Feeds

Another (again somewhat minor) maintenance release of the RcppCNPy package arrived on CRAN earlier today.

RcppCNPy provides R with read and write access to NumPy files thanks to the cnpy library by Carl Rogers along with Rcpp for the glue to R.

A change in the most recent Rcpp appears to cause void functions wrapper via Rcpp Modules to return NULL, as opposed to being silent. That tickles discrepancy between the current output and the saved (reference) output of one test file, leading CRAN to display a NOTE which we were asked to take care of. Done here in this release—and now that we know we will also look into restoring the prior Rcpp behaviour. Other small changes involved standard maintenance for continuous integration and updates to files README.md and DESCRIPTION. More details are below.

Changes in version 0.2.13 (2024-09-03)

• A test script was updated to account for the fact that it now returns a few instances of NULL under current Rcpp.

• Small package maintenance updates have been made to the README and DESCRIPTION files as well as to the continuous integration setup.

CRANberries also provides a diffstat report for the latest release. As always, feedback is welcome and the best place to start a discussion may be the GitHub issue tickets page.

If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.

Whoops, it's already been months since I last blogged. I've been actively involved with Plasma and especially its power management service PowerDevil for over a year now. I'm still learning about how everything fits together.

Turns out though that a little bit of involvement imbues you with just enough knowledge and confidence to review other people's changes as well, so that they can get merged into the next release without sitting in limbo forever. Your favorite weekly blogger for example, Nate Graham, is a force of nature when it comes to responding to proposed changes and finding a way to get them accepted in one form or another. But it doesn't have to take many years of KDE development experience to provide helpful feedback.

Otfen we simply need another pair of eyes trying to understand the inner workings of a proposed feature or fix. If two people think hard about an issue and agree on a solution, chances are good that things are indeed changing for the better. Three or more, even better. I do take pride in my own code, but just as much in pushing excellent improvements like these past the finish line:

• Fabian Arndt's support for Lenovo laptops' battery conservation mode (Plasma 6.1)
• Natalie Clarius's feature to block apps from inhibiting sleep and screen locking (6.2)
• Christoph Wolk's improvements to usability for the Power Management settings page (6.2, one among many of the sort)
• Nate's changes to show the current power profile in addition to the battery charge (6.2)
• Xaver Hugl's push to allow software brightness adjustments not just for HDR displays (6.1), but indeed for any display without hardware brightness controls (6.2)

In turn, responsible developers will review your own changes so we can merge them with confidence. Xaver, Natalie and Nate invested time into getting my big feature merged for Plasma 6.2, which you've already read about:

Per-display Brightness Controls

This was really just a follow-up project to the display support developments mentioned in the last blog post. I felt it had to be done, and it lined up nicely with what KWin's been up to recently.

So how hard could it be to add another slider to your applet? Turns out there are indeed a few challenges.

In KDE, we like to include new features early on and tweak them over time. As opposed to, say, the GNOME community, which tends to discuss them for a loooong time in an attempt to merge the perfect solution on the first try. Both approaches have advantages and drawbacks. Our main drawback is harder to change imperfect code, because it's easy to break functionality for users that already rely on them.

Every piece of code has a set of assumptions embedded into it. When those assumptions don't make sense for the next, improved, hopefully perfect solution (definitely perfect this time around!) then we have to find ways to change our thinking. The code is updated to reflect a more useful set of assumptions, ideally without breaking anyone's apps and desktop. This process is called "refactoring" in software development.

But let's be specific: What assumptions am I actually talking about?

There is one brightness slider for your only display

This one's obvious. You can use more than just one display at a time. However, our previous code only used to let you read one brightness value, and set one brightness value. For which screen? Well... how about the code just picks something arbitrarily. If you have a laptop with an internal screen, we use that one. If you have no internal screen, but your external monitor supports DDC/CI for brightness controls, we use that one instead.

What's that, you have multiple external monitors that all support DDC/CI? We'll set the same value for all of them! Even if the first one counts from 0 to 100 and the second one from 0 to 10.000! Surely that will work.

No it won't. We only got lucky that most monitors count from 0 to 100.

The solution here is to require all software to treat each display differently. We'll start watching for monitors being connected and disconnected. We tell all the related software about it. Instead of a single set-brightness and a single get-brightness operation, we have one of these per display. When the lower layers require this extra information, software higher up in the stack (for example, a brightness applet) is forced to make better choices about the user experience in each particular case. For example, presenting multiple brightness sliders in the UI.

A popup indicator shows the new brightness when it changes

So this raises new questions. With only one display, we can indicate any brightness change by showing you the new brightness on a percentage bar:

Now you press the "Increase Brightness" key on your keyboard, and multiple monitors are connected. This OSD popup shows up on... your active screen? But did the brightness only change for your active screen, or for all of them? Which monitor is this one popup representing?

Ideally, we'd show a different popup on each screen, with the name of the respective monitor:

That's a good idea! But Plasma's OSD component doesn't have a notion of different popups being shown at the same time on different monitors. It may even take further changes to ask KWin, Plasma's compositor component, about that. What we did for Plasma 6.2 was to provide Plasma's OSD component with all the information it needs to do this eventually. But we haven't implemented our favorite UI yet, instead we hit the 6.2 deadline and pack multiple percentages into a single popup:

That's good enough for now, not the prettiest but always clear. If you only use or adjust one screen, you'll get the original fancy percentage bar you know and love.

The applet can do its own brightness adjustment calculations

You can increase or decrease brightness by scrolling on the icon of the "Brightness and Color" applet with your mouse wheel or touchpad. Sounds easy to implement: read the brightness for each display, add or subtract a certain percentage, set the brightness again for the same display.

Nope, not that easy.

For starters, we handle brightness key presses in the background service. You'd expect the "Increase Brightness" key to behave the same as scrolling up with your mouse wheel, right? So let's not implement the same thing in two different places. The applet has to say goodbye to its own calculations, and instead we add an interface to background service that the applet can use.

Then again, the background service never had to deal with high-resolution touchpad scrolling. It's so high-resolution that each individual scroll event might be smaller than the number of brightness steps on your screen. The applet contained code to add up all of these tiny changes so that many scroll events taken together will at least make your screen change by one step.

Now the service provides this functionality instead, but it adds up the tiny changes for each screen separately. Not only that, it allows you to keep scrolling even if one of your displays has already hit maximum brightness. When you scroll back afterwards, both displays don't just count down from 100% equally, but the original brightness difference between both screens is preserved. Scroll up and down to your heart's content without messing up your preferred setup.

Dimming will turn down the brightness, then restore the original value later

Simple! Yes? No. As you may guess, we now need to store the original brightness for each display separately so we can restore it later.

But that's not enough: What if you unplug your external screen while it's dimmed? And then you move your mouse pointer again, so the dimming goes away. Your monitor, however, was not there for getting its brightness restored to the original value. Next time you plug it in, it starts out with the dimmed lower brightness as a new baseline, Plasma will gladly dim even further next time.

Full disclosure, this was already an issue in past releases of Plasma and is still an issue. Supporting multiple monitors just makes it more visible. More work is needed to make this scenario bullet-proof as well. We'll have to see if a small and safe enough fix can still be made for Plasma 6.2, or if we'll have to wait until later to address this more comprehensively.

Anyway, these kind of assumptions are what eat up a good amount of development time, as opposed to just adding new functionality. Hopefully users will find the new brightness controls worthwhile.

So let's get to the good news

Your donations allowed KDE e.V. to approve a travel cost subsidy in order to meet other KDE contributors in person and scheme the next steps toward world domination. You know what's coming, I'm going to:

Akademy is starting in just about two days from now! Thank you all for allowing events like this to happen, I'll try to make it count. And while not everyone can get to Germany in person, keep in mind that it's a hybrid conference and especially the weekend talks are always worth watching online. You can still sign up and join the live chat, or take a last-minute weekend trip to Würzburg if you're in the area, or just watch the videos shortly afterwards (I assume they'll go up on the PeerTube Akademy channel).

I'm particularly curious about the outcome of the KDE Goals vote for the upcoming two years, given that I co-drafted a goal proposal this time around. Whether or not it got elected, I haven't forgotten about my promise of working on mouse gesture support on Plasma/Wayland. Somewhat late due to the aforementioned display work taking longer. Other interesting things are starting to happen as well on my end. I'll have to be mindful not to stretch myself too thinly.

Thanks everyone for being kind. I'll be keeping an eye out for your bug reports when the Plasma 6.2 Beta gets released to adventurous testers in just over a week from today.

Discuss this post on KDE Discuss.

tl;dr

DebConf24 was fun!

A playlist of all of my talks, with subtitles (en, pt-br) and chapters is available on YouTube.

Overview

DebConf24 was held in Busan, South Korea, between Sunday July 28th to Sunday August 4th 2024.

As usual for DebConfs, I had a great time meeting my friends, but also met new people and got to learn a bit about the interesting things they're working on.

I ended up getting too excited during the talk submission stage of the conference and as a result I presented 5 different activities (3 talks, 1 BoF and 1 lightning talk).

Since I was too busy with the presentations, I did not have a lot of time to actually hang out with folks, or even to go out in the city, I guess I've learned my lesson for next time.

The main purpose of this post is to write about all of the things I presented at the conference. I did want to list some of the interesting talks I've watched, but that I would not be able to be fair as I'm sure I would miss some.

You can get the schedule and the recordings of any talks from the conference's website: https://debconf24.debconf.org/schedule/

wcurl Lightning Talk

The most fun of my presentations, during the second-to-last day of the conference, I've asked for help from Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj> to setup an URL containing a whitespace and redirecting that to wcurl's manpage.

I then did a little demo to showcase why me (and a lot others) struggle with downloading things with curl, and how wcurl solves that.

Fixing CVEs on Debian: Everything you probably know already

I've always felt like DebConf was missing security-related talks, so I decided to do something about it and presented a few of the things I've learned when fixing CVEs for Debian.

This is an area where we don't get a lot of new contributors, I'm trying to change that, and this talk can be used to introduce newcomers to it.

The secret sauce of Debian

Debian is not very vocal about all of the nice things it has regarding quality-assurance, testing, or CI, even though it's at the state-of-the-art for a lot of things.

This talk is an initial step towards making people aware of the cool things happening behind the scenes. Ideally we should have it well-documented somewhere.

"I use Debian BTW": fzf, tmux, zoxide and friends

One of my earliest good memories of Debian was when it started coming with a colored PS1 by default, I still remember the feeling of relief whenever I jumped into a Debian server and didn't have to deal with a black and white PS1.

There's still a lot of room for Debian to ship better defaults, and I think some of them can actually happen.

This talk is a bit of a silly one where I'm just making people aware of the existence of a few Golang/Rust CLI tools, and also some dotfiles configurations that should probably be the default.

curl

The curl project does such a great job with their security advisories that it will likely never receive the amount of praise it deserves, but I did my best at mentioning it throughout my CVEs talk.

Maybe I will write more extensively about this someday, but in case I don't:

There's no other project which always consistently mentions the exact range of commits that are affected by a given CVE.

Forget about whether the versions are EOL, curl doesn't have LTS releases, yet they do such a great job at clearly documenting their CVEs that I would take that over having LTS releases anytime (that's for curl at least, I acknowledge some types of projects have a different need for LTS releases).

Not only that, but they are also always careful about explaining alternative mitigations such as configuration changes, build flags that defuse the exploitation, or parameters that you should not use.

Just like we tend to do every time we meet, me and the other Debian curl maintainers spent the first 2 or 3 days of the conference talking about how we wanted to eventually meet up to discuss the package.

It was going to be informal, maybe during the Cheese and Wine party, but then I've realized we should make it part of the official schedule, which would also give us the recordings for later.

And so the "curl maintainers BoF" happened, where we spoke about HTTP3, GnutTLS, wcurl and other things.

wcurl

Right after that BoF, Daniel Stenberg asked if we were interested in having wcurl adopted into curl, which we definitely were, so wcurl is now part of the curl project.

Daniel was also kind enough to design a logo for the project, which makes me especially happy because I can stop with my own approach at a logo (which I had to redo every few days):

And here is the new logo:

Much better, I would say :)

curl Swag

DebConf24 was my chance at forwarding some curl swag items to the other curl maintainers, so both Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj> and Carlos Henrique Lima Melara <charles> got the curl-up t-shirt and the very cool curl PCB coaster, both gifted by Daniel Stenberg.

Unfortunately I didn't have any of that for DebConf attendees, but I did drop loads of curl stickers at the stickers table, they were gone very quickly.

For the future

I used to think the most humbling experience you could have as someone who presented a talk was to have to watch it yourself, you notice a lot of mistakes and you instantly think about things that should be done differently.

It turns out the most humbling thing to do is actually to write subtitles for your talks, I noticed every single mistake, often multiple times.

So after spending more than 30 hours writing the subtitles for both English and Brazilian Portuguese for my talks, I feel like it's going to be much easier to avoid committing the same mistakes again. After some time you stop feeling shame about those mistakes and you're just left with feelings of annoyance, and at that point it becomes easier to consciously avoid them.

I am collecting a list of things I wish I had done differently on all of those talks, so if I end up presenting any one of them again, it will be an improved version.

#645 – SEPTEMBER 3, 2024
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This was PyCoder’s Weekly Issue #645.
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This is my last update about my GSoC project (Python bindings for KDE Frameworks).

These weeks have been quieter than usual because I’ve been on vacation, but there are still some new things to share.

I published a mini tutorial on how to generate Python bindings using the new CMake module.

People have started to test the Python bindings and some building issues have been reported (which is good, because that means people have interest in them). Unfortunately I’m going to have less time to contribute as I start university next week, but I’m sure you’ll see me!

Many thanks to Carl (my mentor) and everyone who reviewed my merge requests!

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, September 6 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.

Fifteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of August 31, 2024):

Fifteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of August 31, 2024):

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Other powerful features Annotations allow you to add notes to your analytics data, providing context for significant events and changes, which aids in better data analysis.  Scheduled Email Reports keep you informed by delivering customized, automated reports with key metrics directly to your inbox, making it easy to share insights with stakeholders.  Site Search Analytics lets you track and analyze user search queries, helping you identify content gaps and optimize your site's search functionality.  Visits Log and Visitor Profile offers detailed insights into individual user behavior, visit history, and preferences, enabling personalized marketing and a better user experience. Matomo's premium features Matomo's premium features offer deep insights, extensive customization, and advanced tools for confident data-driven decisions. Learn how these features, from heatmaps and session recordings to A/B testing and funnel analysis, can enhance your analytics capabilities. Heatmap analytics and Session recording Gain valuable insights into user behavior with Matomo’s Heatmap Analytics and Session Recording features: Heatmaps: Visual displays of user interactions, helping identify engaging areas and usability issues. Scroll Maps: Understand how far users scroll down a page. Click Maps: See where users are clicking most often. Session Recording: Capture all visitor activities, including clicks, mouse movements, scrolls, window resizes, page changes, and form interactions. Replay these interactions in video format to see exactly how visitors engage with your site and use these insights to improve user experience and troubleshoot issues. A/B testing platform Optimize your websites, apps, and marketing campaigns by running A/B tests: Experiment with different versions of your pages. Determine which performs best to increase conversions. Make data-driven decisions to enhance performance, ensuring that your changes lead to improved user engagement and higher conversion rates. Custom reports Create custom reports tailored to your needs to gain new insights and save time: Pull out the exact information you require for success. Reduce the risk of human error. Generate new reports quickly, streamlining your data analysis process and allowing you to focus on the metrics that matter most to your business. Form analytics Improve form conversions by analyzing where and when visitors abandon your forms: Gain insights into user interactions with your forms. Identify and fix issues that prevent successful submissions. Optimize your forms to enhance user experience and increase conversion rates. Visualize conversion funnels Understand where visitors drop off in your conversion funnels to increase conversions, sales, and revenue with your existing traffic: Identify bottlenecks in the user journey. Optimize your site to improve conversion rates. Make informed decisions to enhance the user experience and drive more conversions. User flow Analyze the most popular paths users take through your website or app with User Flow: Visual representation helps you understand user behavior. Identify common exit points and optimize navigation. Gain insights into how users interact with your site to improve their experience. Multi-channel conversion attribution Understand the contribution of each marketing channel to your conversions: Clarity on how much credit each referrer deserves. Allocate marketing efforts and budgets more effectively. Optimize your marketing strategy to drive better results. Advertising conversion export Get insights into your paid ads, including Google Ads, Microsoft Bing Ads, and Yandex Ads, with better privacy and simplified implementation: Integrates with these platforms, providing comprehensive data without needing third-party tracking codes. Saves implementation time and ensures that your advertising data is accurate and privacy-compliant. Other advanced tools Media Analytics helps you track and optimize video and audio engagement by monitoring views, play duration, and interactions. SEO Web Vitals enhances your website’s performance and search ranking by identifying and addressing key SEO issues, ensuring a seamless user experience.  Roll-Up Reporting saves time by aggregating data from multiple websites and apps, offering a holistic view of your digital properties. User Cohorts allow you to analyze and compare the behavior of different user groups, enabling you to boost retention and satisfaction. Matomo VS GA4 Both Matomo and Google Analytics 4 (GA4) are prominent web analytics platforms that provide valuable insights into website performance and user behavior. However, they differ significantly in features, user experience, data control, and pricing. Here’s a detailed comparison to help you choose the right tool for your needs. Data ownership and privacy Matomo: Offers full data ownership, allowing businesses to ensure compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR. Users can choose where their data is stored, which is a significant advantage for organizations concerned about data privacy.GA4: Data is stored on Google’s servers, which can raise concerns about data privacy and sharing. While GA4 provides robust analytics capabilities, it may not offer the same level of control over data as Matomo. Historical data import Matomo: Supports importing historical data from Universal Analytics, allowing users to maintain continuity in their analytics without losing past insights.GA4: Does not allow importing historical data from Universal Analytics, which means users starting with GA4 will not have access to their previous data, potentially complicating year-over-year comparisons. User interface and usability Matomo: Known for its intuitive and user-friendly interface, Matomo is rated highly for ease of use. Users can quickly navigate the platform and access insights without extensive training.GA4: While it features a modern design, many users find the interface complex and challenging to navigate, especially those accustomed to previous versions of Google Analytics. It requires a steeper learning curve to fully leverage its capabilities. Reporting and insights Matomo: Offers customizable reports and a variety of analytics tools, including conversion tracking and A/B testing. Users can easily create dashboards that reflect their specific needs.GA4: Provides advanced reporting features, including custom reports and data visualization tools. However, its reliance on machine learning can sometimes obscure direct insights, making it less straightforward for some users. Pricing Matomo: Offers both free and paid options, with the free version requiring self-hosting, which may incur additional costs. The paid version is generally more affordable than GA4's premium offerings, making it a cost-effective choice for many businesses.GA4: The free version is powerful but comes with limitations, such as a 14-month data retention policy. The paid version can be expensive, particularly for larger organizations that require extensive data analysis capabilities. Final thoughts Choosing between Matomo and GA4 ultimately depends on your organization's specific needs and priorities. If data ownership, privacy, and ease of use are paramount, Matomo is likely the better choice. Conversely, if you require advanced machine learning features and seamless integration with Google products, GA4 may be more suitable. Both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, and understanding these can help you make an informed decision that aligns with your analytics goals. With experience working extensively with GA4 and Matomo, we’re ready to help you improve your web analytics and SEO experience. Learn more about our Drupal SEO services and get in touch with us today!

My latest Python book is now available for pre-order on Kickstarter.

JupyterLab 101 mockup

JupyterLab, the latest iteration of the Jupyter Notebook, is a versatile tool for sharing code in an easily understandable format.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world use Jupyter Notebooks or variations of the Notebook architecture for any or all of the following:

• teaching
• presentations
• learning a computer language
• numerical simulations
• statistical modeling
• data visualization
• machine learning
• and much more!

Jupyter Notebooks can be emailed, put on GitHub, or run online. You may also add HTML, images, Markdown, videos, LaTeX, and custom MIME types to your Notebooks. Finally, Jupyter Notebooks support big data integration.

JupyterLab 101 will get you up to speed on the newest user interface for Jupyter Notebooks and the other tools that JupyterLab supports. You now have a tabbed interface that you can use to edit multiple Notebooks, open terminals in your browser, create a Python REPL, and more. JupyterLab also includes a debugger utility to help you figure out your coding issues.

Rest assured, JupyterLab supports all the same programming languages as Jupyter Notebook. The main difference lies in the user interface, which this guide will help you navigate effectively and efficiently.

After reading JupyterLab 101, you will be an expert in JupyterLab and produce quality Notebooks quickly!

What You’ll Learn

In this book, you will learn how about the following:

• Installation and setup of JupyterLab
• The JupyterLab user interface
• Creating a Notebook
• Markdown in Notebooks
• Menus in JupyterLab
• Launching Other Applications (console, terminal, text files, etc)
• Distributing and Exporting Notebooks
• Debugging in JupyterLab
• Testing your notebooks

Rewards to Choose From

As a backer of this Kickstarter, you have some choices to make. You can receive one or more of the following, depending on which level you choose when backing the project:

• An early copy of JupyterLab 101 + all updates including the final version (ALL BACKERS)
• A signed paperback copy (If you choose the appropriate perk)
• Get all by Python courses hosted on Teach Me Python or another site  (If you choose the appropriate perk)
• T-shirt with the book cover  (If you choose the appropriate perk)

Get the book on Kickstarter today!

The post ANN: JupyterLab 101 Kickstarter appeared first on Mouse Vs Python.

Pydantic is a powerful data validation and settings management library for Python, engineered to enhance the robustness and reliability of your codebase. From basic tasks, such as checking whether a variable is an integer, to more complex tasks, like ensuring highly-nested dictionary keys and values have the correct data types, Pydantic can handle just about any data validation scenario with minimal boilerplate code.

In this video course, you’ll learn how to:

• Work with data schemas with Pydantic’s BaseModel
• Write custom validators for complex use cases
• Validate function arguments with Pydantic’s @validate_call
• Manage settings and configure applications with pydantic-settings

[ 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 ]

In accordance with our security release policy, the Django team is issuing releases for Django 5.1.1, Django 5.0.9, and Django 4.2.16. These releases address the security issues detailed below. We encourage all users of Django to upgrade as soon as possible.

CVE-2024-45230: Potential denial-of-service vulnerability in django.utils.html.urlize()

urlize and urlizetrunc were subject to a potential denial-of-service attack via very large inputs with a specific sequence of characters.

Thanks to MProgrammer for the report.

This issue has severity "moderate" according to the Django security policy.

CVE-2024-45231: Potential user email enumeration via response status on password reset

Due to unhandled email sending failures, the django.contrib.auth.forms.PasswordResetForm class allowed remote attackers to enumerate user emails by issuing password reset requests and observing the outcomes.

To mitigate this risk, exceptions occurring during password reset email sending are now handled and logged using the django.contrib.auth logger.

Thanks to Thibaut Spriet for the report.

This issue has severity "low" according to the Django security policy.

Affected supported versions

• Django main branch
• Django 5.1
• Django 5.0
• Django 4.2

Resolution

Patches to resolve the issue have been applied to Django's main, 5.1, 5.0, and 4.2 branches. The patches may be obtained from the following changesets.

CVE-2024-45230: Potential denial-of-service vulnerability in django.utils.html.urlize()

• On the main branch
• On the 5.1 branch
• On the 5.0 branch
• On the 4.2 branch

CVE-2024-45231: Potential user email enumeration via response status on password reset

• On the main branch
• On the 5.1 branch
• On the 5.0 branch
• On the 4.2 branch

The following releases have been issued

• Django 5.1.1 (download Django 5.1.1 | 5.1.1 checksums)
• Django 5.0.9 (download Django 5.0.9 | 5.0.9 checksums)
• Django 4.2.16 (download Django 4.2.16 | 4.2.16 checksums)

The PGP key ID used for this release is Natalia Bidart: 2EE82A8D9470983E

General notes regarding security reporting

As always, we ask that potential security issues be reported via private email to security@djangoproject.com, and not via Django's Trac instance, nor via the Django Forum, nor via the django-developers list. Please see our security policies for further information.

Calligra 4.0.1 is out. This small releases mostly contains fixes for distributions issues and updated translations.

I fixed some compatibility issues for Flatpak which is since yesterday available on Flathub.

Flathub website showing Calligra

Yaakov Selkowitz fixed the installation of the Okular generators so now if Calligra is installed, you can read your office document in Okular correctly.

Antonio Rojas dropped the unused KPart dependency and reenabled the user documentations.

I removed the old space navigator plugin which didn’t build anymore and was only used to navigate an office document with some retro controllers.

Finally, I fixed a few issues in Stage, I found while dog footing it for my slides for my Akademy presentation.

The updated slides sidebar of Calligra Stage

Get It

Calligra 4.0 is now available on Flathub. It’s also now available on Arch, KDE Neon and OpenBSD and I am aware there is some work in progress for Fedora and Mageia. Thanks everyone for packaging Calligra!

Packager Section

You can find the package on download.kde.org and it has been signed with my GPG key.

<strong>Topics covered in this episode:</strong><br> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://hynek.me/articles/docker-virtualenv/?featured_on=pythonbytes">Why I Still Use Python Virtual Environments in Docker</a></strong></li> <li><a href="https://lp.jetbrains.com/python-developers-survey-2023/?featured_on=pythonbytes"><strong>Python Developer Survey Results</strong></a></li> <li><strong><a href="https://www.anaconda.com/blog/introducing-anaconda-code-add-in-for-microsoft-excel?featured_on=pythonbytes">Anaconda Code add-in for Microsoft Excel</a></strong></li> <li><a href="https://davidism.com/disabling-scheduled-dependency-updates/?featured_on=pythonbytes"><strong>Disabling Scheduled Dependency Updates</strong></a></li> <li><strong>Extras</strong></li> <li><strong>Joke</strong></li> </ul><a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpAPT-T5m2g' style='font-weight: bold;'data-umami-event="Livestream-Past" data-umami-event-episode="399">Watch on YouTube</a><br> <p><strong>About the show</strong></p> <p>Sponsored by us! Support our work through</p> <ul> <li>Our <a href="https://training.talkpython.fm/?featured_on=pythonbytes"><strong>courses at Talk Python Training</strong></a></li> <li><a href="https://courses.pythontest.com/?featured_on=pythonbytes"><strong>Hello, pytest! Course</strong></a></li> <li><a href="https://www.patreon.com/pythonbytes"><strong>Patreon Supporters</strong></a></li> </ul> <p><strong>Connect with the hosts</strong></p> <ul> <li>Michael: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@mkennedy"><strong>@mkennedy@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> <li>Brian: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@brianokken"><strong>@brianokken@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> <li>Show: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@pythonbytes"><strong>@pythonbytes@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> </ul> <p>Join us on YouTube at <a href="https://pythonbytes.fm/stream/live"><strong>pythonbytes.fm/live</strong></a> to be part of the audience. Usually <strong>Monday</strong> at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.</p> <p>Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to <a href="https://pythonbytes.fm/friends-of-the-show">our friends of the show list</a>, we'll never share it.</p> <p><strong>Michael #1:</strong> <a href="https://hynek.me/articles/docker-virtualenv/?featured_on=pythonbytes">Why I Still Use Python Virtual Environments in Docker</a></p> <ul> <li>by Hynek Schlawack</li> <li>I was going to cover <a href="https://hynek.me/articles/docker-uv/?featured_on=pythonbytes">Production-ready Docker Containers with uv</a> but decided to take this diversion instead.</li> <li>Spend a lot of time thinking about the secondary effects of what you do.</li> <li>venvs are well known and well documented. Let’s use them.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Brian #2:</strong> <a href="https://lp.jetbrains.com/python-developers-survey-2023/?featured_on=pythonbytes"><strong>Python Developer Survey Results</strong></a></p> <ul> <li>“… official Python Developers Survey, conducted as a collaborative effort between the Python Software Foundation and JetBrains.”</li> <li>Python w/ Rust rising, but still only 7%</li> <li>““The drop in HTML/CSS/JS might show that data science is increasing its share of Python.” - Paul Everitt</li> <li>37% contribute to open source. Awesome.</li> <li>Favorite Resources: Podcasts <ul> <li>Lots of familiar faces there. Awesome. <ul> <li>Perhaps I shouldn’t have decided to move “Python Test” back to <a href="https://testandcode.com?featured_on=pythonbytes">Test &amp; Code</a></li> </ul></li> </ul></li> <li>Usage <ul> <li>“Data analysis” down, but I think that’s because “data engineering” is added.</li> <li>Data, Web dev, ML, devops, academic, </li> <li>Testing is down <img src="https://paper.dropboxstatic.com/static/img/ace/emoji/1f61e.png?version=8.0.0" alt="disappointed face" /> 23%</li> </ul></li> <li>Python Versions <ul> <li>Still some 2 out there</li> <li>Most folks on 3.10-3.12</li> </ul></li> <li>Install from: mostly python.org</li> <li>Frameworks <ul> <li>web: Flask, Django, Requests, FastAPI …</li> <li>testing: pytest, unittest, mock, doctest, tox, hypothesis, nose (2% might be the Python 2 people)</li> </ul></li> <li>Data science <ul> <li>77% use pandas, 72% NumPy</li> </ul></li> <li>OS: Windows still at 55% </li> <li>Packaging: <ul> <li>venv up to 55%</li> <li>I imaging uv will be on the list next year</li> <li>requirements.txt 63%, pyproject.toml 32%</li> </ul></li> <li>virtual env in containers? 47% say no</li> </ul> <p><strong>Michael #3:</strong> <a href="https://www.anaconda.com/blog/introducing-anaconda-code-add-in-for-microsoft-excel?featured_on=pythonbytes">Anaconda Code add-in for Microsoft Excel</a></p> <ul> <li>Run their Python-powered projects in Excel locally with the Anaconda Code add-in</li> <li>Powered by PyScript, an Anaconda supported open source project that runs Python locally without install and setup</li> <li>Features <ul> <li>Cells Run Independently</li> <li>Range to Multiple Types</li> <li>init.py file is static and cannot be edited, with Anaconda Code, users have the ability to access and edit imports and definitions, allowing you to write top-level functions and classes and reuse them wherever you need. </li> <li>A Customizable Environment </li> </ul></li> </ul> <p><strong>Brian #4:</strong> <a href="https://davidism.com/disabling-scheduled-dependency-updates/?featured_on=pythonbytes"><strong>Disabling Scheduled Dependency Updates</strong></a></p> <ul> <li>David Lord</li> <li>Interesting discussion of as they happen or batching of upsates to dependencies</li> <li>dependencies come in <ul> <li>requirements files</li> <li>GH Actions in CI workflows</li> <li>pre-commit hooks</li> </ul></li> <li>David was seeing 60 PRs per month when set up on monthly updates (3 ecosystems * 20 projects)</li> <li>new tool for updating GH actions: <a href="https://gha-update.readthedocs.io/en/latest/?featured_on=pythonbytes">gha-update</a>, allows for local updating of GH dependencies</li> <li>New process <ul> <li>Run pip-compile, gha-update, and pre-commit locally.</li> <li>Update a project’s dependencies when actively working on the project, not just whenever a dependency updates.</li> <li>Note that this works fine for dev dependencies, less so for security updates from run time dependencies. But for libraries, runtime dependencies are usually not pinned.</li> </ul></li> </ul> <p><strong>Extras</strong> </p> <p>Brian:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://testandcode.com?featured_on=pythonbytes">Test &amp; Code</a> coming back this week</li> </ul> <p>Michael:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.codeinacastle.com/python-zero-to-hero-2024?featured_on=pythonbytes">Code in a Castle event</a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/basnijholt/unidep/pull/191#issuecomment-2322392833">Python Bytes badge spotting</a></li> <li><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41385546&featured_on=pythonbytes">Guido’s post removed for moderation</a></li> </ul> <p><strong>Joke:</strong> <a href="https://devhumor.com/media/c-will-watch-in-silence?featured_on=pythonbytes">C will watch in silence</a></p>

Discover Dresktop, the open-source tool revolutionizing Drupal management. From local development to cloud integration, Dresktop simplifies the way you handle Drupal environments with its powerful blend of Docker, SSH, and Drush. Whether you're searching for an alternative to Acquia Desktop or a streamlined solution for your Drupal projects, Dresktop offers the features and flexibility you need.

As I'm getting older a lot of my social circles are becoming ever more conservative. The focus shifts from building with ambition to fiercly protecting what one has achieved. Shifting the mind on protectionism makes one consider all that can cause damage. It puts the focus on the negative, it makes those negative thoughts feel much more significant than they are and one dwells on the past, instead of envisioning of what opportunity might lie ahead.

Yet, when we look back at history, it becomes clear that progress and fresh ideas tend to prevail over time. Not every new idea will succeed, but the overall trend is undeniable.

I believe that every day presents us with a choice: to step forward with courage and optimism or to cling to the status quo, even as it becomes increasingly untenable. Embracing new ideas carries inherent risks, but so does the refusal to explore them.

Right now we find ourselves slowly sliding down from our local maximum and some people try to pull you back up to where we were standing. On the other hand if you dare to run you will find a bigger and more impressive hill to scale. One that offers a better vantage point and when water rises undoubtedly the better place to be.

In today's political environment, the rhetoric is dominated by a yearning for the past. Some politicians will promote a return to fossil fuels and conservative social norms. They play into your fears of others and promote individualism at cost of the collective. The will uphold every bad news as a reason to fortify borders and strengthen nation-states.

But as time marches on, future generations will likely look back at these regressive inclinations and wonder how we could have been so short-sighted.

Codecov’s unreliability breaking CI on my open source projects has been a constant source of frustration for me for years. I have found a way to enforce coverage over a whole GitHub Actions build matrix that doesn’t rely on third-party services.

Here's our bi-monthly update from KDE's personal information management applications team. This report covers progress made in July and August 2024.

Since the last report, 32 people have contributed over 1300 changes to the KDE PIM code base. We also released a new version of the KDE PIM Suite in August with the Gear release

Akademy

The KDE PIM team will be at Akademy from the 7th to the 12th of September in Würzburg (Germany). We will host again a PIM BoF on Monday from 14h to 16h.

Milestones

We have decided to plan and track our work in milestones. Milestones represent concrete goals with clear definitions of what we understand as done, and be achievable within a reasonable time frame. Each milestone is then split into smaller bite-sized tasks that can be worked on independently.

This helps us prioritize important work, make our progress more visible and, most importantly, make it easier for people to get excited about what we are working on. New contributors will also be able to pick a well-defined task and start contributing to PIM.

You can see the milestones on our Gitlab board. If anything there catches your eye and you would like to help, reach out to us on the #kontact:kde.org Matrix channel!

Retiring KJots and KNotes

We made some progress on this front and KNotes was not part of the 24.08 release. The repositories for KNotes and KJots are now archived and the remaining bits related to the Akonadi Note support were removed from KOrganizer, Calendar Support, KDE PIM Runtime, and Event Views.

Moving Protocol Implementations to KDE Frameworks

Volker continued to cleanup and optimize KMime in preparation for moving it to the KDE Frameworks. KMime is the library used to parse and write emails.

Itinerary

Our travel assistant app Itinerary got a new seat information display in the timeline, integration with the Träwelling check-in service, more use of Wikidata/Wikimedia online content and a pretty new website. See its own bi-monthly update for more details.

Kleopatra

Over the last two months the smart card views for the different types of supported smart cards got a facelift to make them look more unified and less crowded (T7018).

Kleopatra now supports disabling OpenPGP certificates (T7216). This is sometimes useful to prevent accidentally using a certificate for encryption.

We improved the usability in

• signing and encryption (T6485, T7183, T7236),
• the list of certifications that now only shows the relevant ones (T7231),
• the certificate group configuration (T6966),
• changing the expiration of subkeys (T7198, T7215).

Akregator

Akregator is the RSS feed reader integrated into Kontact. Laurent reimplemented the filter bar to avoid multiple clicks and it is now similar to the one from Thunderbird.

Akregator now supports Plasma Activities so you can select which feeds are visible depending on the activity you are in. Similar functionalities are planned for KMail, KOrganizer and KAddressBook.

Finally, Akregator now has a What's New dialog showing the changes from the last version.

KMail

KMail now uses less memory by only loading some widgets when needed.

MimeTreeParser/Merkuro

We have unified the verification message for signed messages between Kleopatra, KMail and Merkuro by moving the implementation to LibKleo.

KAlarm

We replaced the libcanberra audio backend with VLC, since libcanberra is unmaintained and does not recognise recent audio formats. There is also the option for distributions to use MPV as audio backend.

This post is a review for Computing Reviews for Free and open source software and other market failures , a article published in Communications of the ACM

Understanding the free and open-source software (FOSS) movement has, since its beginning, implied crossing many disciplinary boundaries. This article describes FOSS’s history, explaining its undeniable success throughout the 1990s, and why the movement today feels in a way as if it were on autopilot, lacking the “steam” it once had.

The author presents several examples of different industries where, as it happened with FOSS in computing, fundamental innovations happened not because the leading companies of each field are attentive to customers’ needs, but to a certain degree, despite them not even considering those needs, it is typically due to the hubris that comes from being a market leader.

Kemp exemplifies his hypothesis by presenting the messy landscape of the commercial, mutually incompatible systems of Unix in the 1980s. Different companies had set out to implement their particular flavor of “open Unix computers,” but with clear examples of vendor lock-in techniques. He speculates that, “if we had been able to buy a reasonably priced and solid Unix for our 32-bit PCs … nobody would be running FreeBSD or Linux today, except possibly as an obscure hobby.” He states that the FOSS movement was born out of the utter market failure of the different Unix vendors.

The focus of the article shifts then to the FOSS movement itself: 25 years ago, as FOSS systems slowly gained acceptance and then adoption in the “serious market” and at the center of the dot-com boom of the early 2000s, Linux user groups (LUGs) with tens of thousands of members bloomed throughout the world; knowing this history, why have all but a few of them vanished into oblivion?

Kemp suggests that the strength and vitality that LUGs had ultimately reflects the anger that prompted technical users to take the situation into their own hands and fix it; once the software industry was forced to change, the strongly cohesive FOSS movement diluted. “The frustrations and anger of [information technology, IT] in 2024,” Kamp writes, “are entirely different from those of 1991.” As an example, the author closes by citing the difficulty of maintaining–despite having the resources to do so–an aging legacy codebase that needs to continue working year after year.

Today we are talking about The Greater Cleveland RTA, How they use Drupal, and how they built a Drupal team with guests Mike Cermak & Rithya Lath. We’ll also cover Geofield Directions as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/465

Topics

• What does the Greater Cleveland RTA do
• Is the RTA a state agency
• What kind of Digital Service do you provide
• How does the GCRTA use Drupal
• Whay was Drupal selected
• Let's talk about the team
• How long has the team existed and how many people
• What type of skill makeup doest hte team have
• Local development and deployment
• Point and click learning, how do you keep up to speed now
• Day to day responsibilities
• Drupal con and Starshot

Resources

• Greater Cleveland RTA

Guests

Rithya Lath - ral1239 Mike Cermak - riderta.com MikeCermak

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to make it easy for visitors to your Drupal site to get directions to a location via Google Maps? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Geofield Directions
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Feb 2021 by Christopher Martin (ccjjmartin), though recent releases are by Allan Chappell (generalredneck)
  • Versions available: 1.0.1, compatible with Drupal ^8.8 ^9 || ^10 ^11
• Maintainership
  • Minimally maintained, Maintenance fixes only
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation? Not even a README
  • Number of open issues: 1 open issue, not a bug
• Usage stats:
  • 26 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The module provides a new field formatter, so you can install it and then update a view mode to use Geofield Directions. Now your content display will include a link to get directions
  • You can figure the text of the link, whether the link should open in a new tab, the magnification of the destination map, and more
  • The module also includes token support, so you can dynamically include things like the name of the location in the link text
  • I think the only downside I can see is that because this is implemented as a formatter, you have to choose the directions link OR a map, where I could foresee sites wanting to show both