Today we released a beta of 0.6.0 of KDE Telepathy KDE's instant messaging client.
New Features
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
We had some feedback to improve the notifications of new messages. We now show an icon in the contact list when a new message arrives, change the icon in the system tray, and for group chats we now 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.
We've 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
We are 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. We have closed over 70 bugs between 0.5 and 0.6.
We've completely redone connection error notifications and other important UI areas.
More filtering plugins
We have extended our range of message plugins.
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 the 0.6 beta
Our beta is stable for everyday use and we made sure there are no major bug before release. There are packages being built right now for Fedora, Arch, Kubuntu and SuSE.
Source tarballs are available from http://download.kde.org/unstable/kde-telepathy/0.5.80/src/
This contains our full set of applications and applets
Getting involved
This is a beta and there will of course be bugs that we are aware of and want to fix by 0.6.0, there are also bugs that we are not aware of that still need to be reported.
You can help make 0.6.0 an awesome release by running the beta and reporting any bugs to http://bugs.kde.org.
You can also help by fixing bugs, to find out how to contact our team and get involved please see our wiki page at http://community.kde.org/KTp/Getting_Involved.