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Wednesday, 18 December 2024

Today, we bring you a report on the brand-new release of the Maui Project.

Community

To follow the Maui Project’s development or to just say hi, you can join us on our Telegram group @mauiproject

We are present on X and Mastodon:

Thanks to the KDE contributors who have helped to translate the Maui Apps and Frameworks!

Downloads & Sources

You can get the stable release packages [APKs, AppImage, TARs] directly from the KDE downloads server at https://download.kde.org/stable/maui/

All of the Maui repositories have the newly released branches and tags. You can get the sources right from the Maui group: https://invent.kde.org/maui

MauiKit 4 Frameworks & Apps

With the previous version released, MauiKit Frameworks and Maui Apps were ported over to Qt6, however, some regressions were introduced and those bugs have now been fixed with this new revision version.

Currently, there are over 10 frameworks, with two new ones recently introduced. They all, for the most part, have been fully documented, and although, the KDE doxygen agent has some minor issues when publishing some parts, you can find the documentation online at https://api.kde.org/mauikit/ (and if you find missing parts, confusing bits, or overall sections to improve – you can open a ticket at any of the framework repos and it shall be fixed shortly after)

A brief list of changes and fixes introduced to the frameworks are the following:

For MauiKit Controls

  • MauiKit is now no longer dependent on MauiKit-Style, so any other QQC2 style can be used with Maui Apps (other styles are not supported).
  • MauiKit documentation has been updated with notes on the new attached controls properties – https://api.kde.org/mauikit/mauikit/html/classControls.html
  • MauiKit fixes the toast area notifications. The toast notifications can now take multiple contextual actions.
  • MauiKit Demo app has been updated to showcase all the new control properties
  • New controls: TextField, Popup, DropDownIndicator,
  • MauiKit fixes the template delegates and the IconItem control
  • MauiKit fixes to the Page autohide toolbars
  • Update style and custom controls to use MauiKit Controls’ attached properties for level, status, title, etc.
  • Display keyboard shortcut info in the MenuItems
  • Update MauiKit Handy properties for isMobile, isTouch, and hasTransientTouchInput and fixes to the lasso selection on touch displays
  • Added more resize areas to the BaseWindow type
  • Check for system color scheme style changes and update accordingly. This works on other systems besides Plasma or Maui, such as Gnome or Android
  • The type AppsView has been renamed to SwipeView, and AppViewLoader to SwipeViewLoader
  • Update MauiKit-Style to support MauiKit Controls attached properties and respect the flat properties in buttons
  • Fixes to the MauiKit bug in the GridBrowser scrollbars policy
  • Fixes to the action buttons layout in Dialog and PopupPage controls
  • Refresh the icon when a system icon-theme change is detected – a workaround for Plasma is used and for other systems the default Qt API

For the MauiKit Frameworks

  • FileBrowsing fixes bugs with the Tagging components
  • Fixes to the models using dates. Due to a bug in Qt getting a file date time is too slow unless the UTC timezone is specified
  • Update FileBrowsing controls to use the latest Mauikit changes
  • Added a new control: FavButton, to mark files as favorites using the Tagging component quickly
  • Update and fixes to the regressions in the other frameworks
  • ImageTools fixes the OCR page
  • TextEditor fixes the line numbers implementation.

All of the frameworks are now at version 4.0.1

All of the apps have been reviewed for the regressions previously introduced in the porting to Qt6; those issues have been solved and a few new features have been added, such as:

  • Station, now allows opening selected links externally
  • Index fixes to the file previewer and support for quickly tagging files from the previewer
  • Vvave fixes to the minimode window closing
  • Update the apps to remove usage of the Qt5Compat effects module
  • Fix issues in Fiery, Strike, and Agenda
  • Fix the issue of selecting multiple items in the apps not working
  • Clip fixes to the video thumbnail previews and the opening file dialog
  • Implement the floating viewer for Pix, Vvave, Shelf, and Clip for consistency
  • Correctly open the Station terminal at the current working directory when invoked externally
  • Among many few other details

** Index, Vvave, Pix, Nota, Buho, Station, Shelf, Clip, and Communicator versions have been bumped to 4.0.1

*** Strike and Fiery browser versions have been bumped to 2.0.1

**** Agenda and Arca versions have been bumped to 1.0.1

And as for Bonsai, Era, and other applications still under development, there is still not a ported version to Qt6 as of now

 

Maui Shell

Although Maui Shell has been ported over to Qt6 and is working with the latest MauiKit4, a lot of pending issues are still present and being worked on. The next release will be dedicated fully on Maui Shell and all of its subprojects, such as Maui Settings, Maui Core, CaskServer, etc.

That’s it for now. Until the next blog post, that will be a bit closer to the 4.0.1 stable release.

Release schedule

The post Maui Release Briefing #7 appeared first on MauiKit — #UIFramework.

Ruqola 2.4.0 is a feature and bugfix release of the Rocket.chat messenger app.

Some of the new features in this release of Ruqola include:

  • Allow to clean up room history when room was not opened for a long time.
  • Add restore button in administrator server settings dialog.
  • Improve changing password (show validation info).
  • Improve register new account (Add reason support).
  • Implement mute/unmute user.
  • Add color to the text in the account tab.
  • Allow to show private installed applications.

Some bug fixing:

  • Fix editing message.
  • Show permissions in Rocket.Chat Marketplace.
  • Fix reconnect server.
  • Fix single application on Windows/MacOs
  • Fix select created room/discussion/teams
  • Fix filter discussion in administrator mode
  • Fix message video support
  • Fix highlight text in quoted message
  • Fix open discussion channel
  • Allow to show application market settings

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/ruqola/
Source: ruqola-2.4.0.tar.xz
SHA256: f532e421ae731dfc2e88b78ab61de01e0e367a31a4fe34497664a66fc737225c
Signed by: E0A3EB202F8E57528E13E72FD7574483BB57B18D Jonathan Riddell jr@jriddell.org
https://jriddell.org/jriddell.pgp

Tuesday, 17 December 2024

I recently saw one of my old branded “stripes” wallpapers in a screenshot of FreeBSD by someone on X, and that triggered me to make a new wallpaper in a similar style.

There was a call for artwork for the next Debian release – Trixie, and I made a modified version of one of my old wallpapers for it. As it was not chosen to be the default in Trixie, I decided to post it here for people who might like it.

It is, like all my wallpapers, a calm non-distracting one. (it is much prettier full-4k-size than in the thumbnail below)

Trixie Tracks
Trixie Tracks

If you like it, you can download it from Debian’s Wiki – in 1920x1080 and 4k versions. There is also a version with the Debian logo there for inspiration if you want to create a custom distribution-branded one.

Monday, 16 December 2024

Welcome to the @Krita-promo team's November 2024 development and community update.

Development Report

Community Bug Hunt Ended

The Community Bug Hunt has ended, with dozens of bugs fixed and over a hundred bug more reports closed. Huge thanks to everyone who participated, and if you missed it, the plan is to make this a regular occurrence.

Can't wait for the next bug hunt to be scheduled? Neither will the bug reports! Help in investigating them is appreciated anytime!

Community Report

November 2024 Monthly Art Challenge Results

For the "Fluffy" theme, 22 members submitted 26 original artworks. And the winner is… Most "Fluffy" by @steve.improvthis, featuring three different fluffy submissions. Be sure to check out the other two as well!

KJ's Clouds by @steve.improvthis

The December Art Challenge is Open Now

For the December Art Challenge, @steve.improvthis has chosen "Tropical" as the theme, with the optional challenge of using new or unfamiliar brushes. See the full brief for more details, and find yourself a place in the sun!

Best of Krita-Artists - October/November 2024

Seven images were submitted to the Best of Krita-Artists Nominations thread, which was open from October 15th to November 11th. When the poll closed on November 14th, these five wonderful works made their way onto the Krita-Artists featured artwork banner:

Ocean | Krita by @Gurkirat_Singh

Ocean by @Gukirat_Singh

Winter palace by @Sad_Tea

Winter palace by @Sad_Tea

Order by @Valery_Sazonov

Order by @Valery_Sazonov

Curly, 10-24 by @Celes

Curly, 10-24 by @Celes

Afternoon Magic by @zeki

Afternoon Magic by @zeki

Ways to Help Krita

Krita is Free and Open Source Software developed by an international team of sponsored developers and volunteer contributors.

Visit Krita's funding page to see how user donations keep development going, and explore a one-time or monthly contribution. Or check out more ways to Get Involved, from testing, coding, translating, and documentation writing, to just sharing your artwork made with Krita.

The Krita-promo team has put out a call for volunteers, come join us and help keep these monthly updates going.

Notable Changes

Notable changes in Krita's development builds from Nov. 12 - Dec. 11, 2024.

Stable branch (5.2.9-prealpha):

  • General: Fix rounding errors in opacity conversion, which prevented layered 50% brushstrokes from adding up to 100%. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • General: Fix snapping to grid at the edge of the canvas. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • General: Disable snapping to image center by default, as it can cause confusion. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • Calligraphy Tool: Fix following existing shape in the Calligraphy Tool. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • Layers: Fix "Copy into new Layer" to copy vector data when a vector shape is active. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • Selections: Fix the vector selection mode to not create 0px selections, and to select the canvas beforing subtracting if there is no existing selection. (bug report, CCbug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • General: Add Unify Layers Color Space action. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • Layers: Don't allow moving a mask onto a locked layer. (Change, by Maciej Jesionowski)
  • Linux: Capitalize the .AppImage file extension to match the convention expected by launchers. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)

Unstable branch (5.3.0-prealpha):

Bug fixes:

  • Color Management: Update display rendering when blackpoint compensation or LCMS optimizations are toggled, not just when the display color profile is changed. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)

Features:

  • Text: Implement Convert to Shape for bitmap fonts. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
  • Filters: Add Fast Color Overlay filter, which overlays a solid color using a configurable blending mode. (Change, by Maciej Jesionowski)
  • Brush Engines: Add Pattern option to "Auto Invert For Eraser" mode. (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • Wide Gamut Color Selector Docker: Add option to hide the Minimal Shade Selector rows. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
  • Wide Gamut Color Selector Docker: Show the Gamut Mask toolbar when the selector layout supports it. (Change, by Wolthera van Hövell)
  • Layers: Add a warning icon for layers with a different color space than the image. (Change 1, by Dmitry Kazakov, and Change 2, by Timothée Giet)
  • Pop-Up Palette: Add an option to sort the color history ring by last-used instead of by color. (bug report) (Change, by Dmitry Kazakov)
  • Export Layers Plugin: Add option to use incrementing prefix on exported layers. (wishbug report) (Change, by Ross Rosales)

Nightly Builds

Pre-release versions of Krita are built every day for testing new changes.

Get the latest bugfixes in Stable "Krita Plus" (5.2.9-prealpha): Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

Or test out the latest Experimental features in "Krita Next" (5.3.0-prealpha). Feedback and bug reports are appreciated!: Linux - Windows - macOS (unsigned) - Android arm64-v8a - Android arm32-v7a - Android x86_64

Sunday, 15 December 2024

The open source project I work on for the longest time is KDE and there more specific Kate.

This means I look at user bug reports for over 20 years now.

The statistics tell me our team got more than 9000 bugs since around 2001 (just for Kate, this excludes the libraries like KTextEditor that we maintain, too).

Kate Bug Statistics
Kate Bug Statistics

That is a bit more than one bug per day for over two decades.

And as the statistics show, especially in the last years we were able to keep the open bug count down, that means we fixed a lot of them.

Given we are a small team, I think that is a nice achievement.

We not just survived over 20 years, we are still alive and kicking and not just a still compiling zombie project.

Thanks a lot to all people that are contributing to this success!

Let’s keep this up in the next year and the ones following.

Welcome to a new issue of "This Week in KDE Apps"! Every week we cover as much as possible of what's happening in the world of KDE apps.

This week aside of releasing KDE Gear 24.12.0 and Kaidan 0.10.0, we added an overview of all your data in Itinerary and polished many other apps. Some of us also meet in Berlin and organized a small KDE sprint where aside of eating some Crêpes Bretonnes, we had discussion around Itinerary, Kirigami, Powerplant and more.

KDE Itinerary Digital travel assistant

Itinerary has a new "My Data" page containing your program membership, health certificates, saved locations, travel statistics and let you export and import all the data from Itinerary. (Carl Schwan, 25.04.0 — Link)

The new My Data tab
The new My Data tab

Calculator A feature rich calculator

Fixed the "History" action not working (Joshua Goins, 25.04 — Link)

Kaidan Modern chat app for every device

Version 0.10.0 and 0.10.1 of Kaidan were released! See the release announcement for the full list of changes.

Kongress Conference companion

Show the speaker's name for each event (Volker Krause, 25.04 — Link)

Kleopatra Certificate manager and cryptography app

Improved the dialog showing results of decrypt and verify operations (Tobias Fella, 25.04, Link)

Fixed a Qt6 regression that causes the dropdown menu for certificate selection to behave in unexpected ways (Tobias Fella, 25.04 — Link)

Improved the messages showing the result when decrypting and verifying the clipboard (Tobias Fella, 25.04 — Link)

NeoChat Chat on Matrix

Fixed web shortcuts not working (Joshua Goins, 24.12.1 — Link)

Improved how colored text sent by some other clients shows up (Joshua Goins, 24.12.1 — Link)

Stop NeoChat from crashing when sending messages (Tobias Fella, 24.12.1 — Link)

Okular View and annotate documents

Improved the look of banner messages (Carl Schwan, 25.04 — Link)

PowerPlant Keep your plants alive

Mathis redesigned various part of Powerplant and added a tasks view. (Mathis Brucher)

Powerplant Overview
Powerplant Plant Detail
Powerplant Tasks

Other

More Kirigami applications are now remembering their size accross restart by using KConfig.WindowStateSaver. (Nate Graham, 25.04.0 — Skanpage and Elisa)

…And Everything Else

This blog only covers the tip of the iceberg! If you’re hungry for more, check out Nate's blog about Plasma and be sure not to miss his This Week in Plasma series, where every Saturday he covers all the work being put into KDE's Plasma desktop environment.

For a complete overview of what's going on, visit KDE's Planet, where you can find all KDE news unfiltered directly from our contributors.

Get Involved

The KDE organization has become important in the world, and your time and contributions have helped us get there. As we grow, we're going to need your support for KDE to become sustainable.

You can help KDE by becoming an active community member and getting involved. Each contributor makes a huge difference in KDE — you are not a number or a cog in a machine! You don’t have to be a programmer either. There are many things you can do: you can help hunt and confirm bugs, even maybe solve them; contribute designs for wallpapers, web pages, icons and app interfaces; translate messages and menu items into your own language; promote KDE in your local community; and a ton more things.

You can also help us by donating. Any monetary contribution, however small, will help us cover operational costs, salaries, travel expenses for contributors and in general just keep KDE bringing Free Software to the world.

To get your application mentioned here, please ping us in invent or in Matrix.

This release includes fixes for GreaseMonkey, VerticalTabs, Navigation bar (security icon), stability fixes, does not advertise the FTP support, fixes printing and more small fixes.

GreaseMonkey

  1. Fixed loading of sites ending with *.user.js name. (BUG: 467459)
  2. GreaseMonkey got a support for running scripts on sites through context menu. (BUG: 469855)
GreaseMonkey context menu

VerticalTabs

  1. Enabled switching tabs with mouse wheel when the scrollbar is visible. (BUG: 394066)
  2. Pinned tabs are now arranged vertically like a normal tabs in this plugin. (BUG: 452818)
VerticalTabs: Pinned tabs

Site security icon

Falkon now display more proper security icon in the url bar based on the state if the SSL certificate exceptions. (BUG: 420902)

Various security icons

Removed FTP support

The FTP support in Chomium and QtWebEngine which is based on it was removed a while ago. So with this update Falkon will not advertise to the system that it support FTP protocol and it will instead try to open other program to handle it. (BUG: 494222)

Others

And more:

  • Fix printing to real CUPS printer. (BUG: 497051)
  • Preferences: Fix crash when un/loading of plugins (BUG: 492023)
  • Random fixes

Short changelog

  • Do not advertise ftp support to the system (BUG: 494222)
  • GreaseMonkey: Add support for context menu (BUG: 469855)
  • GreaseMonkey: Check content type of url *.user.js (BUG: 467459)
  • VerticalTabs: Fix tab switching with mouse wheel (BUG: 394066)
  • VerticalTabs: Arrange pinned tabs vertically (BUG: 452818)
  • Set security icon according to certificate error. (BUG: 420902)
  • Preferences: Fix crash when un/loading of plugins (BUG: 492023)
  • Fix printing to real CUPS printer (BUG: 497051)
  • Random fixes

Friday, 13 December 2024

This release fixes some bugs. Have a look at the changelog for more details.

Changelog

Bugfixes:

  • Fix displaying files of each message in appropriate message bubble (melvo)
  • Fix sending fallback messages for clients not supporting XEP-0447: Stateless file sharing (melvo)
  • Fix margins within message bubbles (melvo)
  • Fix hiding hidden message part (melvo)
  • Fix displaying marker for new messages (melvo)

Download

Or install Kaidan for your distribution:

Packaging status

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-50.


Census III of Free and Open Source Software

Tags: tech, foss, supply-chain

Interesting report, some findings are kind of unexpected. It’s interesting to see how much npm and maven dominate the supply chain. Clearly there’s a need for a global scheme to identify dependencies, hopefully we’ll get there.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/research/census-iii


Open Source Archetypes: A Framework For Purposeful Open Source

Tags: tech, foss, business, strategy

An important white paper which probably went unnoticed. It gives a nice overview of the strategies one can build around Open Source components.

https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/MZOTS_OS_Archetypes_report_ext_scr.pdf


Fool Me Twice We Don’t Get Fooled Again

Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse

Excellent post from Cory Doctorow about why he is only on Mastodon. Not being federated should indeed just be a deal breaker by now. Empty promises should be avoided.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/


Firefox is the superior browser

Tags: tech, web, browser, firefox

Obviously I agree with this. It’s time people stop jumping on chromium based browsers.

https://asindu.xyz/posts/switching-to-firefox/


TRELLIS: Structured 3D Latents for Scalable and Versatile 3D Generation

Tags: tech, 3d, ai, machine-learning, generator

Looks like a nice model to produce 3D assets. Should speed up a bit the work of artists for producing background elements, I guess there will be manual adjustments needed in the end still.

https://trellis3d.github.io/


Who and What comprise AI Skepticism? - by Benjamin Riley

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, criticism

Excellent post showing all the nuances of AI skepticism. Can you find in which category you are? I definitely match several of them.

https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/who-and-what-comprises-ai-skepticism


Reverse engineering of the Pentium FDIV bug

Tags: tech, cpu, hardware

It’s interesting to see such a reverse engineering of this infamous bug straight from the gates layout.

https://oldbytes.space/@kenshirriff/113606898880486330


How to Think About Time

Tags: tech, time

A good summary on the various concepts needed to reason about time.

https://errorprone.info/docs/time


Galloping Search - blag

Tags: tech, algorithm

Nice principle for a search in a sorted list when you don’t know the upper bound.

https://avi.im/blag/2024/galloping-search/


I’m daily driving Jujutsu, and maybe you should too

Tags: tech, version-control, git

Jujutsu is indeed alluring… but its long term support is questionable, that’s what keeps me away from it for now.

https://drewdevault.com/2024/12/10/2024-12-10-Daily-driving-jujutsu.html


mise-en-place

Tags: tech, tools, developer-experience

A single tool to manage your environment and dev tools across projects? Seems a bit young and needs a proper community still. I’m surely tempted to give it a spin though.

https://mise.jdx.dev/


Raw loops vs. STL algorithms

Tags: tech, c++, algorithm

An old one now, but since I keep giving this advice it seems relevant still. If you’re using raw loops at least that no again, there is likely a good alternative in the STL.

https://www.meetingcpp.com/blog/items/raw-loops-vs-stl-algorithms.html


Generic programming to fight the rigidity in the C++ projects

Tags: tech, architecture, type-systems, generics, c++

A good reminder that genericity can help fight against the rigidity one can accumulate using purely object oriented couplings… but it comes at a price in terms of complexity.

https://codergears.com/Blog/?p=945


Nobody Gets Fired for Picking JSON, but Maybe They Should? · mcyoung

Tags: tech, json, safety, type-systems

JSON is full of pitfalls. Here is a good summary. Still it is very widespread.

https://mcyoung.xyz/2024/12/10/json-sucks/


JSON5 – JSON for Humans

Tags: tech, json

Interesting JSON superset which makes it more usable for humans. I wonder if it’ll see more parsers appear.

https://json5.org/


Improving my desktop’s responsiveness with the cgroup V2 ‘cpu.idle’ setting

Tags: tech, systemd, cgroups

Nice little systemd trick, definitely an alias to add to your setup.

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/CgroupV2CpuIdleForResponsiveness


“Rules” that terminal programs follow

Tags: tech, shell, tools, unix

Good list of the undocumented rules terminal programs tend to follow. It’s nice to have this kind of consistency even though a bit by accident.

https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/11/26/terminal-rules/


htmy

Tags: tech, web, backend, frontend, python, htmx

The idea is interesting even though it probably needs to mature. It’s interesting to see this kind of libraries popup though, there’s clearly some kind of “backend - frontend split” fatigue going on.

https://volfpeter.github.io/htmy/


The errors of TeX (1989)

Tags: tech, latex, history, estimates, craftsmanship

A very precious document. Shows great organization in the work of Knuth of course but the self-reflection has profound lessons pertaining to estimates, type of errors we make, etc.

https://yurichev.com/mirrors/knuth1989.pdf


An Undefeated Pull Request Template

Tags: tech, codereview

This is indeed a nice template for submitting changes for review. It’s very thorough and helps reviewers.

https://ashleemboyer.com/blog/pull-request-template/


On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules

Tags: tech, design, architecture, research

We’re still struggling about how to modularize our code. Sometimes we should go back to the basics, this paper by Parnas from 1972 basically gave us the code insights needs to modularize programs properly.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145361598.361623


TDD as the crack cocaine of software

Tags: tech, tdd, flow

Indeed, it is often overlooked that TDD can really help finding a state of flow. Unlike other addictive activities presented in this article it requires a non negligible initial effort though, that’s why I wouldn’t describe it as an addiction though.

https://jefclaes.be/2014/12/tdd-as-crack-cocaine-of-software.html


Demo Driven Development

Tags: tech, agile, product-management

A good reminder of what agile is about from the product management perspective. If you can regularly demo your work you ensure a feeling of progress.

https://oanasagile.blogspot.com/2013/12/demo-driven-development.html


The 6 Mistakes You’re Going to Make as a New Manager

Tags: tech, leadership, management

Good points, this is indeed often where we are struggling when we move to a leadership role. This changes the nature of the work at least in part and we need to adjust to it.

https://terriblesoftware.org/2024/12/04/the-6-mistakes-youre-going-to-make-as-a-new-manager/



Bye for now!

Monday, 9 December 2024

Screenshot of Kaidan in widescreen Screenshot of Kaidan

We finally made it: Kaidan’s next release with so many features that we cannot summarize them in one sentence!

Most of the work has been funded by NLnet via NGI Assure and NGI Zero Entrust with public money provided by the European Commission. If you want Kaidan’s progress to continue and keep more free software projects alive, please share and sign the open letter for further funding!

Now to the bunch of Kaidan’s new and great features:

Group chats with invitations, user listing, participant mentioning and private/public group chat filtering are supported now. In order to use it, you need an XMPP provider that supports MIX-Core, MIX-PAM and MIX-Admin. Unfortunately, there are not many providers supporting it yet since it is a comparatively recent group chat variant.

You do not need to quote messages just to reply to them any longer. The messages are referenced internally without bloating the conversation. After clicking on a referenced message, Kaidan even jumps to it. In addition, Kaidan allows you to remove unwanted messages locally.

We added an overview of all shared media to quickly find the image you received some time ago. You can define when to download media automatically. Furthermore, connecting to the server is now really fast - no need to wait multiple seconds just to see your latest offline messages anymore.

If you enter a chat address (e.g., to add a contact), its server part is now autocompleted if available. We added filter options for contacts and group chats. After adding labels to them, you can even search by those labels. And if you do not want to get any messages from someone, you can block them.

In case you need to move to a new account (e.g., if you are dissatisfied with your current XMPP provider), Kaidan helps you with that. For example, it transfers your contacts and informs them about the move. The redesigned onboarding user interface including many fixes assists with choosing a new provider and creating an account on it.

We updated Kaidan to the API v2 of XMPP Providers to stay up-to-date with the project’s data. If you are an operator of a public XMPP provider and would like Kaidan’s users to easily create accounts on it, simply ask to add it to the provider list.

The complete list of changes can be found in the changelog section. There is also a technical overview of all currently supported features.

Please note that we currently focus on new features instead of supporting more systems. Once Kaidan has a reasonable feature set, we will work on that topic again. Even if Kaidan is making good progress, keep in mind that it is not yet a stable app.

Changelog

Features:

  • Add server address completion (fazevedo)
  • Allow to edit account’s profile (jbb)
  • Store and display delivery states of message reactions (melvo)
  • Send pending message reactions after going online (melvo)
  • Enable user to resend a message reaction if it previously failed (melvo)
  • Open contact addition as page (mobile) or dialog (desktop) (melvo)
  • Add option to open chat if contact exists on adding contact (melvo)
  • Use consistent page with search bar for searching its content (melvo)
  • Add local message removal (taibsu)
  • Allow reacting to own messages (melvo)
  • Add login option to chat (melvo)
  • Display day of the week or “yesterday” for last messages (taibsu, melvo)
  • Add media overview (fazevedo, melvo)
  • Add contact list filtering by account and labels (i.e., roster groups) (incl. addition/removal) (melvo, tech-bash)
  • Add message date sections to chat (melvo)
  • Add support for automatic media downloads (fazevedo)
  • Add filtering contacts by availability (melvo)
  • Add item to contact list on first received direct message (melvo)
  • Add support for blocking chat addresses (lnj)
  • Improve notes chat (chat with oneself) usage (melvo)
  • Place avatar above chat address and name in account/contact details on narrow window (melvo)
  • Reload camera device for QR code scanning as soon as it is plugged in / enabled (melvo)
  • Provide slider for QR code scanning to adjust camera zoom (melvo)
  • Add contact to contact list on receiving presence subscription request (melvo)
  • Add encryption key authentication via entering key IDs (melvo)
  • Improve connecting to server and authentication (XEP-0388: Extensible SASL Profile (SASL 2), XEP-0386: Bind 2, XEP-0484: Fast Authentication Streamlining Tokens, XEP-0368: SRV records for XMPP over TLS) (lnj)
  • Support media sharing with more clients even for sharing multiple files at once (XEP-0447: Stateless file sharing v0.3) (lnj)
  • Display and check media upload size limit (fazevedo)
  • Redesign message input field to use rounded corners and resized/symbolic buttons (melvo)
  • Add support for moving account data to another account, informing contacts and restoring settings for moved contacts (XEP-0283: Moved) (fazevedo)
  • Add group chat support with invitations, user listing, participant mentioning and private/public group chat filtering (XEP-0369: Mediated Information eXchange (MIX), XEP-0405: Mediated Information eXchange (MIX): Participant Server Requirements, XEP-0406: Mediated Information eXchange (MIX): MIX Administration, XEP-0407: Mediated Information eXchange (MIX): Miscellaneous Capabilities) (melvo)
  • Add button to cancel message correction (melvo)
  • Display marker for new messages (melvo)
  • Add enhanced account-wide and per contact notification settings depending on group chat mentions and presence (melvo)
  • Focus input fields appropriately (melvo)
  • Add support for replying to messages (XEP-0461: Message Replies) (melvo)
  • Indicate that Kaidan is busy during account deletion and group chat actions (melvo)
  • Hide account deletion button if In-Band Registration is not supported (melvo)
  • Embed login area in page for QR code scanning and page for web registration instead of opening start page (melvo)
  • Redesign onboarding user interface including new page for choosing provider to create account on (melvo)
  • Handle various corner cases that can occur during account creation (melvo)
  • Update to XMPP Providers v2 (melvo)
  • Hide voice message button if uploading is not supported (melvo)
  • Replace custom images for message delivery states with regular theme icons (melvo)
  • Free up message content space by hiding unneeded avatars and increasing maximum message bubble width (melvo)
  • Highlight draft message text to easily see what is not sent yet (melvo)
  • Store sent media in suitable directories with appropriate file extensions (melvo)
  • Allow sending media with less steps from recording to sending (melvo)
  • Add media to be sent in scrollable area above message input field (melvo)
  • Display original images (if available) as previews instead of their thumbnails (melvo)
  • Display high resolution thumbnails for locally stored videos as previews instead of their thumbnails (melvo)
  • Send smaller thumbnails (melvo)
  • Show camera status and reload camera once plugged in for taking pictures or recording videos (melvo)
  • Add zoom slider for taking pictures or recording videos (melvo)
  • Show overlay with description when files are dragged to be dropped on chats for being shared (melvo)
  • Show location previews on a map (melvo)
  • Open locations in user-defined way (system default, in-app, web) (melvo)
  • Delete media that is only captured for sending but not sent (melvo)
  • Add voice message recorder to message input field (melvo)
  • Add inline audio player (melvo)
  • Add context menu entry for opening directory of media files (melvo)
  • Show collapsible buttons to send media/locations inside of message input field (melvo)
  • Move button for adding hidden message part to new collapsible button area (melvo)

Bugfixes:

  • Fix index out of range error in message search (taibsu)
  • Fix updating last message information in contact list (melvo)
  • Fix multiple corrections of the same message (melvo, taibsu)
  • Request delivery receipts for pending messages (melvo)
  • Fix sorting roster items (melvo)
  • Fix displaying spoiler messages (melvo)
  • Fix displaying errors and encryption warnings for messages (melvo)
  • Fix fetching messages from server’s archive (melvo)
  • Fix various encryption problems (melvo)
  • Send delivery receipts for catched up messages (melvo)
  • Do not hide last message date if contact name is too long (melvo)
  • Fix displaying emojis (melvo)
  • Fix several OMEMO bugs (melvo)
  • Remove all locally stored data related to removed accounts (melvo)
  • Fix displaying media preview file names/sizes (melvo)
  • Fix disconnecting from server when application window is closed including timeout on connection problems (melvo)
  • Fix media/location sharing (melvo)
  • Fix handling emoji message reactions (melvo)
  • Fix moving pinned chats (fazevedo)
  • Fix drag and drop for files and pasting them (melvo)
  • Fix sending/displaying media in selected order (lnj, melvo)

Notes:

  • Kaidan is REUSE-compliant now
  • Kaidan requires Qt 5.15 and QXmpp 1.9 now

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