[Kde-finance-apps] Finance Sprint article on the dot

[Alvaro Soliverez]

Here is a draft, with more info on the 3rd day, and little epilogue
with info about the group and its past and current work.
-------------------------------------

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 :

The KMyMoney gang:

Thomas BAUMGART, whose company (Syrocon) kindly hosted the event
Alvaro SOLIVEREZ, from Argentina
Cristian ONET, from Romania

The Kraft bunch:

Klaas FREITAG, from Germany
Thomas RICHARD, from Belgium

The Skrooge guy:

Guillaume DE BURE, from France

Arnaud DUPUIS, developper of Assuma, was also supposed to join from
France, but couldn't make it due to personal issues.

Day 1, meet & greet

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 ?

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.

Teams took some time to present their respective applications, what
they currently do, and what they might become in the future.

KMyMoney

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.

The current stable is still based on KDE 3, but the team is working
full steam on porting it to KDE 4 in KDE playground. Its philosophy is
to have the rigourous philosophy of the double entry system, but
hiding its complexity from the user. It is suitable for a range of
users from individuals to small business organizations.

Skrooge

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 KDE Extragear.

Skrooge philosophy is to keep a simple interface while allowing
powerful functions such as advanced reporting or automatic processing
of operations.

Kraft

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 ERP.
Kraft allows them to create their products catalogue, manage the
clients database using KAdressBook, and manage invoices using a
templating system.

Kraft's latest version is based on KDE 4.

Day 2, we have a plan

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.

Oxygen Icons

When KMyMoney and Skrooge started to talk in 2008, one of the first
possible common work that arose was requesting nicer icons to the
Oxygen Team. 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.

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 here.

Nuno added it to his TODO, so we're confident these icons will see the
light, sooner or later.

KDE Finance Stack

The KDE Finance Stack is an idea from Thomas and Klaas, who
envisionned braoder interactions between KDE Financial applications,
but also between KDE Finance and the rest of KDE. We started by
listing a few Use Cases to define more precisely what we have in mind,
like this one:

Fred purchases the album of his favorite band in an online music store
and pays 5,99$ for it. The commitment is done in Amarok. 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.

Read other Use Cases for more details.

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 Alkimia, the arabian word that is the basis for the word Alchemy.
We found it pretty good, so we sticked with it ;).

Day 3, focusing on Alkimia

Once we had a set of use cases, we worked on a preliminary
architecture for this framework. DBus, Akonadi, and SQlite were
discussed, and an initial architecture came to light, also with a
blueprint for a prototype that would allow us to test drive the
concepts we had discussed. Later on, this blueprint would become the
source for a Season of KDE project that is being worked on at the
moment. Also, we discussed some more possibilities for Alkimia,
including handling some tasks currently done individually by each
application, like online quotes and file import/export. Afterwards, we
wrapped up the discussion and everyone left to take their ride home.
Exhausted, but extremely happy with the results.

History and future of the group
The KDE Finance group is fairly recent. It started with some
discussions about application integration between the developers of
Kraft and KMyMoney. Later on, when Skrooge became known, they were
invited too. The discussions lingered during 2008 and early 2009.
Then, a mailing list was created and there was a proposal for a
sprint, which was delayed until KMyMoney and Kraft were ported to
KDE4. During January and February of this year, a date for the sprint
was decided, more developers were invited into the group, and clear
goals were set for the group. The sprint and the joint work later
during SoK have strengthened the group. Even as everyone continues to
work hard on their own applications and will continue to do so, the
KDE Finance group is slowly evolving into a team and results are
starting to show. Alkimia is slowly making its appearance in
playground, taking shape as a promising future pillar of KDE.






On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Guillaume DE BURE
<guillaume.debure at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Le mardi 22 juin 2010 21:56:54, Alvaro Soliverez a écrit :
> > On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 5:41 PM, Guillaume DE BURE <
> > guillaume.debure at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > > After our release, I have a little more time, so if you still need
> > > > help on this, let me know.
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Alvaro
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Kde-finance-apps mailing list
> > > > Kde-finance-apps at kde.org
> > > > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-finance-apps
> > > >
> > > Thanks ! I'm working on it, will send a first draft soon :)
> > >
> > >
> > Guillaume, any update on the article?
> >
> Sorry, life's been ridiculously busy over here in the past weeks... Attached is my draft "as is", please feel free to comment/update/submit it to the dot after modification/anything else... :)
>
> I red, links I wanted to add, but did not do yet.
>
> Guillaume
>
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>