<p>On April 23rd, developpers from various finances-related KDE applications gathered in Francfort for the very first ever KDE Finances Sprint. The fellowship was composed of :</p>
<p>The <a href="http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net">KMyMoney</a> gang:</p>
<ul><li>Thomas BAUMGART, whose company (Syrocon) kindly hosted the event</li>
<li>Alvaro SOLIVEREZ, from Argentina</li>
<li>Cristian ONET, from Romania</li>
</ul>
<p>The <a href="http://kraft.sourceforge.net/">Kraft</a> bunch:</p>
<ul><li>Klaas FREITAG, from Germany</li>
<li>Thomas RICHARD, from Belgium</li>
</ul>
<p>The <a href="http://skrooge.org">Skrooge</a> guy:</p>
<ul><li>Guillaume DE BURE, from France</li>
</ul>
<p>Arnaud DUPUIS, developper of <a href="http://www.associationsubscribersmanager.org/">Assuma</a>, was also supposed to join from France, but couldn't make it due to personal issues.</p>
<h1>Day 1, meet & greet</h1>
<p>On Friday 23rd, after travelling from our various places, we all met in the Syrocon's office, located in a building facing the building that will soon become the new home of the Francfort Stock Exchange. Now, ain't the perfect place for a KDE Finance Sprint ?</p>
<p>We got some time to introduce ourselves, what were the chains of events that brought us that day into that room, discussing that highly improbable topic : writing KDE Applications dedicated to financial matters.</p>
<p>Teams took some time to present their respective applications, what they currently do, and what they might become in the future.</p>
<h2>KMyMoney</h2>
<p>KMyMoney is a long time player in the FOSS applications for personal finances management. Its origins goes back as far as KDE 1 ! It is probably the most reknown application in the KDE Finance Ecoystem.</p>
<p>The current stable is still based on KDE 3, but the team is working full steam on porting it to KDE 4 in <span style=" color:#e20800;">KDE playground</span>. Its philosophy is to have the rigourous philosophy of the <span style=" color:#e20700;">double entry system</span>, but hiding its complexity from the user. It is suitable for a range of users from individuals to small business organizations.</p>
<h2>Skrooge</h2>
<p>In the same area of personal finances management, Skrooge can be seen as KMyMoney's little brother. As opposed to the latter, Skrooge does not rely on the double entry system, and is only suitable for individuals. The project started in 2008, based on KDE 4, and is part of <span style=" color:#e20800;">KDE Extragear</span>.</p>
<p>Skrooge philosophy is to keep a simple interface while allowing powerful functions such as advanced reporting or automatic processing of operations.</p>
<h2>Kraft</h2>
<p>Kraft plays on a different field : it is an invoice management application, that can be used by small business organizations that don't want to go through the hassle of deploying a full blown <span style=" color:#e20700;">ERP</span>. Kraft allows them to create their products catalogue, manage the clients database using <span style=" color:#e20800;">KAdressBook</span>, and manage invoices using a templating system.</p>
<p>Kraft's latest version is based on KDE 4.</p>
<h1>Day 2, we have a plan</h1>
<p>With a clear vision of applications and their respective use cases, it was time to start producing work that could benefit to that whole Ecosystem. There were two main topics that we wanted to discuss when we built the agenda in the preceding weeks.</p>
<h2>Oxygen Icons</h2>
<p>When KMyMoney and Skrooge started to talk in 2008, one of the first possible common work that arose was requesting nicer icons to the <span style=" color:#e20800;">Oxygen Team</span>. As both applications were moving closer to KDE, it only made sense that the visual relationship needed reinforcement. But with both teams knee deep in development, the topic advanced rather slowly.</p>
<p>This face to face meeting was the perfect time to pick it up again, and extend the offer to Kraft guys. So we sat down a moment and focused on producing a list of requested icons that could benefit all three applications. the list can be found <span style=" color:#e20800;">here</span>.</p>
<p>Nuno added it to his TODO, so we're confident these icons will see the light, sooner or later.</p>
<h2>KDE Finance Stack</h2>
<p>The KDE Finance Stack is an idea from <strong>Alvaro or Thomas (?)</strong>, who envisionned braoder interactions between KDE Financial applications, but also between KDE Finance and the rest of KDE. We started by listing a few <a href="http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KdeFinance/Alkimia/Usecases">Use Cases</a> to define more precisely what we have in mind, like this one:</p>
<blockquote><p>Fred purchases the album of his favorite band in an online music store and pays 5,99$ for it. The commitment is done in <a href="http://amarok.kde.org/">Amarok</a>. Next time Fred starts KMyMoney or Skrooge it notifies him that he did this payment and if he wants to put it on the right account.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Read other Use Cases for more details.</p>
<p>A good part of the discussion was about finding a name for this component, so we had a small brainstorming session were we put some keywords about this thing (exchange, money, transfer...), and came up with <strong>Alkimia</strong>, the arabian word that is the basis for the word <em>Alchemy</em>. We found it pretty good, so we sticked with it ;).</p>
<h1>Day 3, focusing on Alkimia</h1>
<p></p>