dereference options, providing
  more control over symlink handling.  This supports more secure handling of
  CLI arguments, and is more consistent with chown, and chmod on other systems.

  cp now accepts the --keep-directory-symlink option (like tar), to preserve
  and follow existing symlinks to directories in the destination.

  cp and mv now accept the --update=none-fail option, which is similar
  to the --no-clobber option, except that existing files are diagnosed,
  and the command exits with failure status if existing files.
  The -n,--no-clobber option is best avoided due to platform differences.

  env now accepts the -a,--argv0 option to override the zeroth argument
  of the command being executed.

  mv now accepts an --exchange option, which causes the source and
  destination to be exchanged.  It should be combined with
  --no-target-directory (-T) if the destination is a directory.
  The exchange is atomic if source and destination are on a single
  file system that supports atomic exchange; --exchange is not yet
  supported in other situations.

  od now supports printing IEEE half precision floating point with -t fH,
  or brain 16 bit floating point with -t fB, where supported by the compiler.

  tail now supports following multiple processes, with repeated --pid options.

** Improvements

  cp,mv,install,cat,split now read and write a minimum of 256KiB at a time.
  This was previously 128KiB and increasing to 256KiB was seen to increase
  throughput by 10-20% when reading cached files on modern systems.

  env,kill,timeout now support unnamed signals. kill(1) for example now
  supports sending such signals, and env(1) will list them appropriately.

  SELinux operations in file copy operations are now more efficient,
  avoiding unneeded MCS/MLS label translation.

  sort no longer dynamically links to libcrypto unless -R is used.
  This decreases startup overhead in the typical case.

  wc is now much faster in single-byte locales and somewhat faster in
  multi-byte locales.

Universities and colleges are faced with unique goals, challenges, and opportunities around digital transformation. We often hear from folks who want to reorient their higher education websites around attracting and nurturing potential new students. I recently shared insights on how to accomplish this at the 2023 HighEdWeb Conference in Buffalo, New York, where I co-presented with Winna Tse and Vibeke Silverthorne from OCAD University.

We showcased our collaboration on OCAD U’s Admissions sites—two visually bold, accessible, interactive microsites that we designed to captivate a creative audience and streamline the application process. OCAD U saw a 21% increase in website visits and a 15% increase in applicants within a few weeks of the launch.

In this article, I’ve shared some of our best lessons and findings from the project. Read on to explore six proven ways to reach, engage, and win over prospective students.

 

1. Consider Building a Separate Microsite

According to usability research, students often select a program first before they choose which school to attend. That means it’s really important to show prospective students what programs are available and make program pages easily accessible. Many websites successfully use a program finder on their main website to funnel prospective students to their program of choice. 

But because OCAD U had information architecture issues on its main site, we recommended replacing the old admissions section with two stand-alone microsites targeted at prospective students (one for graduates, one for undergraduates). This solution brought several advantages for OCAD U’s admissions team and the wider university, which we’ll explore below.  

Targeted user experience

By capturing prospective undergraduates on a self-contained microsite, OCAD U can deliver a highly tailored digital experience. Everything from the menu navigation to the visuals are geared towards users who’re considering studying at the university. OCAD U was so happy with this approach that they commissioned a second microsite aimed at prospective postgraduates.

Streamlined updates process

Originally, the admissions team had to ask the marketing team to make content changes. Every department did this, meaning it could take 2-3 weeks for requests to reach the top of the queue. This wasn’t practical for the fast-paced nature of admissions and recruitment.

A stand-alone microsite gives the admissions team greater ownership over their content. They can make changes in a single day, enabling them to publish time-sensitive content such as deadlines reminders.

Because the microsites are built using Drupal, the admissions team has access to a powerful user roles feature for managing editing permissions. This is one of many reasons to use Drupal for higher education websites.

Possibilities for experimentation

OCAD U’s admissions website created an opportunity to experiment with the visual brand and user experience. It offers more freedom and breathing room than the main website due to its size and age. What’s more, the university can learn from the admissions website and apply lessons from its successes to the main website. 

Alternative: Program Finder

A separate microsite was the right choice for OCAD U, but another strategy is using a program finder on both the main and recruitment site to funnel users towards detailed program pages. This approach is particularly effective for institutions with multiple campus websites, as it offers a versatile starting point for program exploration. For OCAD U, the decision to go with a microsite stemmed from a lack of flexibility with the information architecture on their main site, making a microsite the obvious choice. For other institutions, the program finder funnel solution might make more sense.

2. Create Straightforward User Journeys

Because you’re competing for the time and attention of prospective students, it’s all the more important that your website serves up the information they’re looking for quickly and effortlessly. The best way to achieve this is by mapping user journeys and working out how to streamline your site architecture, search experience, and calls to action.

User Journey Mapping

We ran a user journey mapping exercise with OCAD U where we developed user personas and explored the types of interactions they had with the university. This included everything from Googling the institution, to attending an open day, to completing an application form. The process helped us uncover new opportunities to improve their journey, and allowed us to start developing wireframes and mockups.

User Mindsets

Using a less traditional approach, we also explored user mindsets. Our team identified three mindsets that any prospective student might have—whether they’re a high schooler, undergraduate, mature student, or coming from abroad: 

1. “I don’t know what I want to study.”
2. “I want to study art and design, but I don’t know where yet.”
3. “I already know that I want to attend OCAD University.”

Looking into these mindsets with OCAD U helped us shape their site navigation and provide relevant, consistent CTAs. Their Discover section is aimed at the first mindset, the Afford and Visit sections at the second mindset, and the Apply section at the third mindset.

 

We helped OCAD U refine its program selectors and calls to action for a simpler user experience.

 

Want to learn more about the discovery and UX design in higher education projects? Read about our collaboration with York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design in 5 Surprising Findings That’ll Change How You See Discovery.

3. Integrate Storytelling Throughout Your Content

Storytelling creates an emotional connection between users and your brand. The most powerful stories are authentic and value-based, showing target audiences that you care about what they care about. Storytelling isn’t just for your homepage either. Program pages are a common entry point for prospective students, so they need to promote your brand as well as the course details.

As an art, design, and media institution, OCAD U has incredible opportunities to use visual storytelling. We infused a range of student-created art throughout the university’s website. Not only does this elevate the design, it also showcases talent that reflects OCAD U’s reputation, and invites prospective students to imagine their own creative possibilities.

 

“We felt that [Evolving Web’s] aesthetic was very strong, that they could really adapt to our brand. Also, most importantly, was their thoughtful approach to storytelling.”

- Winna Tse, Communications & Projects Specialist, OCAD University 

 

Having worked with dozens of higher education institutions, our team has interviewed many prospective students about what matters to them. We’ve heard repeatedly about the importance of connecting with current students and alumni. Prospective students value hearing about real-life experiences at your university—in fact, it’s often a tipping point in their decision making process. So, don’t isolate student stories and testimonials in a corner of your website. Integrate them on every page to ensure exposure to your most persuasive content. 

 

We reimagined the application of OCAD U’s visual brand to create a striking website design. 
4. Fine-Tune Your Visual Brand

An eye-catching, memorable visual identity sets your university apart from competitors. Above all, it needs to resonate with your target audience. Building a new website is often a good opportunity to refresh your brand—but it’s possible to refine what you already have in a way that targets prospective students. 

Identify where your brand allows for flexibility, and experiment with different flavours of existing design elements. OCAD U wanted a bolder look and feel that reflects their reputation and meets the expectations of discerning young creatives. So we found ways to use their visual identity in new ways, bringing out more daring and fun aspects of the brand.

Our design team developed ‘Windows into OCAD U’, a concept that invites students to explore creative possibilities, escape the boring, and reimagine a more fantastical reality. We also used the distinctive architecture of OCAD U’s buildings as inspiration for textures and shapes, including tiled patterns, concentric squares, and boldly coloured buttons.

We communicated our vision to the client using stylescapes, a valuable tool for enhancing collaboration on art direction.

 

Stylescapes helped us communicate design ideas and get early alignment on the visual direction of the project. 
5. Help Prospective Students Apply with Confidence

If you want to increase applications from prospective students, it’s essential to make the admissions process as straightforward and welcoming as possible. A useful exercise is to identify major touchpoints in the user’s journey and find ways to provide better support and value around it. 

For OCAD U, this touchpoint was when prospective students prepared and submitted their portfolio. For other universities, it might be something like attending an open day or having an interview with faculty.

We helped OCAD U develop a dedicated page for portfolio preparation. It offers step-by-step guidance, information about requirements, creative prompts and tips, answers to common questions, and access to portfolio clinics. By providing these valuable resources, OCAD U saw an increase not only in the number of applications but also in their quality.

 

Portfolio submission is a unique aspect of OCAD U’s admissions process that required special attention.
6. Prioritize Accessibility and Inclusion 

Prospective students come from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds, and include people with disabilities and support needs. Higher education institutions need to prioritize accessibility and inclusion when building a website, ensuring that everyone has equal access to content and feels welcomed and represented.

Everything our team builds complies with WCAG 2.0 AA and relevant federal, provincial, state, or local requirements. But we encourage and guide clients to go beyond these standards with a human-centric, personalized approach to web accessibility. This can empower your organization to reach even more people and offer ever-better experiences.

It’s also important to represent your institution’s diversity into your site’s content strategy. Select website imagery that represents people of various cultures, races, ethnicities, religions, and so on that represent that diversity you would find on campus. Diversity can also mean highlighting different paths to success, such as showcasing someone who is a mature student that went to OCAD to start a second career. Prioritize plain language to help non-native speakers and users with cognitive disabilities to find the right information. Consider whether you need a multilingual website to cater to audiences such as international students.

Finally, explore ways to support prospective students from historically underserved communities. As a North American university, OCAD U has a dedicated section for indigenous applicants that provides tailored information about relevant resources, contacts, programs, scholarships and bursaries.

Meet Evolving Web, Your Digital Agency Partner

Evolving Web works with higher education organizations across North America—including Princeton University, McGill University, Georgia Tech, the University of Washington, OCAD University, Queen’s University, York University, and the University of California Berkeley.

Our experience has allowed us to develop best practices and tried-and-tested solutions that help us deliver exceptional value to our higher education clients. We create dynamic, user-centric websites to help you connect with target audiences and cultivate valuable relationships. Our team prioritizes your digital independence, giving you the tools you need to grow and evolve your digital presence.

Learn about our work with higher education clients and see what we can do for you. 

+ more awesome articles by Evolving Web

The presentation   Below is our summary of Dries' presentation. Drupal’s past Dries started Drupal when he was about 20 years old and studying at university. He built the system for himself and then open sourced it.  One key turning point early on was in 2002, when Dries reached out to Jeremy Andrews, the person behind KernelTrap, a kernel development blog. At the time, many websites fell victim to something called the Slashdot effect. Slashdot was so popular at the time that if your site was mentioned on Slashdot you’d get a massive spike of traffic and websites would often crash. Dries wrote to Jeremy and said that if he migrated his site Drupal it would never crash. He even offered Jeremy root access via email.

Efficient Token Usage in Drupal: Practical Tips and Examples Editor Thu, 03/28/2024 - 12:54

If you want hassle-free and efficient content generation and management, Drupal is the right choice. With several modules and tokens, it will help you create a dynamic and versatile data environment to cater to your audience’s needs and search engine guidelines. Lamborghini, Doctors Without Borders, and Nokia illustrate how applicable and productive this system is.
You must discover the solution’s features in more detail to get started and advance your content generation strategy. It will come in handy to lead your Drupal scenario from scratch to scratch without difficulty. Stay tuned to find out more about token implementation scenarios at your disposal. Mind the gap!

In this episode, we attacked the issue list. JourneyInbox is live and serving user and now it’s time to start polishing and building the full set of features. There are so many easy targets to fix that we focused on a few clear improvements to user experience and the user interface.

KEcoLab

Sustainability has been one of three goals at KDE over the past 2 years. One aspect of this goal is to measure the energy consumption of KDE software. To do this, it is necessary to access the lab in KDAB, Berlin, which can now be done remotely using KEcoLab.

Figure : Testing and debugging Okular scripts on a Virtual Machine host (image from Aakarsh MJ published under a CC-BY-4.0 license).

KEcoLab (remote-eco-lab) is a KDE Eco project aimed at enabling remote energy consumption measurements for your software using Gitlab's CI/CD pipeline. By automating the measurement process and integrating with the OSCAR statistics tool, developers can make informed decisions about improving code efficiency and obtain software eco-certification with the Blue Angel. This project came to being as part of GSoC 2023 under the mentorship of Volker Krause, Benson Muite, Nicolas Fella and Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss. Karanjot Singh is its original developer.

One of the main aims of Season of KDE 2024 is to integrate KEcoLab into Okular's pipeline. Okular is KDE's popular multi-platform PDF reader and universal document viewer. In 2022, Okular was awarded the Blue Angel ecolabel, the first ever eco-certified computer program. You can learn more about KDE Eco here and the process of measuring energy consumption in the KDE Eco handbook.

Deliverables Of The SoK24 Project

1. Integrate KEcoLab into Okular's pipeline.
2. Integrate KEcoLab's pipeline with E2E tests or integration tests.
3. Usage scenario scripts with KdeEcoTest.
4. Bug squashing.

I have been working together with Sarthak Negi for this Season of KDE.

Integrating KEcoLab Into Okular's Pipeline

As mentioned, the main aim for this mentorship is to integrate KEcoLab into Okular's pipeline. Okular, being a Blue Angel certified project, will benefit from having its energy consumption measured either for every release automatically or for specific merge requests via a manual trigger. In this way it is possible to track Okular's energy consumption and make necessary changes to adhere to Blue Angel specifications.

I have had discussions with the Okular team regarding the integration of KEcoLab into their pipeline. This was necessary to make sure that the new addition won't change their existing workflow rules, i.e., there would be no manual work required on their end to trigger the pipeline on every release. At the same time, we wanted to make sure it is possible to manually trigger the measurement process on a case-by-case basis. I'll go into further details below. The email exchange can be accessed here.

I have been testing the pipeline on a test-repo for the past few weeks, which can be accessed here.

The pipeline was tested for the following contexts:

1. Triggering KEcoLab's pipeline for energy measurement:

   a) using Web UI.

   b) pushing the tag through Git.

2. Pipeline runs on triggering it manually through the Web UI.

3. Pipeline does not run on merge request.

4. Prevent pipeline from running on every commit push.

The above was achieved by making use of a combination of GitLab's workflow: rules and GitLab's predefined CI/CD variables. There were several difficulties I faced during this time, notably preventing the pipeline from running on every release and rather restricting it to only major releases. During one of the monthly meetings, however, Volker thought this would not be necessary since there is only one release per month, i.e, for the time being it is not important to cherry pick the release candidates. As it is now, the measurement process will therefore be triggered on every release of Okular. This may change at a later date, and so I will document here some thoughts I had on how to this.

I initially thought about making use of a global variable which would be updated in the .pre stage depending on a comparison between the last and second-to-last tag to determine whether it's a major or minor release. This would be achieved by making use of a regex rule to identify the difference. The way this would work is by adding a rule under every job to check for the value of the variable. However, since the value wasn't persistent, I took a different approach by making use of artefacts which would contain the value required to determine if it's a major or a minor release version. When a measurement should be triggered, and when not, looks something like this:

• v1.8.3 -> v2.0.8 # Pipeline should run

• v2.2.3 -> v2.6.8 # Pipeline should not run

The code looked something like this:

check-major-version: stage: .pre image: alpine tags: - EcoLabWorker before_script: - echo "Checking for major version" script: - export PREV_COMMIT_TAG=$(git tag --sort=-v:refname | grep -A1 '$COMMIT_TAG' | tail -n 1) - export MAJOR_VERSION_CURRENT=$(echo $COMMIT_TAG | sed 's/v\([0-9]*\).*/\1/') - export MAJOR_VERSION_PREVIOUS=$(echo $PREV_COMMIT_TAG | sed 's/v\([0-9]*\).*/\1/') - if [ "$MAJOR_VERSION_CURRENT" == "$MAJOR_VERSION_PREVIOUS" ]; then IS_MAJOR_RELEASE="false" > release_info.env; fi artifacts: reports: dotenv: release_info.env

Once I started testing it, I realised that the value of the updated global variable did not persist across jobs. Therefore, using the variable to determine whether the job should run or not was not viable. Additionally, I realized that this approach would still cause the pipeline to run and in any case it would result in a failed pipeline if all the jobs did not run. Since we decided the measurement process can run on every release, I abandoned trying to implement this.

Currently the pipeline is being tested on my fork of Okular here. It's almost ready, we just need to add the test scripts under 'remote-eco-lab/scripts/test-scripts/org.kde.okular' for which this patch has been made.

Figure : Testing Okular in KEcolab (image from Aakarsh MJ published under a CC-BY-4.0 license). Bug Squashing

This includes the following:

Updating The Test Script To Comply With The Latest Kate Version (Issue !23)

Kate was one of the first application that KEcoLab had test scripts for. Even though we made use of as many shortcuts as possible, we were still using tabs to navigate around the user interface. This caused a problem: the previous script was made on Kate v21, and with Kate v24 being released the script needed to be updated accordingly. Also, testing the script across different distros highlighted a shortcoming of a bash-script approach: on Ubuntu the file was not being saved as intended, whereas on Fedora the file was being saved. In other words, small differences had potentially significant impacts which could make the script fail. In fact, it is one of the more fragile aspects of this approach to usage scenario scripting, which a semantics-based tool like Selenium doesn't have.

Figure : Testing Kate scripts on a Virtual Machine host (image from Aakarsh MJ published under a CC-BY-4.0 license). Helping Debug A Test Script On The Remote Lab PC (Issue !29)

There is a usage scenario script that is failing on the System Under Test. Worse yet, we do not know why and currently have no way to visually monitor the issue. This is a real pain point, mainly because we are unsure what may be the underlying problem. The script simulating user behavior doesn't seem to exit after completion, resulting in the lab being stuck in an endless loop. It is only exited when the GitLab runner times out. Since we don't yet have visual output of what is happening on the System Under Test, we are setting up a VNC to monitor what is happening. If anyone is interested in helping debug this, take a look at the remote eco lab job here. Also, check out the discussion at this issue regarding the visual monitoring of what is happening on the remote lab PC.

Figure : Testing scripts running remotely on the System Under Test in the measurement lab at KDAB, Berlin (image from Aakarsh MJ published under a CC-BY-4.0 license). Test Out And Update The SUS Scripts For Okular In The FEEP Repository (Issue !52)

This mainly involved testing the script and cross-checking everything works. In this case, the shortcuts defined at the very top weren't consistent with the shortcuts used by the script.

Looking To The Future Of KEcoLab

1. Usage scenario scripts with KdeEcoTest. Since KdeEcoTest now supports Wayland thanks to Athul Raj and runs on Windows thanks to Amartya Chakraborty, we can utilize this tool to further enhance the remote lab. The current bash scripts are based on xdotool, which only supports X11 and not Wayland and does not run on Windows. With Plasma 6 now supporting Wayland by default, and many KDE apps being available on Windows, including Okular, this seems to be the right next step for KEcoLab tooling.

2. Setting up a VNC to monitor scripts visually. The problems faced by us have put further emphasis on the need to be able to monitor what is or is not happening on the remote System Under Test. This was also previously considered. From Joseph's notes, based on work done by Nicolas Fella during one of the lab setup sprints, the following approach can be utilized:

# VNC/remote desktop access ## Server Install - apt install tigervnc-standalone-server - echo "kwin_x11 &" >> .vnc/xstartup - echo "konsole" >> .vnc/xstartup ## Start Server - tigervncserver -geometry 1920x1080 ## Client create SSH tunnel: - ssh -N -L 5900:localhost:5901 kde@INSERT_IP_HERE In VNC client, e.g. KRDC: - connect to localhost:5900 It will start a single Konsole window. Use this to start other stuff

If this doesn't work, we may want to reference x11vnc. If anyone has successfully setup VNC before, feel free to reach out as we would appreciate your help!

Interested in Contributing?

If you are interested in contributing to KEcoLab, you can join the matrix channels Energy Measurement Lab and KDE Energy Efficiency and introduce yourself. KEcoLab is hosted here. Thank you to Karan and Joseph as well as the whole KDE e.V. and the wonderful KDE community for helping out with this project. You can also reach out to me via email or on Matrix

We’re delighted to announce the first maintenance release of the 24.02 series, tackling regressions, bugs, and crashes. A big thank you to everyone who reported issues during this transition – keep up the great work!

Changelog

• Fix crash on group cut. Commit.
• Fix possible startup crash. Commit.
• Fix typo. Commit.
• Fix appstream release notes formatting. Commit.
• Add release notes to AppData. Commit.
• Fix: some sequence properties incorrectly saved, like subtitles list, timeline zone. Commit. Fixes bug #483516.
• Fix: Windows crash clicking fullscreen button. Commit. Fixes bug #483441.
• Fix: cannot revert letter spacing to 0 in title clips. Commit. Fixes bug #483710.
• Fix: font corruption on Qt6/Wayland. Commit.
• Fix: Fix pan timeline with middle mouse button. Commit. Fixes bug #483244.
• Minor cleanup. Commit.
• When file fails to open, display MLT’s warning to help debugging. Commit.
• Fix crash trying to recover a backup after opening a corrupted file. Commit.
• Fix multiple subtitles issues: several tracks not correctly saved, sequence copy not suplicating subs, crash on adding new subtitle track. Commit. Fixes bug #482434.
• Update file org.kde.kdenlive.appdata.xml. Commit.
• Update file org.kde.kdenlive.appdata.xml. Commit.
• Add .desktop file. Commit.
• Updated icons and appdata info for Flathub. Commit.
• Org.kde.kdenlive.appdata: Add developer_name. Commit.
• Org.kde.kdenlive.appdata.xml use https://bugs.kde.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=kdenlive. Commit.
• Fix bin thumbnails for missing clips have an incorrect aspect ratio. Commit.
• On sequence change, recursively update each sequence that embedded it. Commit. Fixes bug #482949.
• When using multiple timeline sequences, fix change in a sequence resulting in effect loss if the tab was not changed. Commit.
• Fix crash on spacer tool with grouped subtitle. Commit. Fixes bug #482510.
• Fix crash moving single item in a group. Commit.
• Block Qt5 MLT plugins in thumbnailer when building with Qt6. Commit. Fixes bug #482335.
• [CD] Disable Qt5 jobs. Commit.
• Don’t allow autosave when the document is closing. Commit.
• Fix deleting single item in a group not working. Commit.
• Fix moving a single item in a group with alt not always working and breaks on undo. Commit.
• Fix another case of clips with mixes allowed to resize over another clip, add tests. Commit.
• Fix adding a mix to an AV clit that already had a mix on one of its components moving existing mix. Commit.
• Fix typo. Commit.
• Fix for Qt6’s behavior change in QVariant::isNull() (fixes speech to text). Commit.
• Fix crash on invalid gradient data. Commit. Fixes bug #482134.
• Enforce proper styling for Qml dialogs. Commit.
• Fix incorrect Bin clip video usage count and initialization, spotted by Ondrej Popp. Commit.

The post Kdenlive 24.02.1 released appeared first on Kdenlive.

And That’s a Wrap

MidCamp has been and gone for 2024, and we couldn't have done it without our volunteers, organizers, contributors, venue hosts, sponsors, speakers, and of course, attendees for making this year's camp a success.

Replay the Fun

Find all of the sessions you missed, share your session around, and spread the word. Videos can be watched on the MidCamp YouTube channel (🔀 jump to the playlist) or on Drupal.tv.  Captions will follow within a couple of weeks.

Share Your Feedback

For those who joined us this year, please fill out our quick survey. We really value your feedback on any part of your camp experience, and our organizer team works hard to take as much of it as possible into account for next year.

Also, don’t forget to rate any sessions you attended (these can be found on each session node).

🥁…announcing... MidCamp 2025!

Mark your calendars now! We’ll be back at DePaul University for MidCamp 2025, March 20-21.

Explore other Upcoming Drupal Events

Need more Drupal Events to tide you over to next year? Head over to the Drupal Community Events page to check out what’s coming up in 2024.

One Last Thanks

MidCamp really wouldn't be possible without our amazing sponsors.

Consider adding your organization to the list next year. (2025 prospectus coming soon!)

Keep the madness going all year by joining in the MidCamp Slack We look forward to seeing you at MidCamp 2025. We’re also on Twitter and Mastodon.

Thanks!

The MidCamp Team

In celebration of International Women's Day, The DropTimes dedicates March to highlighting the influential women of the Drupal community. The second part of the "Women in Drupal" series, featuring insights from April Sides of Red Hat, Stephanie Bridges of Digital Polygon, Laura Johnson of Four Kitchens, Mary Blabaum of Acquia, Tiffany Farriss of Palantir, Jill Moraca of Princeton University, and Surabhi Gokte of Axelerant, emphasizes the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion within technology and specifically within Drupal. Their stories cover overcoming imposter syndrome, the significance of representation, mentoring junior developers, and advocating for women's visibility and leadership roles. These leaders share their commitment to fostering a welcoming, supportive, and inclusive environment, reflecting Drupal's ongoing initiatives to inspire inclusion and celebrate the diverse contributions that women make to the community and the tech industry at large.

Authored by: Nadiia Nykolaichuk 

The administrative navigation toolbar is an essential piece in the puzzle of your website’s overall capability to boost website management tasks. It serves as the guiding compass for your team, leading them across the administrative sections quickly and confidently. To achieve this, the toolbar needs to be intuitive, visually clear, straightforward, logically organized, and well-positioned.

Small teaser:

Probably won't show up in aggregators (try this link instead).

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- March 27, 2024 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced Alyssa Rosenzweig, who reverse-engineered Apple's current line of graphics processing units (GPU), as keynote speaker for LibrePlanet 2024. LibrePlanet 2024: Cultivating Community is the sixteenth edition of the FSF's conference on ethical technology and user freedom and will be held on May 4 and 5 at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA, as well as online.

I recently wrote a blog post about the best university websites on Drupal, which come from different corners of the world. In this article, I focus on web pages from Poland, similarly presenting their functionalities. For this compilation, I’ve selected seven examples of - in my opinion - the most interesting and inspiring websites.

There’s an abundance of third-party tools and libraries for manipulating and analyzing audio WAV files in Python. At the same time, the language ships with the little-known wave module in its standard library, offering a quick and straightforward way to read and write such files. Knowing Python’s wave module can help you dip your toes into digital audio processing.

If topics like audio analysis, sound editing, or music synthesis get you excited, then you’re in for a treat, as you’re about to get a taste of them!

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

• Read and write WAV files using pure Python
• Handle the 24-bit PCM encoding of audio samples
• Interpret and plot the underlying amplitude levels
• Record online audio streams like Internet radio stations
• Animate visualizations in the time and frequency domains
• Synthesize sounds and apply special effects

Although not required, you’ll get the most out of this tutorial if you’re familiar with NumPy and Matplotlib, which greatly simplify working with audio data. Additionally, knowing about numeric arrays in Python will help you better understand the underlying data representation in computer memory.

Click the link below to access the bonus materials, where you’ll find sample audio files for practice, as well as the complete source code of all the examples demonstrated in this tutorial:

Get Your Code: Click here to download the free sample code that shows you how to read and write WAV files in Python.

You can also take the quiz to test your knowledge and see how much you’ve learned:

Take the Quiz: Test your knowledge with our interactive “Reading and Writing WAV Files in Python” quiz. Upon completion you will receive a score so you can track your learning progress over time:

Take the Quiz »

Understand the WAV File Format

In the early nineties, Microsoft and IBM jointly developed the Waveform Audio File Format, often abbreviated as WAVE or WAV, which stems from the file’s extension (.wav). Despite its older age in computer terms, the format remains relevant today. There are several good reasons for its wide adoption, including:

• Simplicity: The WAV file format has a straightforward structure, making it relatively uncomplicated to decode in software and understand by humans.
• Portability: Many software systems and hardware platforms support the WAV file format as standard, making it suitable for data exchange.
• High Fidelity: Because most WAV files contain raw, uncompressed audio data, they’re perfect for applications that require the highest possible sound quality, such as with music production or audio editing. On the flipside, WAV files take up significant storage space compared to lossy compression formats like MP3.

It’s worth noting that WAV files are specialized kinds of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), which is a container format for audio and video streams. Other popular file formats based on RIFF include AVI and MIDI. RIFF itself is an extension of an even older IFF format originally developed by Electronic Arts to store video game resources.

Before diving in, you’ll deconstruct the WAV file format itself to better understand its structure and how it represents sounds. Feel free to jump ahead if you just want to see how to use the wave module in Python.

The Waveform Part of WAV

What you perceive as sound is a disturbance of pressure traveling through a physical medium, such as air or water. At the most fundamental level, every sound is a wave that you can describe using three attributes:

1. Amplitude is the measure of the sound wave’s strength, which you perceive as loudness.
2. Frequency is the reciprocal of the wavelength or the number of oscillations per second, which corresponds to the pitch.
3. Phase is the point in the wave cycle at which the wave starts, not registered by the human ear directly.

The word waveform, which appears in the WAV file format’s name, refers to the graphical depiction of the audio signal’s shape. If you’ve ever opened a sound file using audio editing software, such as Audacity, then you’ve likely seen a visualization of the file’s content that looked something like this:

Waveform in Audacity

That’s your audio waveform, illustrating how the amplitude changes over time.

The vertical axis represents the amplitude at any given point in time. The midpoint of the graph, which is a horizontal line passing through the center, represents the baseline amplitude or the point of silence. Any deviation from this equilibrium corresponds to a higher positive or negative amplitude, which you experience as a louder sound.

As you move from left to right along the graph’s horizontal scale, which is the timeline, you’re essentially moving forward in time through your audio track.

Having such a view can help you visually inspect the characteristics of your audio file. The series of the amplitude’s peaks and valleys reflect the volume changes. Therefore, you can leverage the waveform to identify parts where certain sounds occur or find quiet sections that may need editing.

Coming up next, you’ll learn how WAV files store these amplitude levels in digital form.

The Structure of a WAV File Read the full article at https://realpython.com/python-wav-files/ »

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

Create subsites with a different look and feel to the rest of your LocalGov Drupal website.

Haruna version 1.0.2 is out.

There are not a lot of changes in this release as the focus was on porting to Qt6 and KF6 and code refactoring. Some hwdec options have been removed, if needed they can be set in the settings under "Custom commands" as set hwdec decoding_method_name and choose "Run at startup".

You can get it now on flathub:

Windows version can be found here. Availability of other package formats depends on your distro and the people who package Haruna.

If you like Haruna then support its development: GitHub Sponsors | Liberapay | PayPal

Feature requests and bugs should be posted on bugs.kde.org, but for bugs make sure to fill in the template and provide as much information as possible.

Changelog: 1.0.2

Features:

• Opening items from the playlist is faster
• If Maximum recent files setting is set to zero the recent files are removed from the config file

Bugfixes:

• Opening file through Open File action was not playing the file
• Opening playlist file from playlist header was not doing anything
• Hiding/showing Playlist toolbar setting was not working
• Track sub-menus in Audio and Subtiles global menus being empty
• Freeze when opening HamburgerMenu

Every e-commerce platform is different and comes with its own unique and specific needs. Some can use simple ready-made tools, while others need special software made just for them. New trends like smart personalization, easy shopping on phones, and caring for the environment are also important for online shops.

To help businesses achieve personalized website goals, Drupal comes into the scene. It's like a toolbox that lets you build your online store just the way you want. Drupal commerce is great because it's flexible and lets you try out new ideas. But there’s more to it. 

Today, we'll learn more about what makes Drupal Commerce special, like its features and how it's built.