About KDE 💻

KDE is an open-source organization in which several worldwide developers contribute their code to improve software and make it more advanced. For users of Linux and Unix, KDE offers a varied range of user workspace applications that allow interaction with these operating systems in a modern, graphical user interface. KDE's Plasma Desktop comes along with several other workspace applications to enhance the user experience.

KDE also consists of several Android applications, including Konqueror web browser, KDE connect, Dolphin file manager, Kontact, etc ... All of these open software and their developers make the KDE ecosystem robust and up to date with modern time.

Motivation to take part in SoK'24 🔥

I first came to know about KDE when I used their application KDE Connect. This application connects the Linux/UNIX desktop devices to the mobile devices to share the files in both systems. This application just blew the mind of an 18 yrs. old newbie developer. As of this, I started exploring the codebase of KDE software. While exploring the codebase, I learned a lot about the best coding practices followed in the codebase. It was also amazing to see how several developers from different parts of the globe collaboratively develops and maintains several software under KDE.

Being fascinated by this I applied for the KDE's mentorship program Season of KDE SoK'24 in the month of December. Under this mentorship, there were several projects listed but the project that caught my eye was "Extending the embedded documentation of Cantor Project".

My Project 🕸

Cantor is an application that lets you use several mathematical programming languages in a worksheet interface. It also allows you to share your worksheets with others. Under Cantor, several mathematical programming languages were supported including Octave, Maxima, R, Qalculate, etc... all of these programming languages have their separate set of documentation which can be downloaded from KDE Store Cantor section.

The problem that cantor developers faced was all of this documentation was not having a common look decreasing the user experience using different docs at the same time. Along with that, these documentation files are first needed to be converted into "Qt Help file format" from HTML files to be uploaded to the KDE store. To achieve this goal python scripting needed to be done by consuming the QT framework and extending the existing Python scripts.

Considering all of these facts I contacted my mentor Alexander Semke. He generously explained the whole project to me and clarified all my doubts regarding the project. Being a newbie in proposal writing I reached Karanjot Singh and Rudraksh Karpe for their selected project proposal of SoK'23 these two guys helped me a lot while drafting my proposal and solving even the minute doubts related to the proposal. Later on, I successfully submitted the initial draft of my proposal KDE invent repository.

Getting Selection Mail 🥳

I was like above the cloud when I got the selection mail from KDE. It was my first time writing a project proposal, and getting selected was just amazing. Later on, I talked with my mentor thanking him for trusting me for this project and also got valuable insights on what factors they ranked my proposal. My proposal can be found here.