KRename Interview - App of the Month

Mark Volkert interviews KRename author Dominik Seichter.

You can check out the overview of KRename.

Dominik Seichter

Dominik, you're the maintainer of krename. Please let us know who you are and how you started with the krename project?

My name is Dominik Seichter and I am 21 years old. Right now I am studying Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences in Rosenheim in the fourth semester.

As far as I can remember I started working on KRename in April 2001 about one year after having switched to Linux as my main desktop operating system. I did not know any C++ at this time so it took me till August to get the first working version out.

The main motivation for writing KRename was that I was annoyed by files which I copied from CDs I got with computer magazines, as they ended always up with all letters uppercase on my harddisk. This could have been done by some find/sed/awk magic, too, but KRename soon was also useful for sorting MP3s and photos which is harder to do with awk. Additionally I was looking for a programming project. And as a user friendly batch renamer was missing for KDE, KRename was a good point to start with open source development.

Who else should be mentioned to acknowledge KRename? What was their job within the project?

Stefan Onken has to be mentioned. Stonki (his nick on IRC) is hosting the KRename webpage on his server and is also responsible for the (IMHO) excellent design of our webpage. But the most important thing he did for KRename was to write hundreds of emails, in which he asked me for countless new features. He did not only kick my butt to further improve KRename, he helped also a lot with his outstanding testing and bug finding capabilities. Additionally he is giving support in our user forum as well as in our mailing list.

Besides Stefan, many other people were very helpful. So many that I sadly cannot mention them all here. A big thanks goes to all translators, packagers and to everyone who reported bugs or sent in patches!

Is KRename your first project, or have you started earlier with another work for KDE? Are you working on other projects?

KRename is my first project for KDE. Besides KRename I am working on two other projects for KDE at the moment. The first to mention is KBarcode which is a barcode and label printing application for KDE. The second project is called SchafKopf. Schafkopf is a popular Bavarian card game. As there is no free Schafkopf client, I decided to start one with a few friends.

In which language is KRename written and how did you developed it?

It is written in C++. I used to develop it using KDevelop which is an excellent IDE as it takes care of all the Makefile work and has also a great editor. But recently I switched to a more powerful "IDE" and I am a happy Emacs user now.

For many years KRename has offered very stable versions. What could we expect from the future, or is KRename complete?

KRename is basically feature complete. But now and then I get little feature requests and I do my best to integrate them all. Besides this I am trying to make KRename easier to use which is very important to me. Along with this I am also trying to improve the current user documentation.

There is still one missing feature left in KRename. It's the abillity to write meta information tags to files and to generate their information from the filename. This would be so useful when working with MP3s.

This year's KDE summit will take place in Dublin, Irland. Will you attend the meeting?

I really would like to come and finally meet some KDE developers. But August/September is usually the time of the year in which I am working full time, so I do not think I can make it to Dublin :-(.

Politicians, economists and software developers are heatedly discussing the subject of software patents in Europe. What is your point of view here? How would you personally be affected by software patents?

I hope that there will never be software patents in Europe! In my opinion software patents are an idea of the big software companies to protect themselves from smaller companies and free software. As far as I know most small to medium-sized software companies are against software patents in Europe. So only a small, but sadly very vocal minority of big companies wants these patents.

Software patents could affect me in several ways. One possibility is that I would have to stop developing free software, because of them. Another very bad possibility is that software patents could keep me from getting a job. As software patents do not only damage to free software but also to small and medium-sized software companies (where most of the jobs in the IT industry are, as far as I know), it could indeed be harder to get a job when software patents would become reality in Europe (OK - that's very pessimistic, but still possible!).

Have you ever met any other KDE developers?

Sadly, I have not yet met any other KDE developer.

Why do you help KDE?

I am working on KDE as it is great fun to program for KDE as the Qt/KDE API is so easy. Additionally it is great to improve a great desktop like KDE even a little bit more.

KDE is short for "K Desktop Environment". Do you have some other funny fancy name we could use for KDE instead? :-)

I tried everything to find a funny name for KDE ... not even a glass of absinth did help ... . Maybe you will find a funny name next month, otherwise I would suggest to just stick with "K Desktop Environment" :).

Which UNIX/Linux distribution do you use for your work and why?

On my notebook, which is my main development machine, I am using Gentoo Linux as I like to be on the bleeding edge and I am not afraid of compiling :). What I like about Gentoo is that you install it once and can keep it always up to date without ever having to reinstall it. Yes - I could have this with Debian, too. But I decided for Gentoo. On a server I would most likely choose Debian, though.

Let us know a bit more about you. Do you have family? Pets? How much time do you spend working on KDE?

I'm too young for a family right now, but I have a wonderful girl friend - Kati. She even got used to press ALT+F2 and enter an URL to get online :).

I think I spend about 1 hour a day working on KDE (that includes coding, reading and answering emails, preparing releases ...). But most likely it is more time :).

Anything important that we have forgotten?

I think we got everything right! Thanks for choosing KRename as the application of the month and thanks for this great series. I always enjoy reading it.