17.08 Applications Release announcement text

[Valorie Zimmerman]

Hello folks, I noticed that there was not much progress on the release
announcement text, and I had some time last night, so I worked up an
announcement text based on those we've had in the past, and the notes
left by developers on
https://notes.kde.org/p/applications_17.08_new_features .

I found some of these notes rather difficult to make sense of, so
please check! Here is the text so you need not login to notes just to
see:

KDE Ships KDE Applications 17.08.0

Also available in:  English ...

August 17, 2017

KDE Applications 17.04 is here.

We have worked to make both the applications and the underlying
libraries more stable and easier to use. By ironing out wrinkles and
listening to your feedback, we have made the KDE Applications suite
less prone to glitches and much friendlier. Enjoy your new apps!

We're pleased that the following applications which were based on
kdelibs4 are now based on KDE Frameworks 5: kmag, kmousetool,
kgoldrunner, kigo, konquest, kreversi, ksnakeduel, kspaceduel,
ksudoku, kubrick, lskat, and umbrello. Thanks to the hard-working
developers who volunteered their time and work to make that happen.
Ktorrent, separately released, has also been updated to KDE Frameworks
5.

What's new in 17.08

Dolphin
Dolphin developers report that Dolphin now shows "Deletion Time" in
the Trash, and shows "Creation Time" if the OS supports it such as on
BSDs.

KIO-Extras
Kio-Extras now provides better support for Samba shares.

KAlgebra
The KAlgebra developers have worked on improving their Kirigami
front-end on the desktop, and implemented code completion.

KDE PIM

In KMailtransport, developers have reactivated akonadi transport
support, created plugins support, and recreated sendmail mail
transport support.
In SieveEditor, a lot of bugs in autocreate scripts have been fixed
and closed. Along with general bug-fixing, a regexp editor line-editor
has been added.
In KMail the ability to use an external editor has been recreated as a plugin.
The Akonadi-import-wizard now has the "convert all converter" as a
plugin, so that developers can create new converters easily.
Kdepim*apps* now depends on Qt5.7. Developers have fixed a lot of
compile errors on windows. All of kdepim does not compile on windows
yet but the developers have made big progress. To begin, the
developers created a craft-recipe for it. Much bug fixing has been
done to modernize code (c++11) Wayland support on Qt 5.9.
Kdepim-runtime adds a facebook resource.

Kdenlive
In Kdenlive, the team fixed the broken "Freeze effect." In recent
versions, it was impossible to change the frozen frame for the freeze
effect. Now a keyboard shortcut for Extract Frame feature is allowed.
Now the user can save screenshots of their timeline with a keyboard
shortcut, and a name is now suggested based on frame number
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=381325. Fix downloaded transition
lumas do not appear in interface:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382451. Fix audio clicks issue
(for now, requires building the dependency MLT from git until a MLT
release): https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=371849.

Krfb
Developers have finished porting the X11 plugin to Qt5, and krfb is
working again using a X11 backend that is much faster than the Qt
plugin. There's a new Settings page, allowing the user to change
preferred framebuffer plugin.

Konsole
Konsole now allows unlimited scrollback to extend past 2GB (32bit)
limit. Now Konsole allows users to enter any location to store
scrollback files. Also, a regression was fixed, Konsole can once again
allow KonsolePart to call the Manage Profile dialog.

KAppTemplate
In KAppTemplate there is now an option to install new templates from
the filesystem. More templates have been removed from KAppTemplate and
instead integrated  into related products; ktexteditor plugin template
and kpartsapp template (ported to Qt5/KF5 now) have become part of KDE
Frameworks KTextEditor and KParts since 5.37.0. These changes should
simplify creation of templates in KDE applications.

https://community.kde.org/Applications/17.08_Release_Notes

Valorie

-- 
http://about.me/valoriez