Kraft Version 0.95

The authors are happy to announce the new release 0.95 of Kraft. Kraft is free desktop software for managing office documents like quotes and invoices in the small enterprise for the Linux desktop. Kraft Version 0.95 With version 0.95 we do a big step forward in the way of generating documents: Until now (more than fifteen years!) Kraft uses the ReportLab python library to create high quality PDF documents. While this has served us well, it has always been cumbersome to adopt the template for users needs. ReportLab uses a XML format as the template which has a bit of a steep learning curve and is not really easy with syntax. ...

August 28, 2020 · 2 min · 391 words · Me

Open Search Foundation

recently I learned about the Open Search Foundation in the public broadcast radio (Bayern 2 Radio Article). That surprised me: I had not heard about OSF before, even though I am active in the field of free software and culture. But this new foundation made it into the mainstream broadcast already. Reason enough to take a closer look. It is a very good sign to have the topic of internet search in the news. It is a fact that one company has a gigantic market share in searching which is indeed a threat to the freedom of internet users. The key to be found in the web is the key to success with whatever message or service a web site might come up with, and all that is controlled by one enterprise driven by commercial interests. That should be realized by a broad audience. ...

June 14, 2020 · 7 min · 1338 words · Me

Welcome PDF Quirk

How often have you scanned a letter, a certificate or whatever and looked for the right way to call $UTILITY to convert it to a PDF that can be shared via internet? For this very common use case I could not find a tool to make that really easy for the Linux desktop. Given my mission to help making the Linux desktop more common in the small business world (do you know Kraft?) I spent some time starting this little project. ...

May 21, 2020 · 2 min · 238 words · Me

Kraft Version 0.90

This blog is to inform that Kraft, the Qt and KDE based desktop software to manage documents like invoices and quotes in your small company was released in version 0.90 recently. Followup Documents A great new feature is the completely reworked handling of so called follow-up documents. Kraft has this feature to help dealing with docs that follow on a certain kind of predecessor doc in the business flow, such as an invoice follows on an offer once the work has been finished. ...

December 31, 2019 · 3 min · 459 words · Me

ownCloud and CryFS

It is a great idea to encrypt files on client side before uploading them to an ownCloud server if that one is not running in controlled environment, or if one just wants to act defensive and minimize risk. Some people think it is a great idea to include the functionality in the sync client. I don’t agree because it combines two very complex topics into one code base and makes the code difficult to maintain. The risk is high to end up with a kind of code base which nobody is able to maintain properly any more. So let’s better avoid that for ownCloud and look for alternatives. ...

August 17, 2019 · 3 min · 621 words · Me

Eighty Percent ownCloud

Recently the German computer magazin C’t posted an article about file sync solutions (“Unter eigener Regie”, C’t 23, 2018) with native sync clients. The article was pretty positive about the FOSS solution of… Nextcloud! I was wondering why they had not choosen ownCloud’s client as my feeling is that ownCloud is way more busy and innovative developing the desktop client for file synchronization together with community. [caption id=“attachment_943” align=“alignright” width=“338”] Code lines changed as of Nov. 10, 2018[/caption] ...

December 23, 2018 · 3 min · 442 words · Me

Change in Professional Life

This November was very exciting for me so far, as I was starting a new job at a company called Heidolph. I left SUSE after working there for another two years. My role there that was pretty far away from interesting technical work, which I missed more and more, so I decided to grab the opportunity to join in a new adventure. Heidolph is a mature German engineering company building premium laboratory equipment. It is based in Schwabach, Germany. For me it is the first time that I am working in company that doesn’t do only software. At Heidolph, software is just one building block besides mechanical and electronic parts and tons of special know how. That is a very different situation and a lot to learn for me, but in a small, co-located team of great engineers, I am able to catch up fast in this interesting area. ...

November 23, 2018 · 2 min · 337 words · Me

Kraft Version 0.82

A new release of Kraft, the Qt- and KDE based software to help to organize business docs in small companies, has arrived. A couple of days ago version 0.82 was released. It mainly is a bugfix release, but it also comes with a few new features. Users were asking for some new functions that they needed to switch to Kraft with their business communication, and I am always trying to make that a priority. ...

October 19, 2018 · 2 min · 231 words · Me

Kraft Version 0.81 Released

I am happy to announce the release of Kraft version 0.81. Kraft is a Qt based desktop application that helps you to handle documents like quotes and invoices in your small business. Version 0.81 is a bugfix release for the previous version 0.80, which was the first stable release based on Qt5 and KDE Frameworks5. Even though it came with way more new features than just the port, it’s first release has proven it’s stability in day-to-day business now for a few month. ...

June 17, 2018 · 1 min · 142 words · Me

Kraft Version 0.80 Released

I am happy to announce the release of the stable Kraft version 0.80 (Changelog). Kraft is desktop software to manage documents like quotes and invoices in the small business. It focuses on ease of use through an intuitive GUI, a well choosen feature set and ensures privacy by keeping data local. After more than a dozen years of life time, Kraft is now reaching a new level: It is now completely ported to Qt5 / KDE Frameworks 5 and with that, it is compatible with all modern Linux distributions again. ...

April 3, 2018 · 3 min · 516 words · Me