For me as an occasional code contributor, I notice that I find it especially tedious to get a proven local runtime environment ready for local testing of non-trivial programs. For example, this tutorial https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Build_from_source#Set_up_the_runtime_environment describes which environment variables should be set for this purpose. Quite a few and I am not sure if all entries are still valid. I guess every developer ends up with his/her own script or scripts to handle this issue (including having some convenience message on the bash prompt showing if the correct variables are set). Maybe this could be extracted to a maintained and standardized script that can be used anywhere where Qt/KF5 based-programs are developed. The script and a guide how one would use it in combination with Kdevelop (or automatic integration with the Launch > Environments) could facilitate getting started.

Thanks, I've informed sysadmin. Apparently the server lost various slides ...

@hein the link to the slides is broken: https://conf.kde.org/system/attachments/99/original/Input_Methods_in_Plasma_5.pdf returns to:

Some ideas from a n00b contributor:

Lots of great suggestions here, I will try to add the ideas from the comments and the video asap. Of course, feel free to edit the initial post directly and include them yourself. =)

In T6875#114456, @chfanzil wrote:

@neofytosk, These are good ideas to overcome these problems. Do you think we should now try and approach people that already upload videos/tutorials in order to see if they're interested in this project? Or should we wait for the final vote?

On one hand, having people with these skills interested in contributing could potentially increase the chances of this proposal being voted. But I would be careful in explaining that the voting is still pending.

KDE looses contributors because of large gap between joining the community and making any actual contribution. To overcome this situation we can do two things

"... I don't want to switch to Windows 10."

@gregormi, Exactly! We must respond to this feeling and not ignore it. This is why we should prepare for this event which is going to happen in the upcoming years, and offer them a way to make a clean and easy transition - by training them. In that respect, the timeline for the BHAG is corresponding to this event.
People say that when Windows Vista or Windows 8 emerged, GNU/linux desktop wasn't ready for the masses.
Let us aim for something completely different: Help as many Windows 7 Power Users to switch to Plasma/linux.

+1 for Patreon/Liberapay page.

Please do merge. The comments will still be available in the ticket that is marked as a duplicate. And it will be linked from here automatically when you merge it in.

I've added 'Windows 7 Power Users' as a target groups.
...
Here is a short quote from the conclusion of the post

I've added 'Windows 7 Power Users' as a target groups.
Why? Recently I've read a post titled "The Purpose of Linux: A Windows Power User’s Perspective" (https://raywoodcockslatest.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/windows-power-user-linux/), that raised some interesting points. Mainly - that Windows 7 Power Users look for an alternative - They don't want to switch to Windows 10 (though eventually their OS wouldn't be supported anymore), because it will limit them and make them simple users.
We should also target this market share as Plasma and KDE apps can suit them greatly (Simple by default, Powerful when needed)
Here is a short quote from the conclusion of the post:

The missing piece, in those mission statements and purposes, was an articulation of a realistic target market. This post has suggested that Windows power users comprise an appropriate and significant target market for Linux. For such users, the objective would not be to make child’s play of computing, much less to draw the masses away from Microsoft. It would be, rather, to create a computing environment in which basic commands and appealing graphics, along with clear hardware and software guidance, would enable an intelligent but busy knowledge worker to get things done with minimal disruption, learning helpful and manageable bits of Linux as needed along the way.

@colomar Thank you for the link! This is sounds like a plan! Communicating this information - when ready - should be done using the methods mentioned in #114484

In T7116#114498, @ervin wrote:

Yes, it'd be nice to see them finally merging, we're late in the discussion phase now. Also as a bonus, it would be awesome if the consolidated proposal could contain aspects coming from the talk we held with David Faure this year about the developer story. That'd make for a very strong one then, and would probably add at least David's name in the list of people willing to put work into it. ;-)

Yes, it'd be nice to see them finally merging, we're late in the discussion phase now. Also as a bonus, it would be awesome if the consolidated proposal could contain aspects coming from the talk we held with David Faure this year about the developer story. That'd make for a very strong one then, and would probably add at least David's name in the list of people willing to put work into it. ;-)

@neofytosk Sure, I'm fine with that.

Yup, totally agree with merging as these two obviously overlap. Am just not sure if and how merging can be done through phabricator without all the current comments being lost.

I can close my similar proposal (https://phabricator.kde.org/T6832) if folks are okay with me editing the description of this one to include the elements that I mention in mine.

@colomar I strongly support the merge. I just added https://phabricator.kde.org/T7116#114484 that would also apply to this ticket. So what shall I do? Link it? Repost it here aswell? Or wait for the merge? ;)

In addtion to @neofytosk , I would like to propose some ideas that may be achieveable in the near future:

@neofytosk, These are good ideas to overcome these problems. Do you think we should now try and approach people that already upload videos/tutorials in order to see if they're interested in this project? Or should we wait for the final vote?

So, what do we do with this proposal and https://phabricator.kde.org/T7116 now? They are so similar that it really makes little sense from my perspective to keep them separated.
Can @ngraham and @neofytosk maybe see how to proceed with merging them into one which contains all aspects of both?
Otherwise votes would end up split between the two, effectively reducing the chance for either of them to be selected.

In T6875#112772, @chfanzil wrote:

I would like to add a link to a sort-of course/introduction to Plasma made by BigDaddyLinux's on Youtube. Maybe we can learn something from that. His videos helped me when I first started working with Plasma. He has made a lot of video dedicated to different parts of Plasma desktop - Dolphin, System settings, Window management, Keyboard shortcuts, etc.
Here is a link to the videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbKR0OXmf-fg-olEJLukx6ytKN2CkVDjZ
I think we should either try to improve on that work or add more software as you suggested (Krita, Digikam, Okular, kdenlive, coding with Qt/frameworks, etc.)
And of course concentrate all of this knowledge in one place and make it KDE official. We can put it in Youtube also, but it should be under the same 'user'. So that people will be able to find it all in one place.

These are indeed educational videos, thanks for sharing. And yes, that is the idea, have all these under the KDE umbrella. We could even reach out to people that already put work into this, and ask if they are willing to help in this effort.

What worries me a bit, is that the software sometimes changes so rapidly that the current version might look different from that which is shown on our videos. For that matter, the real-world courses are always up-to-date, But they too have drawback as they are constrained by time and space (which the online courses don't). Anyway our most important goal is increasing the number of power-users no matter how.

Yes, for videos it is kind of an issue redoing the whole thing once something changes. Annotations could be inserted though to inform people of minor changes. And perhaps the videos could be reviewed periodically to check they are still relevant.

Here are some further thoughts I've made on this:

@navarromorales Mentoring is indeed a very important aspect of improving the contribution process and it can help solving issues like the ones you describe.

@laysrodrigues Yes, that is exactly what this proposal is about :)

Well, if I'm not wrong we can develop an infrastructure with software that allows people to build their smart home systems. People go to Google and Amazon because it's easy and it's already working. But we can develop one more solution that cares about privacy and leaves the user to extend the project without the limitations that Google and Amazon have.
Amazon, for example, allows you to build your own echo device, you can check on this video: https://youtu.be/vreyairMTwY?t=1m40s
There's also this open source platform, Home Assistant, wrote in Python, and is quite modular on the case of automating stuff for home.
What I mean is, we still have time to join the "market", and I think that we already have the boilerplate to do it.
We have on one side the IoT market, that is basically accessible and open source, and the other the software side, that lacks on good and open source solutions(at least in my point of view)

I am definitely all for getting design more involved, but I feel that this proposal needs to be more detailed and concrete before I'm ready to sign it.

I also agree with @colomar
In any case, just to keep in mind the current official status of document format handlers in okular:
https://okular.kde.org/formats.php

Agreed, I didn't mean to start a whole new branch of the conversation. Just mention that it might be beneficial to also to focus on basic productivity software as a part of this goal.

I'm happy that there is a lot of discussion happening here, but maybe the discussion about annotations in Okular is getting a bit too much into detail for this point in the process.
So let's maybe summarize it for now as "There are potentially some issues with compatibility of Okular annotations, so if this goal gets selected, this could be one of the things we look into, together with academic / research users.

Usually I fill in very simple PDF's forms and annotate pdf with okular. I also exchange them with colleges and secretaries at the institute where I work. They work mostly with Win and to a lesser extend with mac. So far I have had very few problems in terms of rendering the information or the annotations, really very few. However, it might be due to the kind of very simple forms and annotations I'm processing in Okular.

In T6895#113154, @ngraham wrote:

Actually Xournal also has PDF annotation features. But there's a broader point: as a former Mac user, let me bring up the unfortunate truth that Okular can't hold a candle to Apple's Preview, *especially* in the annotations department. That's the standard Okular needs to aspire to. Right now Okular's annotations have a major problem: they aren't consistently compatible with viewers that aren't Okular. Annotations are often not visible when printing or viewing with another problem. This is of course tracked by many bugs:

In T6895#113154, @ngraham wrote:

Right now Okular's annotations have a major problem: they aren't consistently compatible with viewers that aren't Okular.

In T6895#113166, @ngraham wrote:

I don't know the technical details. All I know is that I can't remember the last time in the past 16 years of being a (prior) full-time macOS user when a PDF I annotated didn't print properly or display properly in Acrobat Reader, Foxit Reader, or anything else I happened to use to open it.

does apple's preview implement an open standard when it comes to annotations? if there is one in the PDF specs (i'm not an expert on this) it should be implemented. if apple uses its own proprietary standard, it would be a waste of time, because apple often changes those and leaves you stranded (like the multiple times they broke OpenPGP support in mail, and still do from time to time).

In T6895#113154, @ngraham wrote:

Right now Okular's annotations have a major problem: they aren't consistently compatible with viewers that aren't Okular. Annotations are often not visible when printing or viewing with another problem.

Beside the scientific-oriented software, we could list some general software with great application in science. I am talking about Okular because the feature of write/read annotations in the PDF is unique in free software world;

In T6895#113086, @filipesaraiva wrote:

Reading the thread, KBibTex was not cited. It is an interesting bibtex manage software, in KDE4 times there was an integration with Kile. KBibTex was ported to Qt5/KF5.

CCing this thread to @thomasfischer, the KBibTex author.

I like the idea of improve the penetration of KDE software in research and academia. Maybe it is not suitable as an effort from all community, but see it as an effort from a specific subgroup is interesting.

In T7124#112443, @ngraham wrote:

We shouldn't try to jam mobile UI conventions into a desktop platform except in the very small number of limited cases where they make sense for specific, well-understood reasons.

I think it's important to keep in mind our users and their use cases. 10-15 years in the future, current trends will reach their logical conclusions, and most casual computing (media consumption, communication, playing games) will probably be done with large phones or tablets because they're more convenient. So why would anyone still use a boring old laptop or desktop? Productivity. These are still the best platforms for accomplishing real work, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. So any design changes we make for the desktop can't compromise productivity or ergonomics for intensive work. We have to remember that people who are trying to get work done *hate* change for change's sake. They don't want high fashion design, they want to be able to create at the speed of thought. That means things like better ergonomics and responsiveness, more consistent keyboard shortcuts, more consistent visual design, and greater ease of learning new software. A really excellent example of this is the ability to search for menu items present in Unity's HUD and the macOS Help menu. We should be willing to mine other *desktop* platforms for ideas, not mobile platforms.

In T6895#112961, @meikm wrote:

FWIW, there's some ubuntu PPAs with daily builds of the KF5 port. i'm using one for work for quite some time now. if you have something particular on your mind, we're always happy for suggestions. we know that a stable release is overdue (the latest stable 0.6.5 still uses KDE 4). please help us find issues that still need fixing. i guess we should keep it about broader strategy here, and discuss particular technical issues someplace else, right?

In T6895#112935, @ngraham wrote:

If we can broaden the scope to include some of those use cases, with the knowledge that this will pay dividends for academic users in non-STEM fields, then I would be willing to climb aboard and put work into this.

I think in this regard KDE could collaborate with the document foundation to strengthen the integration of Libre Office and the desktop,

I agree with ngraham it would be nice if KDE somehow can address to those academics in the humanities and social science institutes. Word processor, slide presentations, and a reference manager (e.g. Zotero) are the main tools used here. As many her know right now MS office provides the common tools for that purpose, even when the interfaces are not friendly. It is a matter of custom and market pressure. I think in this regard KDE could collaborate with the document foundation to strengthen the integration of Libre Office and the desktop, along with what it is mentioned as campaigning the use of KDE at academic conferences in the humanities and social sciences. University and city libraries is another place to go bc usually fresh-students get their introduction to those tools in those places.

In T6895#112936, @GreatEmerald wrote:

RKWard really needs more work porting to KF5!

I am interested in this, and specifically for the case of amd64 tablets (I'm biased because I have one :D And have been looking forward to something like this since the age of Plasma Active). Right now GNOME is really far ahead in that use case, since Plasma Mobile assumes a phone (and so portrait mode, dialer, etc.). Also DPI scaling needs more work. And the ability to switch between Mobile and Desktop would be sweet (as it is, I need to uninstall Desktop to be able to access Mobile, seemingly).
I've also written a post on my impression of the current state of Plasma Mobile in comparison with other mobile UIs on my blog.

That's a nice idea. I'm involved with a course that introduces Linux and programming concepts to students and I'd love to see more KDE representation. Last year we used XFCE, this year we'll most likely be using GNOME Flashback.

So far it looks like this goal does a good job of targeting the STEM fields. But I don't see as much attention being paid to the needs of fields in the humanities and social sciences. Folks in these fields aren't as technical, which is a blessing and a curse: they don't need as many esoteric pieces of software (Kile, RKWard, Cantor, KAlgebra, Step, KStars, LabPlot, etc), but they are more demanding of user-friendliness in the basic software and in greater need of a high-quality interoperable office suite (particularly the word processor). This is where Apple currently has a disproportionate market penetration owing to their strong focus on user-friendliness, an integrated hardware/software package, and compatibility with Microsoft Office.

This is hugely important, from an accessibility, internationalization as well as usability perspective. That's why I'd be happy to help with UX design and testing.

@meikm @asemke @sgerlach @evpokp It would be great if you could edit the task description and add your name in the "I am willing to put work into this" section, just to have the list of people.

I agree that we first need more insight what R&A really wants to define the goals more precisely. I can easily put my name under "willing to work on this" because i already work on LabPlot and plan to continue it anyway and my job is in R&A.

In T6895#112887, @asemke wrote:

In T6895#112620, @colomar wrote:

In T6895#112448, @lydia wrote:

Right now there is unfortunately no-one added under "I am willing to put work into this". Is that reflecting reality?

It's a bit strange / sad (?): There are 8 subscribers, but nobody in the "Willing to work on this" and only Bhushan in the "Interested" section of the description.

In T6895#112778, @colomar wrote:

Good point, being easily available on macOS and especially Windows is indeed key for establishing our apps in new sectors.
From your experience, how important is macOS compared to Windows?

In T6895#112789, @ngraham wrote:

In my experience, macOS is heavily over-represented in academia here in the USA. Much less so in Europe.

FTR I'm one of these people @colomar describes ;-)

In my experience, macOS is heavily over-represented in academia here in the USA. Much less so in Europe.

In T6895#112625, @evpokp wrote:

I would be interested to see development on this and I could help with some evangelism, but right now I don't use a lot of KDE software for academic work apart from using Plasma as my DE and I don't expect this to change soon, as the relevant (cited) soft are lagging behind the competition, at least for my areas of interest.

In T6895#112766, @meikm wrote:

i'm working on proposal 1) already (team RKWard). for instance, i was given the opportunity to do a software presentation at the 50th DGPs congress in 2016. the fact that i was given a full 90 min slot in the second largest hall can be seen as an indicator that there's actually a growing interest in software alternatives. i handed out USB sticks with a KDE live system, RKWard and various R packages, not only to invite participants to try it, but also to demonstrate that you are allowed to just give the software to all students and staff. it would already make a lot of sense to have a RKWard booth at such a conference. i'd gladly do that, so i guess you can count me in on "willing to put work into this". but without funding you can only do so much.

In T6895#112701, @neofytosk wrote:

I wonder if KDE people working on projects related to R&A are aware of this proposal. It would be great to hear their opinion. Can we get them involved?

In T7126#112488, @ngraham wrote:

A venn diagram of "People who care about privacy" and "people who buy and use smart home devices" doesn't have a lot overlap, I fear.

If you buy a device that monitors everything about your behavior, house, and life, haven't you already lost the battle by deciding that you don't really care about your privacy? I don't see how we can salvage this situation for people who aren't very interested in the concept. We might want them to care about privacy, but if they did, that would have an always listening spy gizmo in their house in the first place.