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Kontact improvements & integration ideas

KDE 1.-4. Improvements

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Some ideas to improve overall usability and integration of Kontact with other KDE apps.

Main points are summarized on the screenshot.

- Kopete-Kontact integration : IM contacts should be better integrated with Kaddressbook : add an easy way to \\\"link\\\" IM contacts to contacts in address book (e.g., give a list of all Kopete IM contact in the Contact Editor). Status (availability and so on) of contacts should appear in KMail main view + Kontact \\\"summarized view\\\". Moreover, infos (like pictures) could be automatically retrieved from IM profile and added to Kaddressbook.

- Kontact and integration with other apps : Kontact could be efficiently integrated with digiKam to tag pictures with contact names (e.g. \\\"John is on this picture\\\", and thus automatically generate galleries of pictures for each contact. Integration with Last.fm profiles could be interesting, too : when I look at a contacts, I get the list of the songs he was recently listennig at. A futher integration to Amarok (or similar app) could allow to play these songs if they are locally available. Lastly, I could be nice to have a blog integration for contacts, allowing to see/read the last posts directly from Kontact interface.

- Last idea (actually, not really a new idea :) ) : have a \\\"quick answer\\\" box in KMail, like in Thunderbird or GMail. A \\\"Chat with this contact\\\" link could also be added, see screenshot.

That\\\'s all folks ! :)
Some of these ideas could be added in current kontact versions, some other would be better for KDE 4...

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Enderandrew

10 years ago

Contacts are nice.

I would still like to see some of the ideas from here implemented, such as Amarok's last.fm tying in with contacts, and digiKam allowing you to tag photos with KDE contacts.

I think I'm going to go to the KDE bug database and request those features for digiKam and Amarok respectively. However, I'm not sure either is in a spot to focus on adding new features.

Amarok 2 is still being refactored for the new context view, KDE 4, Plasma, new playlist, etc. And digiKam is also focusing on stabilizing the bevy of new features there, and the KDE 4 port.

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Enderandrew

10 years ago

Please vote for these bugs!

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165824 - digiKam request
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165825 - Amarok request

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kossebau

11 years ago

Be happy, the Contacts framework is able to make your idea reality! Have a look at http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=42120

Anyone is welcome to write things like the LastFm plugins. Have a look into properties/examples as a starting point, and do not hesitate to contact me: kossebau (at kde org.

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TakeIT2

11 years ago

While it might not work at work,
kontact at home with this patch ( for ultimately a mediacenter PC,) sounds cool. Now if someone could just do KRadio and kdeTV,we would be streaming through local IM plus... :)

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Dandelion

12 years ago

I just got lost! Part of the problem here is exactly what lays behind KDE's major flaw, which precisely comes from its bigger strength: it's so powerful and configurable that is so easy to get a very confusing and distracting GUI. Less is always more. As someone already mentioned, you don't have to integrate just because you can, but because you should. Having an AmaroK plugin or something else not related to Kontact directly is an invitation to caos, to put it ungently. :P

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ealm

12 years ago

Agreed. The IM and Akregator integration would be really usable, but not the music thing.

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Fri13

12 years ago

If user just has option to select what integration will he use:

1. Amarok LastFM
2. Kopete quickanswer
3. Kopete status save (IM status grab)
4. Digikam (Kflickr)
5. Akregator (akregator is already in kontact?)
6. Kmail quickanswer (or is that just only with kopete?)

If i could select from these what i could use, i would select: 2, 3, 6

How about if there is no RSS feed "folder" in place, just RSS icon would become visible when user has updated own blog or what user has selected from contact options?

I already like idea to have kontact where i have kaddressbook, kmail and akregator. But i dont like to see that everything is in one window, but someone could like that ;-)

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shades

12 years ago

somethings make perfect sense, like kopete integration,others don't. why would u want to have amarok integration on kontact? i think that each monkey belongs to his branch. that wouldn't be useful nor wise.
digikam imports seems reasonable too.

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C

skadge

12 years ago

Amarok integration is only in combination with things like LAST.FM profiles integration. I'd like to see, for my contacts, what songs they recently listen at, and it seems logical, if I own these songs, to be able to play them. But Amarok integration is actually only a "light" integration :)

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ibc2

12 years ago

Why do you want to know your friend music and to play the same song? Is this feature really usable or just two person in the word could use it?

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C

skadge

12 years ago

If you use sometimes last.fm (http://www.last.fm), you know that it's a wide communauty, and *I think* it could be nice to know what music my friend are listenning at...

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ibc

12 years ago

Ok, you are right ;)
Anyway, this feature should appear in Kadresbook, but not in Kmail window.

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michals

12 years ago

It's great!!

I think user should decide if he wants to make use of this integration or not.

I would do if I could :-D

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ra1n

12 years ago

maybe the example it's too crowded, but I agree that there is the need of a more thight integration between kde apps, something like apple does with their iApps, they blend very nice together

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Headrush

12 years ago

I like the ideas except for the amarok/multimedia integration.

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Spoonman

12 years ago

This is just the kind of thing you can do with Outlook if your company's running the MS IM service. We've been using it for a year, and I love the integration. This is a nice way to duplicate the functionality.

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bram85

12 years ago

No, you won't see this in KDE 3.5, since it's in feature freeze.

And I'm also not impressed with amaroK and digikam in Kontact. They just don't belong there. Or shall we include KMPlayer as well? And a Katepart? And...

And as a ending note, I'd like to quote Mathias Ettrich:

"I get the feeling we do embedding and morphing not because its useful, but because we can."

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ibc2

12 years ago

I agree with you, why should Kmail show so much information about the sender of an email? Where is the space to view the mails?


All these information could be placed in the addressbook tab.

The "amaroK, RSS... integration", simply I can't understand.

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C

skadge

12 years ago

I agree with you : RSS, Amarok, digiKam shouldn't appear in KMail view. It's not the right place.
The idea was mainly to suggest new way to integrate the contact list with KDE apps.

It would be certainly better to have these infos in the Kaddressbook view.

Actually I think this "address book" should become a "contacts center", with maybe a more central place in KDE. A place to link together various infos, communications tool and multimedia application in a broad way (blogs, music profile, picture gallery, and so on)

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BorgQueen

12 years ago

I like it. I agree that maybe the amaroK and Digikam thing might be difficult to do but if it can be done, why not? Just make there is an option to add or subtract these features.

Great idea overall.

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meneerdik

12 years ago

Good, Good...

Have you submitted wishlist items on bugs.kde.org?

Especially the quick-answer box for quickly answering e-mails is interesting... The IM-icons next to the mail message listing is useful too.

I'm not so sure about the Amarok/Digikam thing.. It seems a bit far-fetched.

A much more useful thing would be that Kontact could compile a list of E-mail contacts, based on the addresses of sent and received messages. Clicking on a contact would show only the email messages received from or sent to this contact.

At some point, this contact list could also contain contacts from Kopete. Clicking on it would display both email messages and chat logs. When one person has both a Kopete contact name and a email contact name (which is different) the RMB menu of both names could have an entry "This is the same person as...". This would allow easy merging of multiple names into one metacontact.

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updated Feb 01 2006
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