[dot] The Road to KDE 4: Kalzium and KmPlot

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1170113778/

From: Troy Unrau <troy.unrau at gmail.com>
Dept: so-they-can-learn-to-be-nerds-too
Date: Monday 29/Jan/2007, @15:36

The Road to KDE 4: Kalzium and KmPlot
=====================================

   I'll take care of this as I have the previous entries in the series -
dannya
     Since not all of the development for KDE 4 is in backend 
technologies, this week features two of applications from the  KDE EDU
[http://edu.kde.org/] team:  Kalzium [http://edu.kde.org/kalzium/], a
feature-filled  chemistry reference tool, and KmPlot
[http://edu.kde.org/kmplot/], a powerful equation graphing and
visualization program.


     These educational tools have received a lot of work for KDE 4.   In
particular, Kalzium and KmPlot developments are happening at an  amazing
rate.

     Kalzium (German word for calcium) has been a part of KDE since 
version 3.1 and is now one of the most useful applications developed  by
the KDE EDU team.  Initially it was just a program that displayed  the
periodic table, alongside some useful numbers like atomic  weights,
bioling points, etc.  It was later extended to include a  lot of
background information on the elements, and more detailed  chemistry
information (such as emission spectra) which made it a  very useful
chemistry reference.

     In KDE 3.5.5 (which I used for these screenshots, even though 
3.5.6 was released last week), Kalzium looks something like this  when
first loaded:

Click for  fullsize.

     You can see that the interface is pretty simple, and presents a 
lot of information.  If you click on an element it brings up even  more
information on its properties.

     The main user interface in KDE 4 does not look that different, 
except for the fact that Qt 4 introduces some appearance changes,  and
there are some more icons (some that haven't been drawn yet) in  the
toolbar.  Here's a peak at Kalzium in the KDE 4 development  series:

Click for  fullsize.

     So Kalzium is visually quite similar between versions at this 
point. However, the important thing to note in the KDE 4 screenshot  is
the tools menu.  In KDE 3.5.5, this menu contains only Plot Data  and
Glossary.

     Plot Data shows the elements plotted in a variety of useful ways, 
such as mass, radius, electronegativity, etc. while the Glossary
[http://edu.kde.org/kalzium/glossary.php]  shows definitions for many of
the more common chemical terms.  It is  apparently missing the above
mentioned electronegativity, so  evidently there is still room for
improvement here.  Making  improvements to the Glossary would be a great
opportunity for a  chemistry inclined person to contribute to Kalzium in
KDE 4 without  having to be a programmer.

     Anyway, back to the new Tools.  I'll focus on a few of the newly 
developed tools that will make Kalzium even more useful in KDE 4:

     The isotope table will display a list of isotopes and their decay 
methods - as a geologist for example, it is important for me to know 
that Potassium-40 usually decays by electron capture.

     The new equation solver is also quite useful, as seen in the 
following screenshot provided by Kalzium lead Carsten Niehaus:



     You basically just punch in a chemical equation leaving letters  in
place of the numbers you are looking for, and it splits out a  response.
 In high school chemistry, students are expected to be  able to solve
these sorts of equations manually, but like most  equations, once you
solve enough of them, it simply becomes tedious.   This equation solver
can save a lot of time for complex  equations.

     And finally, the most visible change to Kalzium is the inclusion 
of the Kalzium 3D work, which turns the program into a 3D molecule 
viewer.  Initially, it was developed by the Kalzium developers for  use
in this application only, but some collaboration has since  happened and
it will now be using libavogadro a library jointly  developed by the
Kalzium and Avogadro [http://sourceforge.net/projects/avogadro/] 
developers.

     According to the Kalzium developers work is progressing on  porting
the 3D modeller to use libavagadro, an effort led by  Donald Curtis,
providing a more general/powerful framework for  rendering/manipulating
molecules with Qt and OpenGL library.  It is  shared between Kalzium and
Avogadro (and more).  Avogadro is a much more advanced molecular
modelling programs, useful for  creating the actual molecule files, and
doing quantum chemistry.   Kalzium 3D will simply act as a viewer for
files constructed using  these programs.

     Kalzium developer Benoît Jacob submits the following screenshot 
showing the 3D molecule viewer in action using the new Kalzium 3D 
functionality.  This functionality is already SVN as this  article goes
to press, however work continues with libavogadro  integration.

Click for  fullsize.

     Kalzium will likely ship with a library of common molecules ready 
to view provided by the BlueObelisk  project
[http://wiki.cubic.uni-koeln.de/bowiki/index.php/Main_Page].  Thanks to
the OpenBabel [http://openbabel.sourceforge.net/] library, it  should
also be able to open molecule files in a huge variety of  formats (I
counted 62 file formats that it already supports).

     On to our next KDE EDU feature: KmPlot.  For a while already,  this
application has had the ability to plot regular functions,  parametric
functions, and polar functions, as well as show  derivatives (or regular
functions) and a few other goodies.  It has  been useful as an equation
visualization tool, but the interface has  been awkward, with many
little cluttered dialogs to fight with.

     Below is KmPlot in KDE 3.5.5 with it's default settings, and  three
functions plotted, one of each type:



     The dialogs used to plot these equations look something like  this,
except there is one unique dialog for each type of plot:



     Here's a quick look of the new KmPlot interface with the same 
three functions plotted.  No more dialogs to mess with, and the  plots
can be in shapes other than square!  Plus Qt 4 gives  everything a nice
anti-aliased touch.

Click for  fullsize.

     KmPlot has received a huge amount of work, and should be one of 
the KDE 4's killer apps for students, engineers, and more.  It plots 
differential equations now, has a new equation editor, and (as seen  in
the above screenshot) gives tips as to how to correct your  equations.

     The new equation editor is shown below with a differential 
equation being edited:



     As you can see, it's much easier to enter an equation when you  can
design the functions in a nice syntax checking editor like this  one. 
There is a lot more work going into KmPlot than I can describe  in just
this article, so if you're interested in more information,  check out
its development status  page.
 [http://edu.kde.org/kmplot/development.php]
     One note before I leave you:  The KWin that you see is KDE  3.5.5's
KWin as I was loading these applications from my KDE 3.5.5  installation
this week to take the screenshots.  This is mostly due  to the fact that
I'm testing out a bunch of experimental branches of  applications in my
KDE 4 installation (mainly kwin_composite), but  they have a side effect
of making my environment too unstable at the  moment to get good
screenshots.

     KDE EDU is a growing project, with many great applications being 
developed for a wide variety of age groups.  They will have support  for
Windows and Mac as well, thanks to the improved QT 4 and KDE 4 
libraries, and should become more popular programs as a result.   Since
there is so much great work happening here, expect some other  KDE EDU
applications to show up in future articles.