File releases: releasenotes_0.4.0.txt

I am very pleased to announce version 0.4.0 of the Decibel Realtime
Communication Framework.


Decibel
=========

Decibel is a realtime communications framework, meant to integrate services like
CTI (Computer Telephone Integration), VoIP (Voice over IP), text based chat and
instant messaging.

End users find in Decibel one central place to manage all realtime communication
settings and can easily configure and change responses to communication
requests.

By providing a simple, DBus-based API to the services like communication account
management, connection to contacts, etc. Decibel reduces the complexity and
effort of accessing realtime communication technologies in applications. This
allows for integration of realtime communication technologies into applications
that are not focused on communication.

Decibel consists of the desktop neutral policy daemon and desktop dependent
components. These components interact with the user and his desktop environment
by providing GUIs for common tasks like eg. creating a new communication
account, storing passwords or contacting a friend. Using the Telepathy
specification (http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/) the Decibel daemon manages
Telepathy compliant connection managers (implementing the various communication
protocols) and connects them to Decibel components as required by the users
communication needs.


Motivation
----------

Today's users are relying on communication software on their computer systems.
They are forced to switch between different applications for the
different protocols and communication methods (text chat, telephony, etc.) they
are using. These applications usually are poorly integrated with each other,
thus requiring the users to interact with several applications to do simple
things like setting their online status to "away" on all communication channels
they are using.


Acknowledgments
---------------

Development of Decibel is sponsored by NLnet (http://www.nlnet.nl/) and
basysKom GmbH (http://www.basyskom.de/).

Thanks for the support you are giving!

I further want to thank the Tapioca
project (http://tapioca-voip.sourceforge.net/) for providing Qt bindings
to the telepathy specification Decibel is using.


License
-------

Decibel is released under the LGPL version 2.1.


Version 0.4.0
===============

This release is considered to be a feature complete implementation of the
Decibel daemon. It does:

 * Manage communication accounts for all supported protocols
 * Listen for incoming and outgoing communication channels
 * Start up components as configured to handle these channels
 * Support profiles of component configurations. This way you can eg. have
   different reactions to incoming communication channels when online or
   offline.
 * Create connections to contacts managed in an external PIM system.
 * Propagate presence state of contacts into an external PIM system.

Please send a email to tobias dot hunger at basyskom dot de if you think we can
improve support for your use cases.

Version 0.4.0 includes an example implementation demonstrating how to integrate
Decibel with a desktop environment. This implementation uses simple INI files
for data storage.

This is the forth milestone release of Decibel. It is addressed to application
developers wanting to get a glance at Decibel. We are very much interested
in your feedback (and - of course - contributions;-)!


Changes since Version 0.3.0
=============================

 * Build with -fvisibility=hidden: This is the default with KDE4
 * miniGUI VoIP/CTI client added. this is an example application working well
   with the snom telepathy module available here:
       http://decibel.kde.org/index.php?id=90
 * Documentation updated and reworked. Common API part was split out to
   avoid confusing doxygen.
 * API improvements in the ContactManager:
   Contacts are no longer required to be registered with the PIM system.


Sources:
==========

Get the sources at http://decibel.kde.org/index.php?id=90

The code is further available in the KDE Subversion repository:
svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/work/decibel

Please see the INSTALL file for instructions on how to build the sources and
the a list of dependencies.

If you have questions or comments, please send an email to
  tobias dot hunger at basyskom dot de

Thanks!

Binary packages are not available from us, but some linux distributions
already ship Decibel packages. See http://decibel.kde.org/index.php?id=90
for a list of links.


Known Problems
================

None.


To Do
======

 * Update to the newest telepathy specification. This will improve compatibility
   to telepathy connection managers using the streamed media interface.
 * Finalize KDE4 Controlcenter Module for account handling, add another module
   to configure components.
 * Integrate Decibel into desktop environments: A second example implementation
   showing how to integrate Decibel into KDE4 needs to be added.
 * Enhance existing command line examples with a GUI and write more examples.


Contact
=========

Web:          http://decibel.kde.org/
mailing list: decibel at kde dot org
IRC:          #decibel on freenode.net
Author:       tobias dot hunger at basyskom dot de
Authors Blog: http://basysblog.org/

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions, feedback or want to help
building the Decibel Realtime Communication Framework!