Good news, everyone! The KDE Telepathy team has just released version 0.6.0 of KDE Telepathy (KTp), KDE's instant messaging suite. This version brings a number of new features as well as a large amount of bug fixes.

About KDE Telepathy

KDE Telepathy is an instant messaging suite built upon the Telepathy framework. KDE Telepathy provides text chat, video calls and file transfer services over many popular instant messaging platforms including Facebook Chat and Google Talk. In addition KTp provides libraries for embedding instant messaging or real-time collaboration inside your application.

KDE Telepathy follows the philosophy that communication is a service offered to applications and the desktop. A more in-depth technical explanation can be read over here, but in practice, this means that KDE Telepathy consists of independent components. This allows KDE Telepathy to be well integrated with Plasma by providing plasmoids and runner interfaces as well as providing the traditional contact list and chatting application. This level of desktop integration allows endless possibilities and greater freedom in the way in which you interact with your contacts. Boundaries of Telepathy however do not stop at communication, the next step is collaboration, for example games can take advantage of Telepathy and provide a multi-player capabilities without the hassle of setting up network connections.

New Features

This release brings in a number of major new features. An overview:

Kopete log migration

KTp now imports logs from Kopete accounts into our log format. For new KTp users this will be asked if they wish to import when they create an account, existing users can also import logs by opening the log viewer.

Clearer message notifications

KTp had some feedback to improve the notifications of new messages. KTp now shows an icon in the contact list when a new message arrives, change the icon in the system tray, and for group chats show who is typing.

Better text editing

The chat window now features tab completion for group chats, as well as text navigation for editing messages.

KTp has made adding emoticons easier too, with a new optional emoticon toolbar.

Advanced notifications

KTp now supports setting different notifications for each of your contacts. This means it is possible to set an optional notification if your favourite friends come online, or play sounds when messages arrive from certain contacts but not others.

Improved password and security management

KTp is now able to connect to password protected jabber rooms, a much requested feature. We have also improved our connection certificate handling, now using KDE SSL certificates manager and allowing the user to override invalid certificates.

Under the hood changes and cleanups

A lot of our effort has been spent in a big refactoring under the hood, getting ourselves ready for the future as well as bringing speed and stability closing over 85 bug reports in 0.6.

0.6.0 features completely redone connection error notifications and other important UI areas.

Core filtering plugins

KTp has an extended range of message plugins to make chatting more dynamic and interactive.

Text messages can be formatted in bold or italics

Youtube links are show and can be played directly in your chat window

Links to bugzilla are shown inline with the bug title and resolution

When sending messages can use your KDE webshortcuts to make it quicker to send links

Messages containing your name are highlighted and a special notification with sound can be emitted. This is especially useful if you lurk in conference rooms

Getting 0.6

After this huge list of awesome new things, you might want to try KTp for yourself! So, where to get it?

First of all, the source tarballs are available from the KDE download servers. This contains our full set of applications and applets.

Most distributions, including openSUSE (in the KDE-extra repository), Fedora and Kubuntu, have packages available already or will have, soon. Note that you will need the full set of packages for KTp to work properly. In most distributions, that means installing the right repository and getting the ktp* packages.

Of course, if you find issues or think of possible improvements, you can either file a bug or join development!





