Konversation 0.19 has been released!

January 30, 2006

We are extremely pleased to announce the immediate release of Konversation 0.19. The focus of this release is on extending and improving upon established functionality. Most notable in this regard are significantly improved management of IRC networks and servers all across the application, a redesigned tab bar and better support for common IRC commands. A long list of further additions and improvements has us confident of this being the best version of Konversation yet. Enjoy! Changes in 0.19:

User Interface

• The Server List dialog has been rewritten to allow direct manipulation of a network’s servers and features more intelligent sorting behavior. Reordering networks via drag and drop is now possible. A behavioral audit of all actions in the dialog resulted in numerous improvements.
• A redesigned tab bar sports highly configurable text- and LED icon-based notifications as well as more intelligent scaling behavior under space-critical conditions.
• Tabs are now intelligently grouped around their respective connection status tab.
• Status tab labels now display the user-configured network name where appropriate.
• The Find Text dialog has been replaced by a search bar that no longer interrupts your workflow.
• Channel links in the chat area now feature a context menu for quick access to common actions.
• Usage of the status bar has been extended to show context-relevant information as the cursor passes over various interface elements. The lag information segment is now only shown where appropriate.
• A channel’s topic can now be cleared by setting an empty text in the Channel Options dialog.
• The Channel Options dialog has been redesigned to allow editing the current topic while browsing a channel’s topic history.
• The Watched Nicknames interface has been fully integrated with network management.
• Pressing the Arrow Down key in the input line now preserves any input entered by adding it to the history.
• Commands may now be sent as regular messages by typing Ctrl+Enter.
• The multi-line paste editor window now highlights whitespace characters and prepends the existing content of the input line.
• The Colored Nicknames feature has been improved to better handle nickname changes and immediately apply any changes to the color palette.
• Some previously not configurable notification events have been made configurable.
• Users leaving a server will now be announced in any query you have open with them.
• Query tab labels will now update when a user you have a query open with changes his/her name.
• The DCC file transfer dialogs have seen a number of cosmetic improvements. Among other things, in the event of a file being renamed on save, the local file name is now shown across the application.
• Various status and error messages have been rewritten for improved consistency and clarity.
• The KDE standard text font will now be correctly set as initial default chat font.
• It is now possible to skip displaying a server’s MOTD on connect.
• If the application is set to display a server’s MOTD in a fixed-width font and the previously configured default chat font is already a fixed-width font, the chat font will now be used rather than the global KDE default fixed-width font.
• The state of the automatic spell checking functionality is now remembered across sessions and set for all tabs.
• Networks no longer lose their channel history when their settings are changed.
• The Server List dialog will no longer close when a connection attempt fails due to the identity not being set up correctly.
• After changing your nickname using the optional drop-down menu to the left of the input line, focus will now be returned to the input line.
• The configuration dialog has been rewritten to correctly update the button state of its primary actions and improve consistency with the KDE style guide.
• The vertical and horizontal splitters in channel tabs now behave better when the application window is resized and correctly retain their positions across sessions.
• The OSD preview in the OSD settings page is now always shown correctly.
• The OSD will no longer be shown when the desktop is locked.
• A bug that prevented copying text from the chat area under certain circumstances has been fixed.
• Keyboard search in the channel nickname list has been fixed.
• A number of issues affecting nickname context menus in the chat area have been fixed.
• A bug leading to a wrong operator count in the status bar has been fixed.
• It is no longer possible to add nameless networks or hostless servers in the responsible management dialogs.
• Bugs that led to parts of the interface not reacting to KDE color scheme changes have been fixed.
• The status bar now correctly reacts to KDE font size changes.
• A bug that led to the application window resizing on overly long status bar contents has been fixed.
• A bug that led to multiple remember lines being inserted into the frontmost tab when away mode was activated has been fixed.
• A bug that led to wrong link addresses being opened from the chat area has been fixed.
• Bugs that led to wrong URLs being produced by dragging a link from the chat area to the input line have been fixed.
• Channel names are now better recognized as such by the chat area.

Bookmarking

• Bookmark titles now default to the channel name.
• Bookmarks now store the network name rather than the server address where available.
• Bookmarks now support IPv6 addresses.

Commands

• The ‘/server’ command now recognizes a greater variety of address notations including network names.
• The ‘/names’ command now always succeeds in returning the user list of a channel.
• The ‘/topic’ command now always succeeds in returning the topic of a channel.
• A ‘/dns’ command has been added that facilitates resolving the host name of a user on the server as well as generic host names. Reverse resolve is supported on KDE 3.5.1+.
• An ‘/unignore’ command has been added.
• A ‘/disconnect’ command has been added.
• A ‘/reconnect’ command has been added that disconnects and then reconnects the respective server.
• A ‘/setkey’ command has been added to set the Blowfish encryption/decryption key for the respective context.
• The ‘/list’ command now correctly opens the Channel List tab.
• A bug in parsing the arguments of the ‘/join’ command has been fixed.
• Usage information and error reporting for various commands has been rewritten for improved consistency and clarity.
• A bug that led to a ‘clear’ command being sent to the server when using the ‘/clear’ command to clear the contents of a query tab has been fixed.

Miscellaneous

• The ‘media’ script has been rewritten and now features improved compatibility with common character sets, greatly enhanced support for the Kaffeine media player and newly added support for the Yammi media player.
• The ‘sysinfo’ script has been rewritten to produce more concise output and better handle a variety of storage scenarios.
• The convenience feature expanding [[term]] into a Wikipedia link is now localizable and generates a link that performs an intelligent lookup for the term in the Wikipedia rather than assume a correct direct link.

Technology

• Konversation now depends on KDE 3.4+.
• The preferences storage system has been rewritten to facilitate easier maintenance and faster development in future release cycles.
• Localized support for a long list of IRC protocol primitives has been added.
• The application will now correctly iterate over a network’s servers on successive failed connection attempts.
• When the ‘/server’ command or the Quick Connect dialog is used to connect to a server that has previously been added to a network in the Server List dialog, it will be recognized as being part of the network and the respective identity settings will be applied.
• The automated reply to a highlight event can now reference the groups of the matched pattern by the identifiers %1-%9 and the entire match by the identifier %0.
• The CABAP IDENTIFY-MSG technology is now supported.
• Compatibility with the Unreal IRC server has been improved.
• Initial support for Blowfish encryption (compatible with mIRCryption and FiSH) has been added. Note that Diffie-Hellman key exchange (DHX) is not yet supported.
• The Watched Nicknames reporting has been made more reliable.
• Socket handling in the DCC file transfer feature has been improved.
• Alpha-blending of icons in the channel nickname list has been fixed.
• Support for the iso-2022-jp encoding has been enhanced.
• The custom web browser feature will now automatically append the URL as a parameter to the specified command when the %u identifier is missing.
• Channel modes are now correctly cleared and updated in the internal representation on rejoin.
• that led to an infinite loop during a connection attempt when all nicknames configured in the identity were in use has been f
• A bug that could lead to a crash when opening the log file for a closed connection has been fixed.