KMail
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Kontact screenshot
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| Developer(s) | KDE |
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| Stable release |
5.2.2 / 20 June 2016
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| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Unix-like, Microsoft Windows (Experimental) |
| Type | Personal Information Manager |
| License | GNU General Public License |
| Website | userbase |
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KMail using the default layout: the folder list on the left side and the preview pane below the message list (top right)
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KOrganizer’s Calendar view
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Akregator running under KDE 4.2
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KNode 0.10.4
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| Initial release | 1997 |
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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, etc.) all built on top of a common core.
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 distributions such as Kubuntu hide the individual applications and only place Kontact prominently.
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 is not useful by itself.
The first embedded components were created by Cornelius Schumacher. He modified the KAddressBook and KOrganizer 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 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 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.
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Wikipedia