Kontact is a
personal information manager
A personal information manager (often referred to as a PIM tool or, more simply, a PIM) 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 manag ...
and
groupware software suite developed by
KDE
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...
. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, etc.) all built on top of a common core.
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 distribution
A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...
s such as
Kubuntu hide the individual applications and only place ''Kontact'' prominently.
History
![KDE mascot Konqi for KDE maillist](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/KDE_mascot_Konqi_for_KDE_maillist.png)
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 it is not useful by itself.
The first embedded components were created by
Cornelius Schumacher
Cornelius Schumacher (born 1 December 1969 in Tübingen, Germany) is a German open source software developer. He was born in Tübingen but lives in Erlangen, Germany.
Biography
He has been a KDE contributor since 1997 when he mainly worked in ...
. He modified the
KAddressBook
Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...
and
KOrganizer
Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...
applications to create the initial address book 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 developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...
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.
During the construction of the Kontact application suite, the
Kolab
Kolab is a free and open source groupware suite. It consists of the Kolab server and a wide variety of Kolab clients, including KDE PIM-Suite Kontact, Roundcube web frontend, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning with SyncKolab extensio ...
groupware server was being worked on by Erfrakon, Intevation.net 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 developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...
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: A summary which shows unread emails, upcoming appointments, and the latest news and weather from the user's subscribed RSS feeds
Email
KMail supports folders, filtering, viewing
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
mail, and international character sets. It can handle
IMAP
In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by .
IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...
,
IMAP IDLE
In email technology, IDLE is an IMAP feature described iRFC 2177that allows a client to indicate to the server that it is ready to accept real-time
Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guar ...
,
dIMAP
In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by .
IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...
,
POP3
In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common p ...
, and local mailboxes for incoming mail. It can send mail via
SMTP
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typical ...
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 (SMTP) used for email transport over the Internet.
A descendant of the ...
protocols. It can forward HTML mail as an attachment but it cannot forward mail inline.
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
In computer programming, standard streams are interconnected input and output communication channels between a computer program and its environment when it begins execution. The three input/output (I/O) connections are called standard input (stdin ...
.
* ''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
Apache SpamAssassin is a computer program used for e-mail spam filtering. It uses a variety of spam-detection techniques, including DNS and fuzzy checksum techniques, Bayesian filtering, external programs, blacklists and online databases. It i ...
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 to 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 oversized messages without wasting time.
Cryptographic support
KMail supports the
OpenPGP
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partiti ...
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 the
GnuPG
GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is a free-software replacement for Symantec's PGP cryptographic software suite. The software is compliant with RFC 4880, the IETF standards-track specification of OpenPGP. Modern versions of PGP are interoperabl ...
software for this functionality. As a visual aid, KMail will colour verified email messages green for
trusted signatures; yellow for untrusted signatures; red for invalid signatures; and blue for encrypted messages.
KMail also supports
S/MIME S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard for public key encryption and signing of MIME data. S/MIME is on an IETF standards track and defined in a number of documents, most importantly . It was originally developed by R ...
messages as well as
Chiasmus
In rhetoric, chiasmus ( ) or, less commonly, chiasm (Latin term from Greek , "crossing", from the Greek , , "to shape like the letter Χ"), is a "reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses – but no repetition of wor ...
, a proprietary cryptographic system created by the German
Federal Office for Information Security
The Federal Office for Information Security (german: Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, abbreviated as BSI) is the German upper-level federal agency in charge of managing computer and communication security for the German g ...
(BSI).
Address book
KAddressBook is an
address book
An address book or a name and address book is a book, or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields (for example: first name, last name, company name, address, telephone num ...
application.
Description
KAddressBook is a
graphical interface
The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...
to organizing the addresses and contact information of family, friends, business partners, etc. It integrates with
KDE Plasma, allowing interoperability with other KDE programs, including the e-mail client
KMail
Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...
– allowing one-click access to composing an e-mail – and the instant messenger
Kopete
Kopete is a multi-protocol, free software instant messaging client released as part of the KDE Software Compilation. Although it can run in numerous environments, it was designed for and integrates with the KDE Plasma Workspaces. Kopete was star ...
– 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, also known as VCF (Virtual Contact File), is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards can be attached to e-mail messages, sent via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), on the World Wide Web, instant messaging, NFC ...
format.
* Uses
DBUS
In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus")
is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...
to interface with other applications.
* Interoperable with
KMail
Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...
and
Kopete
Kopete is a multi-protocol, free software instant messaging client released as part of the KDE Software Compilation. Although it can run in numerous environments, it was designed for and integrates with the KDE Plasma Workspaces. Kopete was star ...
, 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 (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory servi ...
database containing person information.
Organizer
KOrganizer is the
personal organizer
A personal organizer, datebook, date log, daybook, day planner, personal analog assistant, book planner, year planner, or agenda (from Latin ''agenda'' – things to do), is a small book or binder that is designed to be portable. It usually con ...
. It has the ability to manage calendars, journals, and a to do list.
News feed aggregator
Akregator is a
feed aggregator
Feed or The Feed may refer to:
Animal foodstuffs
* Animal feed, food given to domestic animals in the course of animal husbandry
** Fodder, foodstuffs manufactured for animal consumption
** Forage, foodstuffs that animals gather themselves, s ...
. It supports both
RSS
RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...
and
Atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, and ...
. 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
In computing, incremental search, hot search, incremental find or real-time suggestions is a user interface interaction method to progressively search for and filter through text. As the user types text, one or more possible matches for the text ...
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 a browser engine developed by the KDE project. It is the default engine of the Konqueror browser, but it has not been actively worked on since 2016. Moreover, KHTML will be discontinued for KDE Frameworks 6.
Built on the KParts fra ...
as an internal,
tabbed
In interface design, a tab is a graphical user interface object that allows multiple documents or panels to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents. It is an interfac ...
web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
. Any external browser can also be called.
Akregator is part of
KDE
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...
since the 3.4 release, and it is distributed with the
kdepim
Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator ...
module.
Usenet news client
KNode is the
news client
A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet distributed throughout newsgroups. Newsreaders act as clients which connect to a news server, via the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), to download articles and post new ar ...
program for the
KDE
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...
desktop environment
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...
.
It supports multiple
NNTP
The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is an application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles (''netnews'') between news servers, and for reading/posting articles by the end user client applications. Brian Kantor of the Univers ...
servers, message threads, scoring,
X-Face
An X-Face is a small bitmap (48 × 48 pixels, black and white) image which is added to a Usenet posting or e-mail message, typically showing a picture of the author's face. The image data is included in the posting as encoded text, and attached ...
headers (reading and posting), and international character sets.
Personal wiki
KJots is a simple
outliner
An outliner (or outline processor) is a specialized type of text editor (word processor) used to create and edit outlines, which are text files which have a tree structure, for organization. Textual information is contained in discrete sections ca ...
text editor
A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software (e.g. Windows Notepad). Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be us ...
which can be used to create a
personal wiki
A personal wiki is wiki software that allows individual users to organize information on their desktop or mobile computing devices in a manner similar to community wikis, but without collaborative software or multiple users.
Personal wiki softwa ...
. It uses a basic
tree structure
A tree structure, tree diagram, or tree model is a way of representing the hierarchical nature of a structure in a graphical form. It is named a "tree structure" because the classic representation resembles a tree, although the chart is gener ...
to organize information: it refers to nodes as ‘books’ and leaves as ‘pages’. It includes a book view, which shows a
table of contents
A table of contents, usually headed simply Contents and abbreviated informally as TOC, is a list, usually found on a page before the start of a written work, of its chapter or section titles or brief descriptions with their commencing page numbe ...
, and a view mode for all entries.
Similar wiki-style programs are
Zim (based on
GTK
GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and propriet ...
and Python), Wixi (based on
Python
Python may refer to:
Snakes
* Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia
* Python (mythology), a mythical serpent
Computing
* Python (pro ...
and GTK)
KeepNote(based on Python and GTK), Notecase (based on GTK),
BasKet
A basket is a container that is traditionally constructed from stiff fibers and can be made from a range of materials, including wood splints, runners, and cane. While most baskets are made from plant materials, other materials such as horsehai ...
(based on
Qt), Gnudiary (also based on Qt),
Tomboy
A tomboy is a term for a girl or a young woman with masculine qualities. It can include wearing androgynous or unfeminine clothing and actively engage in physical sports or other activities and behaviors usually associated with boys or men. W ...
(GTK, based on
Mono
Mono may refer to:
Common meanings
* Infectious mononucleosis, "the kissing disease"
* Monaural, monophonic sound reproduction, often shortened to mono
* Mono-, a numerical prefix representing anything single
Music Performers
* Mono (Japanese b ...
),
Gnote
Gnote is a free and open-source desktop note-taking application written for Linux, cloned by Hubert Figuière from Tomboy. It uses a Wiki-like linking system to connect notes together. Gnote is part of the GNOME desktop environment, often fill ...
(Tomboy port to
C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
) and
Tiddlywiki
TiddlyWiki is a personal wiki and a non-linear notebook for organising and sharing complex information. It is an open-source single page application wiki in the form of a single HTML file that includes CSS, JavaScript, embedded files such as ...
(self-modifying, single-HTML contained personal wiki, written in
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
and expandable with plugins). Also
Treeline
The tree line is the edge of the habitat at which trees are capable of growing. It is found at high elevations and high latitudes. Beyond the tree line, trees cannot tolerate the environmental conditions (usually cold temperatures, extreme snowp ...
, an advanced outliner written in Python and personal database available for
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
and
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
, has similar functions.
Other components
* Notes:
KNotes – KDE Notes Management
* Weather:
KWeather
Storage back-end
Along with the
KDE Software Compilation 4
KDE Software Compilation 4 (KDE SC 4) was the only series of the so-called KDE Software Compilation (short: KDE SC), first released in January 2008 and the last release being 4.14.3 released in November 2014. It was the follow-up to K Desktop En ...
life cycle, Kontact moved to
Akonadi
Akonadi is a storage service for personal information management (PIM) data and metadata named after the oracle goddess of justice in Ghana. It is one of the “pillars” (core technologies) behind the KDE SC 4 project, although it is designed t ...
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 SC 4 release of Kontact was officially shipped with
KDE 4.1. That release did not use Akonadi. Since then the Kontact components have been gradually migrating towards Akonadi. The first stable version of KDE PIM using Akonadi was released together with
KDE 4.6.4 in June 2011.
See also
*
List of personal information managers
The following is a list of personal information managers ( PIMs) and online organizers.
Applications
Discontinued applications
See also Comparisons
* Comparison of email clients
* Comparison of file managers
* Comparison of note-taki ...
*
David Vignoni, the designer of older icons
References
External links
*
{{Aggregators
Email clients that use Qt
Free email software
Free note-taking software
Free personal information managers
Instant messaging clients that use Qt
KDE Applications
Kdepim