Since the last report two month ago there have been two 21.04 patch releases of Kontact, and more than 1300 changes by more than 30 contributors have been integrated. Here are some of the highlights.

Kontact

A large focus remains preparing for the upcoming migration to Qt6 and KF6. This mainly consists of porting away from deprecated functionality in Qt and KDE Frameworks, as well as moving to more modern build system or C++ constructs. While not having any visible impact right now, this will allow for a smoother transition down the line. Particular noteworthy this time are the new recent files menu code and the still ongoing work on modernizing the various plugin related code paths.

But that’s not all of course:

  • The KDE Kiosk setting to allow revealing passwords in their respective entry fields is now honored everywhere.
  • All Kontact applications can now use the new hamburger menu, when their menu bar is hidden.
Screenshot of KMail showing the hamburger menu access to main menu actions.
Hamburger menu in KMail's toolbar, when the main menu bar is hidden.

Google Summer of Code

Claudio Cambra is doing a Google Summer of Code project on QML/Kirigami- and Akonadi-based calendaring components for Plasma Mobile, mentored by Carl Schwan and Devin Lin. Follow Claudio’s blog and the Kalendar repository for more details.

KMail

  • Filters configured in the message list search line can now be saved and restored.
Screenshot of KMail showing saved message list filters.
Saved messages list filters in KMail.
  • Fix right-to-left text direction handling in the message composer (bug 436880).
  • Fix handling of mailto: URLs containing an ampersand in the subject argument (bug 206269).
  • Fix deletion of two (or more) attachments (bug 282792). This fix was funded by Intevation GmbH.
  • Date/time values in attached Apple Wallet Pass files are now rendered with proper formatting.
  • Fix “Editing as new” selecting the wrong mail transport (bug 436375).

Additionally, there is ongoing work for a new plugin to add smarter safety checks before deleting a large amount of messages.

KOrganizer

Changes to the stable 21.04 releases:

  • The Timeline view uses the preferred calendar colors, and uses sensible pane widths.
  • The Month view shows recurring to-dos on their due date, just like plain to-dos.
  • Very short events and to-dos that start or end near midnight are displayed properly in the Agenda and Month views.
  • The Calendar Properties dialog for iCalendar files is no longer hilariously skinny, and the dialog for EWS calendars fits on smaller screens. (Bugs 435871, 436841)
  • The printed timetables print all events. (Bugs 396570, 406251, 410520)
  • Various misalignments in the printed documents have been cleaned up.
  • The event viewer seen in the sidebar and other places shows the event’s end time, not just its duration. (Bug 438082)
  • The Journal view displays the tops of long, scrollable journal entries, instead of scrolling to a random position. (Bug 437669)
  • Excluding private or confidential all-day events in print-outs does not cause KOrganizer to freeze.

Coming in 21.08:

  • The printed to-do list will optionally print tags, priorities, completion percentages, and start dates. (Bugs 250450, 150685, 195779)
  • The printed timetables will optionally print tags.
  • Generic print options – “Use colors”, “Print footer”, “Exclude confidential”, “Exclude private” – will be available for every print-out where they make sense.
  • If you use the Breeze Dark theme, print-outs will not try to use white ink when printing rich text.

Kleopatra

  • Support for trust signatures / trusted introducers (the equivalent of intermediate CAs for OpenPGP).
  • Support for displaying information about OpenPGP keys stored on PKCS# 15 and other smartcard apps.
  • Fixed configuration of LDAP keyserver for OpenPGP,
  • Improved configuration of LDAP keyservers for X.509; support for extended configuration added in GnuPG 2.2.28.
  • Support for specifying an expiration date for certifications.
  • Support for updating the expiration date of all subkeys together with the expiration date of the primary key.

Most of the changes require the latest versions of GnuPG and GpgME.

Akregator

Akregator now has the ability to block loading externally referenced content in RSS feeds.

Screenshot of Akregator showing an article with a blocked external image.
Blocked external content in Akregator.

Help us make Kontact even better!

Take a look at some of the junior jobs that we have! They are simple, mostly programming tasks that don’t require any deep knowledge or understanding of Kontact, so anyone can work on them. Feel free to pick any task from the list and reach out to us! We’ll be happy to guide you and answer all your questions. Read more here…