Blogs
I’m writing this as Halloween is looming over us and as a new lockdown is in effect in France. Hopefully this post won’t be full of ghosts or ghouls or other bad omens. Rejoice! This is about KDE PIM! Once again I’ll be your host to cover September and October.
Akademy
This year Akademy was super easy to attend, no travel was necessary. It was all virtual and it was a blast! As usual Volker’s post about Akademy 2020 covers a bit PIM land.
One highlight of the discussions during the PIM BoF was the EteSync resource getting merge. This was the result of a GSoC, it’s always pleasant when those succeed so well.
There’s also been further discussion around our GnuPG and Kleopatra activities which was also a good opportunity to rejoice regarding the VS-NfD certification achieved last year.
Of course, the efforts regarding moving more of the PIM related libraries to KDE Frameworks are still on going. There’s overall more of a need to explore what’s left and make plans on how to split them up, a sprint might happen regarding this.
And last but not least, KAsync was mentioned. This is currently reworked by Dan mostly for Akonadi needs but it might appear in KDE Frameworks later on. We’ll see.
KDE Itinerary
Per usual this one is covered separately in its own series by Volker:
Akonadi
Akonadi now supports payload compression using LZMA compression. Since most of the data we store are text-based, we can reduce the disk-space used by Akonadi by up to 30% when the locally cached data are compressed. Based on some initial feedback Dan is planning to switch to ZSTD algorithm before the next release.
IMAP
The IMAP support library and IMAP support in KMail now supports the QRESYNC extension (RFC 5162) allowing for even faster and more reliable email synchronization with less bandwidth usage when syncing emails with IMAP servers that support this extension.
Google Synchronization
The UX of Google synchronization has been improved. First, the KGAPI library that implements various Google APIs no longer uses its own window with an embedded browser for log in, but instead performs login through user’s default web browser. Also, KOrganizer and KAddressbook now show a notification with button to log in when the Google account needs to be re-authenticated.
KDEPIM Addons
Laurent created a new plugin which allows to configure settings of several folders in one go. Previously one would have to select a folder, ask for it’s properties, edit them and move to the next one. Now we got a nice window allowing batch editing.
Kleopatra
It is nowadays progressing in great strides. That also means some of the new changes depend on very recent GnuPG. For sure those versions will become available in a distribution near you though.
Kleopatra will soon provide an easier way to switch between its main views. This should allow to quickly focus on certificates overview, the notepad or the management of your smart cards.
Talking about smart cards, Kleopatra now allows to support more card types. It previously supported OpenPGP and NetKey cards but now also covers PIV cards (which are used in governmental and corporation environments).
It will also support managing several smart cards at the same time or the management of smart cards with multiple card applications (like Yubikey 5 and PIV apps).
Misc
And also tons of bugfixing all around… Crashes in KMail, paper cuts in the GUI of various applications, key management and display in Kleopatra or handling corner cases in itinerary data. You name it!
Community Analytics, What Else?
Of course, I couldn’t conclude such a post without some community data analytics porn. :-)
Let’s see what we got in store this time.
A big shout out to all those who participated in KDE PIM work the past couple of months. Thanks a lot! It’s a very important job you’re all doing, they know who they are, but here is the activity graph of the past two months, so now everyone know who they are (offer them drinks if you get the chance!):
In the past two months, we had 29 different developers on KDE PIM (that’s four more than the same time last year). And of course, since my data is coming only from git, this unfortunately misses people who helped with bug reports, docs, design etc. Whatever your contribution you can be all proud!
Now, how does the code contributor network looks like?
Unsurprisingly the two most influential ones are Daniel and Laurent. You can also see three extra persons fairly central to the network: Yuri Chornoivan, Luigi Toscano and Volker Krause. All those people have their hands in many pies and that’s very much needed.
How You Can Help
Next time, your name could be in visualizations like the ones above!
Check out the KDE PIM Development wiki and find out how to be part of something that matters. If you want your share of this or need help to get started, feel free to contact us #kontact and #akonadi IRC channels on Freenode.
Finally, consider making a tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation