Current version
2.0
Quanta 2.0 Press Release
Everyone's favorite web development tool for KDE is returning big time.
Hello to all the Quanta faithful! During recent weeks I've
received a lot of emails about Quanta Plus. That's amazing when you
consider that we have not released a new version of the GPL'd Quanta
since early this year. I have spent a lot of time answering these
emails and now is a good time to try to answer a lot at once as well
as give those of you pining for a superior GPL'd Quanta some good
news that has been long awaited. Here we go. First of all we
released the 2.0 version of Quanta Plus GPL'd Wednesday,
December 5th. I want to give you a little history,
the story of the Quanta split and a look at the present,
the future and how you can play a part.
A little history...
First of all some general information.
I joined the Quanta project early on, serving as a design
consultant. Dmitry and Alex, the the original Quanta developers,
became my partners and my friends. They are very skilled
programmers. My most useful contributions came in other areas. I
played a large part in the design decisions that helped to make
Quanta such a productive tool. I also helped my friends/former
partners financially as well as sending them hardware and CDs. Now
my friends have created the proprietary Quanta Gold and are
busily doing the things required of a commercial product. I have
been spending as much time as I can learning C++, working on my
business interestes and developing new developer relationships.
The GPL'd Quanta lives on and I am doing what I can to
carry it forward. In fact if anything it appears Quanta will have much
more development time in the future than before.
The Quanta split
I have gotten a lot of questions and comments regarding the status of Quanta and about Quanta Gold.
There has been a great deal of
confusion. Now that Quanta Gold has
been released commercially, more people than ever are interested in
GPL'd version. I have received as many e-mails about Quanta in the
past few weeks as we did in our peak production.
Dmitry and Alex wanted to produce an commercial version of Quanta and
retail it through theKompany. I was willing to look into it for them.
TheKompany was not interested in the GPL'd KDE version Quanta as they
wanted to develop it cross platform, which KDE is not. That was logical as they
could not even use it for a demo however I was not interested
in a commercial cross platform version of Quanta. I did not want to stay with the rest
of the team if it was going in a different direction.
I elected to remain on the GPL'd version of Quanta. Unfortunately this
produced some delays with a new release... but at no time did I waiver in
my commitment to the GPL'd Quanta Plus. I like
having that extra level of control over my development tools. Additinally I
am committed to Quanta Plus as a KDE application. I believe that
the advantages KDE provides me as a developer and a user can't be beat.
Judging from the e-mails that I've received, I am not alone.
For the record I would like to say I have nothing against commercial
software and I wish my friends Dmitry and Alex all the success in the
world. However this version of Quanta is the one that is compelling to me
on so many levels... I decided to redouble my efforts to bring my vision
for it into being.
I wanted to release this statement with code (because anything but code
is just talk ;) to let all our users know that the GPL'd program continues
and I hope this will stem the tide of emails I get regarding the split.
Quanta today
Quanta Plus is not dead!
Long live GPL'd software and long live
GPL'd Quanta Plus.
Of all the emails I receive, my favorties are from people in
far-off lands who can barely afford a computer let alone commercial
software. Free software makes sense for having control of your code.
Free software can also save large organizations a lot of money too.
But to me the impact is most significant where it helps those less
fortunate around the world to develop skills that can leverage their
lifestyles to high levels as well as enriching them personally by
just being able to experience what we take for granted.
About a dozen developers have contacted me in recent months about
helping out. Thank you. Let's do it! I have a lot I have to do. I
have to update the Quanta site, set up a new developer mail list and
answer emails and make patchs for the long awaited 2.0 version. I made
am effort to email everyone who expressed an interest in helping. If I
missed please email me again.
One very exciting development is
the addition of András Mantia who is currently living in Finland. András is the author of Kallery. András will be
moving back to Romania and we are
planning on teaming up with him so that he can be committed to working with us full time. András will be focused on
insuring constant development on Quanta, implementing new features and squashing bugs. I will swing back in action
overseeing the project and coding when I can. I have a number of web developers in training right now. Each of them
has been handed a four CD set of software including a recent Linux distro, many KDE based tools like
Quanta, Cervisia,
Kfilereplace, Kompare,
Kallery,
KImageMapEditor, Kaptain
and more. These tools plus open source Java tools, GNU compilers,
CVS, Apache web servers, PHP and more would literally cost me thousands of dollars per person if I were to offer closed
source alternatives. Therefore my company is dedicated to commit a portion of all profits to the open source community.
We are looking to do this in a responsible manner and with the understanding that we are open source people making a
living on the internet.
The future of Quanta
What can you look forward to with Quanta? First of all we have our new release for KDE 2.2x. This release has been
debugged so those people who had problems compiling PR2 should get it immediately. Second it has a lot of little touches
including a fix for the file tabs always resetting to the leftmost position when you have lots of files open, lots of
fixes in projects, the ability to do file management in the project tree and a lot of small finishing details. Next
on the agenda is to add our templating abilities and a few other productivity features to the 2x version. We will be
making some other modifications to make Quanta more suitable for production web work. There are a list of features
in planning for KDE 3. Those features include the following. Some of these will be KDE 3 only and some will be back
ported.
- WYSIWYG HTML editing with user definable rule sets
- Parsing of linked documents like CSS and PHP includes for easy CSS drop downs and auto completion
- DTD recognition for enabling new tagging capabilities
- Removal of hard coded HTML base (It will plug in like XML or any other tag language) making Quanta more
easily adapted to diverse uses as a tag editor
- Direct data management integration for database design and writing data driven pages
- Enhanced ability to create dialogs quickly (or on the fly) for user coded functions like object oriented PHP
- Loadable, savable, sharable toolbars
- Context sensitive tool bars and project toolbars
- CVS integration with Cervisia as well as CVS oriented site management tools for use even with sites that
don't have CVS capabilities
- Full use of DCOP scripting and kparts
- A number of enhancements to facilitate object oriented site design and management
The objective of GPL'd Quanta has not changed. We want to produce the best web development tool in
the world for professional web development. Since it runs on the best desktop that's only fitting.
It needs to be usable by newbies but it needs to enable seasoned designers to be extremely productive.
Also I have to say that I have come to the conclusion that among the most
important details for me is that Quanta Plus continue to provide cutting edge features with the freedom of the
GPL behind it. Everyone on the internet ought to be able to get the very best tools free. Anyone can
in turn play a part in making that tool better for all of us... and that cannot be beat.
You can play a part...
You can play a part in the development of Quanta. It's simple and easy. Even if you are not a
talented C++ programmer there are a number of things you can do. For activities you can help with docs,
help us provide service to Quanta users with forums and email or help with setting up tagging for new
web languages. To support Quanta you can contact us
if you want to contribute. I recommend that companies
begin thinking along the lines of some degree of open source support, financial or developer contributions,
as a part of the cost of doing business. You can also support businesses that support Quanta such as
Kitty Hooch catnip toys or
Virtual Artisans web design (sorry we have been too busy to finish the new site).
Finally I would like to say a word of thanks to all those in the KDE and Linux community who have said
such nice things about us and sent me so many great emails. I have come to realize wealth beyond imagination
just in the joy of knowing how many people have been touched by this project. I would like to assure everyone
that my commitment is many fold what it was in the past to make Quanta Plus the greatest web development tool
on the planet!
Best Regards
Eric Laffoon
Quanta Plus Project Lead
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