Sunday, July 27. 2008
KMess 2.0 progress, personal stuff
With this blog entry I'd like to inform you all about the amazing progress we're making with KMess 2.0. It's been a bit quiet on the blogging side, but development surely didn't stop. The development timeline at trac.kmess.org reveals there are 200 commits within the last 30 days. 
Within a few days we hope to release a 2.0-alpha 2 release, which has the following new features:
- Everything is running quite stable under KDE 4.
- Tabbed chats are supported now. This is such a breeze, I wouldn't ever want to live without that anymore!
- Every dialog received a nice makeover.
- Connecting over HTTP is supported, making KMess usable for restricted LAN's.
- Ink sending works!
- Larger messages can be sent
- MSNplus formatting can be displayed.
- We've added an application-wide settings dialog for common settings.
- Lots of nifty improvements everywhere; choose your fire transfer ports, automatically download to a folder, copy contact 'now listening' information, etc..
We stil have our share of things we like to improve, implement and annoyances to fix, so the upcoming release will still be called an alpha. Most of the work on KMess 2 has been done by Valerio and Antonio, so I like to thank them for this as well!
This is how KMess 2 look like now:
In the screenshot you see the ink receiving and tabbed chat in action.
KMess on Windows
There is experimental support for Windows as well:
There is no "setup.exe" yet to double-click on, but a lengthy manual of steps to install. Hence the reason we still call it experimental. Everything seams to work though.
Personal stuff
I didn't always find time to work on KMess in the past few months. If you have a daily job as web developer, not all evenings are easily spent on coding as well. 
I still do a lot of things in the background, and I'm slowly starting to pick up coding again. I'm working through the first parts to receive webcam sessions, and you can expect this to be present in KMess too.
After the summer holidays I'll also be moving to to my very own appartment (maisonette actually). It has a small balcony, 3 bedrooms and a view to a lovely park in front, which I really love. Some work needs to be done before I can move in, like installing new kitchen and installing central heating. Guess you'll know what I'll be doing this autumn.
Oh and:
So if you see a guy coding for KMess on a white MacBook running KDE on Windows, it's probably me It's my first time on Akademy and I didn't make any plans yet, but love to join some BoF meetings and discuss innovation. Last time I checked, almost every pillar of KDE could find a place within KMess.
This really keeps up the motivation.
That would be more sensible, IMO.
> That would be more sensible, IMO.
I filed some Kopete bugs in the past, but that didn't work out for me. I loved KMess for both it's design and code as developer, but it's simplicity and user interface as a user. Without KMess, I'd probably wouldn't be in KDE development at all. Other then that, I'd let the enthusiastic reactions here speak for themselves, for which I'm really grateful.
That said, our work could benefit Kopete as well. We have plans for a Qt library based on KMess code (and see where Decibel fits in). The code works, is proven, and tested by many different users. It's not our top priority to work towards a library - and I'm careful not to kill KMess in the progress of it - but it's on the todo list for 2.1.
"KMess on a white MacBook running KDE on Windows".
Well, elephants cannot fly; but penguins can definitely swim, walk and now even fly!
thanks again and keep up the good work!
She had been using aMSN and Emesene in Windows and even though both are great apps they are not QT (and QT is awesome, haha).
I'm going to tell her to try KMess, but from what I can see here she's probably going to like it (and she's pretty demanding of her apps).
Thank you for the sweet new features and keep up the good work.
please implement videoconference (video and sound)
Thanks
Cris
We're working on it, I love to have webcam support as well.
@Diego, Steven, leo_rockway:
Thank you for your encouragements, this really makes me happy and it's very encouraging!
Will a release with webcam support be ready for when KDE 4.1 is released, or at the latest when the next kubuntu version is released (This is when I plan to make the switch to from KDE 3.5 to 4.1 for my everyday use)? The missing webcam support is the only reason I use Kopete. I started using KMess because it's file transfers were better than kopete.
Webcam support will be available in the final 2.0 release, but I won't promise a specific date. When everything is done and stable, it will be released. We want to make sure 2.0 is really good, not rushed out.
That would make Kmess an instant screw-the-RAM-usage-i'm-using-this-in-gnome app, right alongside amarok and several KDE4 games
So that's what Apple means when they say "Think Different"
Congratulations on this excellent application, quick and easy novel. Greetings from venezuela. Sorry for mi Bad English ^^
Regards,
Diego
There is a lot of work going on (see http://trac.kmess.org/timeline for the things we've done the last month), and I like to make it visible for more people too.Currently I'm quite busy moving with my new appartment, which is why I've been a bit silent. But I'll try to post an update.
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