Kexi/Releases/Kexi 2.4 Beta 1

Kexi 2.4 Beta 1 release is within Calligra 2.4 Beta 1

See also Kexi 2.4 release, Kexi 2.3 release, Calligra 2.4 Release Plan, Calligra 2.4 Feature Plan, Kexi TODOs.

List of changes

General TODO

• Disable "Save Record Changes" action when user cancels editing or reverts edited text to the original value. "Cancel Record Changes" action is not disabled though, so user is still able to exit from record editing mode.
• Ask for confirmation when going to Design View and have pending record changes in Data View of table or form
  • Bug #278417
• Replaced term "row" with "record" in visible places
  • Bug #278418

Missing or discontinued features in 2.4

None identified.

See Missing or discontinued features in 2.3 for reference.

Introduction

In this first release of Calligra, a number of application has been renamed. Kexi retains its name for two reasons: it is already recognized brand and it is no longer available within KOffice.

Major feature

The most visible change in Kexi 2.4 is its modern main menu and startup screen. The objective was to reduce number of modal dialogs by switching to web-page-like user interface and add more freedom to the user experience. This philosophy explained more in paper from January 2011 makes Kexi different to other KDE applications but hopefully convergent with popular trends. It will be applied to further features of Kexi in following releases, for example many concurrent data importing views would be eventually possible to open within tabs, much like in most modern web browsers.

While introducing this fundamental change, Kexi stays as desktop application with all related features, especially fully offline operations and robust user interface. It is important to know that there is no use of web technologies to construct the graphical interface, so the level of "look & feel" integration with the underlying operating system is hard if not impossible to reach by web applications.

screenshot 1: Recent projects view: [1]

small 1: [2]

screenshot 2: New Project view: [3]

small 2: [4]

screenshot 3: New Project view - request for overwrite: [5]

small 3: New Project view - request for overwrite: [6]

Other Essential Features

There were about 380 changes made to Kexi during the 10-months-long process of 2.4 development. In addition to the modern menu/startup feature, there are three more:

• Kexi Mobile. This is simplified, mobile version of Kexi started by Adam Pigg in the middle 2010. As expected, it lacks design features of desktop but instead offers touch-enabled interface for "database viewer and simple data entry" features. Status of this version is experimental. User interface is aligned with interface style of N900, so users of N9/N950 would expect to see appropriate rework.

screenshot: [7]

small: [8]

Further information.

• Web widget for Kexi Forms and web element for Kexi Reports. Developed in 2011 by Shreya Pandit within the Season of KDE program for students. Thanks to this program, Shreya has become new Kexi developer. Web browser widget for Kexi Forms provides means for displaying web pages within forms and allows for navigation experience similar to regular web browsers. Users have back and forward buttons available as well as page reloading feature. Entering addresses is possible and most importantly, the address can be saved to a database table in a column of text type. Possible use case is thus creating a database of Internet addresses that can be related with other information like description of pages.

screenshot: [9]

small: [10]

Purpose of Web element for Kexi Reports is similar to the form widget but its area is report generation. Visual snapshot of web pages can be printed out. Again, addresses can be fetched from Kexi database and pages downloaded through a working Internet connection can be printed out. One web page snapshot can be printed for each database record. This plugin has is not ready for beta 1 but should be present in the final 2.4 release.

Forms and Reports web elements have been designed as two optional separately installable plugins. Both use the QtWebKit module, a Qt port of popular WebKit project, the same that is used by Google Chrome, Apple Safari and most mobile browsers these days.

Further information.

• Map widget for Kexi Forms and map element for Kexi Reports. Developed in 2011 by Radek Wicik within the Google Summer of Code program for students. This is another year when Google supports Calligra development and Kexi in particular! Thanks to this initiative, Radek has joined the Kexi Team as regular contributor.

Map browser widget is a graphical element that displays globe and map for given location within a Kexi form. In addition user can pan through the map area to change the location and zoom in or out the view. Location and zoom level can be saved to a database table in a column of text type.

small: [11]

Purpose of Map element for Kexi Reports is similar to the form widget but its area is report generation for printouts. Visual snapshot of a map can be printed out in specified detail. Location and zoom level can be fetched from Kexi database before the map is printed out. One map can be printed for each database record.

screenshot: [12]

small: [13]

As a part of the same development, map Flake Shape has been delivered based on similar previous. Unlike the kexi plugins, this Shape is usable for any document-oriented Calligra applications. This means dynamic maps can be inserted into documents instead of plain images.

small: [14]

Forms and Reports map elements and map Shape have been provided as two optional separately installable plugins. These re-use map component directly for the Marble Project.

Further information.

Statistics

To generate list of commiters sorted by commit count:

cd calligra/
git shortlog -n --since="Dec 12 2010" -s -e --no-merges \
kexi libs/koreport/ libs/koproperty/ plugins/reporting/ | \
grep -v [email protected]

Note: Scripty is excluded but SVN_SILENT commits are not!

To generate list of commits:

cd calligra/
git shortlog -n --since="Dec 12 2010" -s -e --no-merges \
kexi libs/koreport/ libs/koproperty/ plugins/reporting/ | \
grep -v SVN_SILENT

Note: Scripty is not excluded and SVN_SILENT commits are only filtered out but not from the subtotals!

To see total number of commits:

cd calligra/
git shortlog -n --since="Dec 12 2010" -s -e --no-merges \
kexi libs/koreport/ libs/koproperty/ plugins/reporting/ | \
grep -v [email protected] | cut -c-6 |  paste -sd+ | bc

Note: Scripty is excluded but not SVN_SILENT commits.