Kontact is a personal information manager A personal information manager is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to Personal information management as a field of study.[citation needed] As an information management tool, a PIM tool's purpose is to facilitate the recording, tracking, and management and groupware Collaborative software is a concept that greatly overlaps with computer-supported cooperative work . Some authors argue they are equivalent. According to Carstensen and Schmidt (1999) groupware is part of CSCW, since CSCW addresses "how collaborative activities and their coordination can be supported by means of computer systems." software suite for KDE KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems. It is best known for its Plasma Desktop workspace, a desktop environment provided as the default working environment on many Linux distributions, such as openSUSE,. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, etc.) into the container application.

Differences between “Kontact” and “KDE PIM”

Technically speaking, Kontact only refers to a small umbrella application that unifies different stand-alone applications under one user interface. KDE PIM refers to a work group within the larger KDE project that develops the individual applications in a coordinated way.

In popular terms, however, Kontact often refers to the whole set of KDE PIM applications. These days many popular Linux distributions A Linux distribution is a member of the family of Unix-like software distributions built on top of the Linux kernel. Such distributions (often called distros for short) consist of a large collection of software applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications. The operating system will consist of the such as Kubuntu Kubuntu is an official derivative of the Ubuntu operating system using the KDE Software Compilation instead of the GNOME graphical environment. It is part of the Ubuntu project and uses the same underlying system. It is possible to run both the KDE desktop as well as the Gnome desktop (ubuntu-desktop) interchangeably on the same machine. Every hide the individual applications and only place Kontact prominently.

History

The initial groupware container application was written in an afternoon by Matthias Hölzer-Klüpfel and later imported into the KDE source repository and maintained by Daniel Molkentin. This container application is essential for Kontact to operate, but without embedded components is not useful by itself.

The first embedded components were created by Cornelius Schumacher. He modified the KAddressBook Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite for KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications into the container application and KOrganizer Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite for KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications into the container application applications to create the initial addressbook and organizer components. At this stage no mail client component existed so KDE still lacked a functional integrated groupware application. However Cornelius' groundbreaking work acted as a prototype for other developers to base their efforts on.

Don Sanders created the missing mail client component by modifying the KMail Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite for KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications into the container application application. He then integrated the mail client component with the other components, and the groupware container application, assembled and released the initial Kontact packages, and created the initial Kontact website.

Daniel Molkentin, Cornelius Schumacher and Don Sanders then formed the core Kontact team. The KMail and container application changes were imported into the KDE source repository, and Kontact was released as part of KDE 3.2.^[5]

During the construction of the Kontact application suite, the Kolab Kolab is an Open source groupware suite. It consists of the Kolab server and a wide variety of Kolab clients, including KDE PIM-Suite Kontact, Horde Webfrontend, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning with SyncKolab extension and Microsoft Outlook with proprietary Kolab-Connector PlugIns groupware server was being worked on by Erfrakon, Intevation and Klarälvdalens Datakonsult simultaneously and was completed at approximately the same time. This work was done as part of the Kroupware project that also involved modifying the KMail and KOrganizer applications to enhance them with additional groupware features.

The core Kontact team, the Kolab consortium, and several independent KDE PIM developers then worked together to enhance Kontact by integrating the Kroupware functionality and making Kolab the primary Kontact server.

Additionally a news component was created from the KNode Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite for KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications into the container application application by KDE developer Zack Rusin, and Kontact was modified to support an array of mainly web based suites of collaboration software.

Components

Kontact embeds the following

• Summary Page: Shows unread email, upcoming appointments, the latest news and weather

E-Mail

KMail supports folders, filtering, viewing HTML HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms mail, and international character sets. It can handle IMAP The Internet Message Access Protocol is one of the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval, the other being the Post Office Protocol (POP). Virtually all modern e-mail clients and mail servers support both protocols as a means of transferring e-mail messages from a server, dIMAP,^[6] POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection. POP and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern e-mail clients and, and local mailboxes for incoming mail. It can send mail via SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an Internet standard for electronic mail (e-mail) transmission across Internet Protocol (IP) networks. SMTP was first defined in RFC 821 (STD 15) (1982), and last updated by RFC 5321 (2008) which includes the extended SMTP (ESMTP) additions, and is the protocol in widespread use today. SMTP is specified for or sendmail Sendmail is a general purpose internetwork email routing facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and -delivery methods, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol used for email transport over the Internet.

Spam and filtering

KMail uses two special filters to provide a modular access to spam-filtering programs:

• Send this e-mail to a program allows any program to be specified, and when that KMail filter is activated, the program will be run and supplied with the contents of the e-mail as its standard input.
• Pipe this e-mail through a program not only sends the e-mail to a specified program, but replaces the e-mail with the output of that program. This allows the use of systems such as SpamAssassin SpamAssassin is a computer program released under the Apache License 2.0 used for e-mail spam filtering based on content-matching rules. It is now part of the Apache Foundation which can add their own headers to a piece of e-mail.

These modular filters can be combined with text filters to detect (for example) e-mail which has been flagged by SpamAssassin by looking for the special headers it added.

KMail allows manual filtering of spam directly on the mail server, a very interesting feature for dial-up users. Emails that exceed some threshold size (standard is 50 kb, but it may be set any value) are not automatically copied to the local computer. With "get, decide later, delete" options, KMail lists them but does not download the whole message, which allows the deletion of spam and over-sized messages without wasting time.

Cryptographic support

KMail supports the OpenPGP Pretty Good Privacy is a computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting e-mails to increase the security of e-mail communications. It was created by Philip Zimmermann in 1991 standard and can automatically encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify signatures of email messages and its attachments via either the inline or OpenPGP/MIME method of signing/encryption. KMail depends on GnuPG GNU Privacy Guard is a free software alternative to the PGP suite of cryptographic software. GnuPG is compliant with RFC 4880, which is the current IETF standards track specification of OpenPGP. Current versions of PGP (and Veridis' Filecrypt) are interoperable with GnuPG and other OpenPGP-compliant systems for this functionality. As a visual aid, KMail will colour verified email messages green for trusted signatures Pretty Good Privacy is a computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting e-mails to increase the security of e-mail communications. It was created by Philip Zimmermann in 1991; yellow for untrusted signatures; red for invalid signatures; and blue for encrypted messages.

KMail also supports S/MIME messages as well as Chiasmus,^[7] a proprietary cryptographic system created by the German Federal Office for Information Security The Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik is the German government agency in charge of managing computer and communication security for the German government. Its areas of expertise and responsibility include the security of computer applications, critical infrastructure protection, Internet security, cryptography, counter (BSI).

Address Book

KAddressBook is an address book software application made for the K Desktop Environment KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems. It is best known for its Plasma Desktop workspace, a desktop environment provided as the default working environment on many Linux distributions, such as openSUSE,.

Description

KAddressBook is a graphical interface A graphical user interface (sometimes pronounced gooey) is a type of user interface item that allows people to interact with programs in more ways than typing such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than text commands. A GUI to organizing the addresses and contact information of family, friends, business partners, etc. It integrates with KDE, allowing interoperability with other KDE programs, including the e-mail client KMail Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite for KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications into the container application – allowing one-click access to composing an e-mail – and the instant messenger Kopete Kopete is a multi-protocol, free software instant messaging client. Although it can run in numerous environments, it was designed for and integrates with the KDE desktop environment. The name Kopete comes from the Chilean word "copete", a word referring to alcoholic drinks. Kopete was started because ICQ blocked Licq from their network – showing the online status of and easy access to instant messaging contacts. It can be synchronized with other software or device using Kitchensync and OpenSync.

A contact may be classified into customizable categories, such as Family, Business, or Customer. Many of the fields can have multiple entries, for example, if the contact has several e-mail addresses. A contact's fields are separated into four tabs and one tab for custom fields.

Features

• Exports and imports cards to and from vCard vCard is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards are often attached to e-mail messages, but can be exchanged in other ways, such as on the World Wide Web. They can contain name and address information, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, URLs, logos, photographs, and even audio clips format.
• Uses DBUS to interface with other applications.
• Interoperable with KMail Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite for KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications into the container application and Kopete Kopete is a multi-protocol, free software instant messaging client. Although it can run in numerous environments, it was designed for and integrates with the KDE desktop environment. The name Kopete comes from the Chilean word "copete", a word referring to alcoholic drinks. Kopete was started because ICQ blocked Licq from their network, as well as Kontact.
• Customize fields and categories.
• Automatic formatting of names.
• Filter ability, to search for addresses.
• Capability to query an LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP , is an application protocol for querying and modifying directory services running over TCP/IP database containing person information.

Organizer

KOrganizer is the personal organizer A personal organizer, day planner, personal analog assistant, or personal planner is a small book/binder, designed to be portable, usually containing a diary, calendar, address book, and other sections usually including blank paper. It may also include pages with useful information, such as maps, telephone codes. It is related to the separate of the KDE KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems. It is best known for its Plasma Desktop workspace, a desktop environment provided as the default working environment on many Linux distributions, such as openSUSE, desktop environment In graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface (GUI) that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today. These graphical interfaces are designed to assist the user in easily accessing and configuring (or modifying) the most important (or frequently. It has the ability to manage calendars, journals, and a to do list.

News Feed Aggregator

Akregator is an open source Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology. Before the term open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; open source feed aggregator In computing, a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader, rss reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in a single location for easy viewing. It supports both RSS RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship and Atom The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources. Feeds can be sorted into categories. Akregator will aggregate all feeds in a particular category into a single list of new entries so that, for example, all news in the category "Politics" can be shown in one list. It has an incremental search feature for the titles of all the entries in its database.

Akregator can be configured to fetch feeds within regular intervals. The user can also manually request to fetch all feeds, individual ones, or those in a selected category. It supports feed icons and embeds KHTML KHTML is the HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project. It is the engine used by the Konqueror web browser. A forked version of KHTML called WebKit is used by several web browsers, among them Safari and Google Chrome. Distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, KHTML is free software as an internal, tabbed In the area of graphical user interfaces, a tabbed document interface is one that allows multiple documents to be contained within a single window, using tabs to navigate between them. It is an interface style most commonly associated with web browsers, web applications, text editors and preference panes web browser A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to. Any external browser can also be called.

Akregator is part of KDE KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems. It is best known for its Plasma Desktop workspace, a desktop environment provided as the default working environment on many Linux distributions, such as openSUSE, since the 3.4 release, and it is distributed with the kdepim Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite for KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It uses KParts to embed the various applications into the container application module.

Usenet News Client

KNode is a free Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things and that manufacturers of consumer- news client A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet , either directly from the news server's disks or via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) program for the KDE desktop environment.

It supports multiple NNTP servers, message threads, scoring, X-Face headers (reading and posting), and international character sets.

Other components

• Notes: KNotes - KDE Notes Management
• News Ticker: KNewsTicker
• Weather: KWeather

Storage back-end

Along with the KDE 4 life cycle, Kontact moves to Akonadi for storing its data, when in the past every Kontact component implemented the storage technologies itself. Akonadi is currently mostly developed by the KDE PIM team, but its design is done in an agnostic way and thus not depending on KDE technologies.

The first KDE 4 release of Kontact was officially shipped with KDE 4.1. That release did not use Akonadi. Since then the Kontact components are gradually migrating towards Akonadi with KDE 4.5 being expected to finish the transition.^[8]

See also

• List of personal information managers
• David Vignoni: the designer of older icons.

References

1. ^ "KDE 4.4 Release Schedule". http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.4_Release_Schedule.
2. ^ "KDE 4.5 Release Schedule". http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.5_Release_Schedule.
3. ^ "KDE 4.5 Beta 1 Announcement". http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.5-beta1.php.
4. ^ "The KDE on Windows Project". KDE. July 7, 2007. http://windows.kde.org/. Retrieved 2010-02-11.
5. ^ http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelogs/changelog3_1_5to3_2.php
6. ^ http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/doc/suse/suse9.2/suselinux-userguide_en/ch12s03.html
7. ^ http://www.bsi.de/produkte/chiasmus/indexeng.htm
8. ^ http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/PIM/Akonadi

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