diff --git a/content/news/2019-04-14-6.1.0_release_announcement.md b/content/news/2019-04-14-6.1.0_release_announcement.md index 7a1da348e..6367bad91 100644 --- a/content/news/2019-04-14-6.1.0_release_announcement.md +++ b/content/news/2019-04-14-6.1.0_release_announcement.md @@ -1,107 +1,105 @@ --- date: "2019-04-14T00:00:00" title: "digiKam 6.1.0 is released" author: "digiKam Team" description: "Dear digiKam fans and users, after 2 months of development, we are proud to announce the new digiKam 6.1.0." category: "news" --- [![](https://i.imgur.com/IOMJJ5Kh.png "digiKam 6.1.0 with a collection of image export from LR and with famous Metadata Editor")](https://imgur.com/IOMJJ5K) -Dear digiKam fans and users, after the first digiKam 6 release published in February 2019, we receive a lots of user feedbacks -to consolidate this important stage of this project started 2 years ago. We are proud to announce quickly the new digiKam 6.1.0, +Dear digiKam fans and users, after the first digiKam 6 release published in February 2019, we received lots of user feedback +to consolidate this important stage of this project started 2 years ago. We are proud to quickly announce the new digiKam 6.1.0, with plenty of new features and fixes. ### The New Plugins Interface "DPlugins" -With 6.0.0, digiKam project was already left the KIPI plugins support and embed all tools as native solutions without to permit to customize and extend easily the -application. digiKam 5.9.0 was the last version supporting KIPI after more than 15 years, and less and less support outside digiKam project. -It's time to turn the page now and to reload the story with a new plugins interface more powerful, more adjusted to all digiKam main tools, with an extended support to Showfoto, -and without to lost legacy features. +With 6.0.0, digiKam project has already left the KIPI plugins support and embedded all tools as native solutions without easly permitting to customize and extend the +application. digiKam 5.9.0 was the last version supporting KIPI after more than 15 years, and less and less support outside of the digiKam project. +It's time to turn the page now and to reload the story with a new plugin interface more powerful, more adjusted to all digiKam main tools, with an extended support to Showfoto, +and without losing legacy features. -Don't be afraid, you will lost nothing and gain more power with this new plugins interface, named "DPlugins" for... "digiKam Plugins" of course. +Don't be afraid, you will loose nothing and gain more power with this new plugins interface, named "DPlugins" for... "digiKam Plugins" of course. -Where the KIPI tools was limited to the Main Album View in digiKam, DPlugins can be used everywhere, as Image Editor, Light Table, Showfoto, and of course the Album View. -This include all **Generic** tools to import/export items or edit metadata, but wait a minute... more as all **Image Editor^** re-touch tools (colors editing, Transforms, Decorate, Effects, etc.), -and wait a second... more also as all **Batch Queue Manager** tools to process files in a chain. Now you will feel the huge difference with the older KIPI solution: digiKam become really open and +Where the KIPI tools were limited to the Main Album View in digiKam, DPlugins can be used everywhere, e.g. in Image Editor, Light Table, Showfoto, and of course the Album View. +This include all **Generic** tools to import/export items or edit metadata, but wait a minute... more than that also **Image Editor** re-touch tools (colors editing, Transforms, Decorate, Effects, etc.), +and wait a second... still more **Batch Queue Manager** tools to process many files at once. Now you will get a feeling of the huge difference to the older KIPI solution: digiKam becomes really open and extensible as it must do since a very long time, where KIPI never achieve this task. -The plugin lists are already very huge, and we works hard to make the whole features ready to use in only 2 months. Nothing will be lost from users side compared to previous versions: +The list of plugins is already very long, and we work hard to make all the features ready to use in only 2 months. Nothing will be lost from users side compared to previous versions: - Generic plugins: 35 tools. [![](https://i.imgur.com/bbha4Qoh.png "digiKam 6.1.0 Generic plugins")](https://imgur.com/bbha4Qo) - Image Editor plugins: 43 tools. [![](https://i.imgur.com/l6pYb0qh.png "digiKam 6.1.0 Image Editor plugins")](https://imgur.com/l6pYb0q) - Batch Queue Manager plugins: 38 tools. [![](https://i.imgur.com/PeaLSnxh.png "digiKam 6.1.0 Batch Queue Manager plugins")](https://imgur.com/PeaLSnx) -As you can see in these screenshots, the Generic and Image Editor plugins can be enabled or disabled while application sessions. This permit to optimize and customize your digiKam or Showfoto as you want. +As you can see in these screenshots, the Generic and Image Editor plugins can be enabled or disabled during application sessions. This permits you to optimize and customize your digiKam or Showfoto as you want. Batch Queue Manager plugins are not yet configurable in this way, but it's just a question of time. As said previously, DPlugins are shared also between digiKam and Showfoto, the stand alone version of digiKam image editor which do not support the digiKam database. For example, see below on the left side the famous **Metadata Editor plugin** in action from Showfoto application, and on the right side the Showfoto DPlugins configuration tab from setup dialog. [![](https://i.imgur.com/18dwXg6h.png "Showfoto 6.1.0 with Metadata Editor tool and Setup DPlugins panel")](https://imgur.com/18dwXg6) -[The DPlugins API](https://cgit.kde.org/digikam.git/tree/core/libs/dplugins) are already available for external contributions, as the future students planned to work with us while this summer. This will permit to extent digiKam without to touch the core implementations -and localize the changes only in a dynamic loading tools. DPlugins is a safe approach to increase features without to lost stability. DPlugins is based only on pure Qt API for a better portability and maintainability. +[The DPlugins API](https://cgit.kde.org/digikam.git/tree/core/libs/dplugins) is already available for external contributions, e.g. for the students that will work with us during this summer. This will permit to extend digiKam without touching the core implementation +and organize the changes only in dynamically loading tools. DPlugins is a safe approach to increase features without loosing stability. DPlugins is based only on pure Qt API for a better portability and maintainability. -In the future, we plan to extend DPlugins to others parts of digiKam, as Image loaders, Camera operations, Database, Face Management, Maintenance, etc. This will take a while and it will done step by step at next 6.x releases. -Note that we don't plan to share this plugins interface with other external applications, as its depend too much of digiKam core API. This will require to export all digiKam core implementations as shared libraries, -and it's fully out so far of the scope from the project. +In the future, we plan to extend DPlugins to others parts of digiKam, as Image loaders, Camera operations, Database, Face Management, Maintenance, etc. This will take a while and it will done step by step in the next 6.x releases. +Note that we don't plan to share this plugins interface with other external applications, as they depend too much on digiKam core API. This would require to export all digiKam core implementations as shared libraries, +and that is entirely out of scope so far for the project. ### Two New Plugins to Celebrate "DPlugins" -While the finalization of DPlugins API and the port of all digiKam tools as plugins, two new features have been introduced for this release: +While finalizing the DPlugins API and porting all digiKam tools as plugins, two new features have been introduced for this release: -- A plugin to **copy items to a local storage**. This tool is a first step to drop the old tool based on KIO and used to transfer items to remote place. +- A plugin to **copy items to a local storage**. This tool is a first step to drop the old tool based on KIO and used to transfer items to remote storage. As KIO is not portable and cannot be bundled, we need a pure Qt alternative to help users to transfer items outside the collections. The new plugin written -by **Maik Qualmann** start with a simple operation to process copy/move of files over your computer. Currently, only local file systems are supported, but we plan +by **Maik Qualmann** starts with a simple operation to copy/move files on your computer. Currently, only local file systems are supported, but we plan to add FTP and SSH protocols. A future integration to the Batch Queue Manager is also targeted later this summer. [![](https://i.imgur.com/CI75tyKh.png "The Local Storage Export Plugin in Action")](https://imgur.com/CI75tyK) -- A plugin to **set image as Linux desktop wallpaper**. This tool proposed as exercise to a possible GoSC 2019 student named **Igor Antropov**, will help you to setup a photo as -desktop wallpaper. Currently, only Plasma desktop is supported, but we plan to extend this tool to other X11 based Linux desktop, MacOS, and Windows. We have already prototyped some code in this -way, and the tool will be improved step by step at next releases before this summer. +- A plugin to **set image as Linux desktop wallpaper**. This tool proposed as an exercise to a possible GoSC 2019 student named **Igor Antropov** will help you to setup a photo as +desktop wallpaper. Currently only Plasma desktop is supported, but we plan to extend this tool to other X11 based Linux desktop, MacOS, and Windows. We have already prototyped some code in this +way, and the tool will be improved step by step in the next releases before this summer. [![](https://i.imgur.com/LEy1i6oh.png "The Set as Wallpaper Plugin in Action")](https://imgur.com/LEy1i6o) ### Fixes and Improvements -- Embedded Media Player has received few improvements as a new button to adjust sound volume while playing. - Also, another button have been added on bottom right to turn on a loop function with the current playlist. +- Embedded Media Player has received a few improvements like a new button to adjust sound volume while playing. + Also, another button was added on the bottom right to turn on a loop function for the current playlist. [![](https://i.imgur.com/Jh1J9o7.png "The Embeded Video Player in Action")](https://imgur.com/Jh1J9o7) -- Font properties for comments in the Slideshow tool can be changed, as the font size and the font family. - Also the comment can be now faded in and out with the F4 key while running the slide. +- Font properties for comments in the Slideshow tool can be changed, like the font size and the font family. + Also the comments can be now faded in and out with the F4 key while running the slideshow. [![](https://i.imgur.com/KbuYNaR.png "The Slideshow Tool in Action")](https://imgur.com/KbuYNaR) -- The Windows version include now the famous **"Open with"** option already present under Linux, to launch your prefered application with your items. - Some prototype of code for MacOS will be also introduced and tested later in next releases. +- The Windows version includes now the famous **"Open with"** option already present under Linux, to launch your prefered application with your items. + Some prototype of code for MacOS will be also introduced and tested later in the next releases. [![](https://i.imgur.com/fOXeWcb.png "Open With Action Under Windows")](https://imgur.com/fOXeWcb) -- The Album Icon-View includes now the capability to short items by the file system **Modification Dates** registered in database. +- The Album Icon-View includes now the capability to sort items by the file system **Modification Dates** registered in database. [![](https://i.imgur.com/NXWeosY.png "Sort Album Icon View by Modification Dates")](https://imgur.com/NXWeosY) ### The Final Words Thanks to all users for your support, all contributors, all students, and testers who permit to improve this release. digiKam 6.1.0 source code tarball, Linux 32/64 bits AppImage bundles, MacOS package and Windows 32/64 bits installers can be downloaded from [this repository](http://download.kde.org/stable/digikam/6.1.0/). -Rendez-vous in few months for the next 6.2.0 release and a presentation of students who will contribute to the project while GOsC 2019 event. +Rendez-vous in few months for the next 6.2.0 release and a presentation of students who will contribute to the project during the GOsC 2019 event. Happy digiKaming... - -