Kube is still alive! I got distracted for a while, both professionally and privately, and writing blog posts is unfortunately always the first thing that ends up on the chopping block. Anyways, lot’s of progress has been made (103 commits in sink, ~130 commits in the kube codebase):
- For sink we had a variety of bugfixes and performance improvements, especially on the more recent CalDAV/CardDAV backends.
- For CalDAV/CardDAV we now do basic autodiscovery using the .well-known url’s. The DNS part of the spec has not been implemented so far.
This means for a properly set-up server you only have to specify the base url, and everything else will be discovered automatically from there. - On the more user-facing front we have:
- Sent emails are now collapsed by default
- Plain text is now the preferred method of viewing emails. You can still view the HTML variant if available by clicking a button.
- The Addressbook is no longer read-only and you can now create contacts as well.
- A visually reworked composer that avoids becoming too wide and removes a lot of the visual clutter.
- The calendar can now render recurring-events.
- It is now possible to create events as well.
- Work on a tasks view has started
Releases
You may have noticed that it’s been a while since the last release. This is not only because releases are additional work, but also because we already have a continuous delivery method with the nightly flatpak.
It’s clear that releases do provide value, both as a communication tool which version should be packaged, and if they would be maintained. With the current manpower we cannot maintain releases though, which makes it significantly less interesting.
With that said, the 0.8 release with the calendar is now long overdue and should be coming out soonish.
Experimental flatpak
Just to put it out there; Additionally to the usual “master” branch of the flatpak, there is also an “experimental” branch, containing, surprise, various experimental bits and pieces.
This currently entails:
- A plugin that stores the accounts password encrypted by the accounts gpg key (blindly assuming there is one with a matching email address).
- A search view
- The upcoming calendar view (which we’ll move over in the next release)
- The above todo view (which will take a little longer to move to master)
- A “File as expense” plugin (a showcase how we could do extensions in the mail view).
- The Inbox crusher view (an experiment for a view to go through your inbox one-by-one).
It typically serves as a staging ground for new components, and is the version that I’m running day-to-day. flatpak makes it easy to switch back and forth between the branches on top of the same dataset, so you can try it and switch back if you don’t like what you see.
To give it a shot use the following command to install and switch to the experimental flatpak branch:
flatpak -y --user install --from https://files.kube-project.com/flatpak/com.kubeproject.kube.experimental.flatpakref flatpak --user make-current com.kubeproject.kube experimental
To switch back simply issue:
flatpak --user make-current com.kubeproject.kube master
More information on the Kolab Now blog!
“Kube is a modern communication and collaboration client built with QtQuick on top of a high performance, low resource usage core. It provides online and offline access to all your mail, contacts, calendars, notes, todo’s and more. With a strong focus on usability, the team works with designers and UX experts from the ground up, to build a product that is not only visually appealing but also a joy to use.” For more info, head over to: kube-project.com
Finding New Ways... 
To think you’ve got this far with not much manpower is amazing 🙂
It’s a simple to use client, and slick UI, so additional manpower may only speed up development not necessarily quality, and of course UI enhancements can always come later down the line, performance being more important, which works. The simplicity of Kube is probably my favourite feature so far.
Are Kolab likely to increase developemt manpower who might be able to help out in Kube as well as other places? Whilst Kolab Now is great, there are still areas leaving desire for more, such as an IMAP Proxy to filter out folders, and of course a really outstanding webclient to match something as good as Kube for the Web (Roundcube Next which I backed). Is there any talk of hiring developers who might overlap and also be able to improve the server and webclient too?
Keep up the good work, I won’t say no to a mobile version six months down the line
Hello, thanks for all the great work, it’s looking great!!
When trying your command to test the experimental version I get the following error:
com.kubeproject.kube/*unspecified*/experimental not installed
Do you what I should do?
I installed the flatpak repo as of the kube website i.e.:
flatpak -y –user install –from https://files.kube-project.com/flatpak/com.kubeproject.kube.flatpakref
Many thanks
My bad, you’ll have to install it first:
flatpak -y --user install --from https://files.kube-project.com/flatpak/com.kubeproject.kube.experimental.flatpakref