PIM/MS Windows

This page covers topics related to the KDE PIM Suite on MS Windows NT kernel (which means running on Windows Desktop versions NT or newer like XP, Vista or 7).

Building

To build KDE PIM for Windows use emerge. For documentation about emerge please see [1]

You should be able to get executables just by calling emerge kdepim.

Bugs

For a list of open, Windows specific, bugs please see: bugs.kde.org

Problem points

Status	Feature	Description	Contact
TO DO	Documentation of KDE	Somehow the documentation is not loaded correctly in khelpcenter without visible errors in the debug output
TO DO	Search	Provide a search backend	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
TO DO	Default Folders	Some default folders in the wrong place (not in AppData)	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
TO DO	Nepomuk	Provide a working Nepomuk	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
IN PROGRESS	Multiuser Support	Make it possible to deploy KDEPIM in multiuser environments
TO DO	Dialogs opening in background	Dialogs are way to often opened in the background and thus missed by the user	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
TO DO	KWallet in background of accountwizard warnings	Do not open the initial KWallet dialog behind the accountwizard	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
TO DO	Seamless integration with Gpg4Win 2.1	Crypto does not integrate as good and easy as it should	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
TO DO	Summary Screen without Nepomuk	The summary screen has problems without nepomuk avialability	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
IN PROGRESS	Make mailto work	There are probably some wrong parameters set in the registry. KSendemail has already been fixed so that i can take the parameters correctly.
TO DO	Performance of Plugin loading	Loading plugins like the configuration plugins takes unnaturally long	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
TO DO	SSL Certificate checks	All SSL Certificate checks fail	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
TO DO	System Requirements	Minimum System requirements	Andre Heinecke <[email protected]>
DONE	LDAP Support	Enabling KLdap
DONE	Akonadi Notifications	Akonadi Notifications are not communicated correctly to the GUI
DONE	Kwallet warnings	Remove the Kwallet "do you want to grant xy access
DONE	Image view in Mailviewer	Images in the Mailviewer are not shown correctly
DONE	Design	Make KDEPIM feel native on Windows
DONE	Integrate with GPG4Win	GnuPG is currently supported
DONE	Akonadi startup/shutdown	Decide how akonadi should be started/stopped on Windows (There is now a Full Shudown button in Kontact that also kills akonadi

SSL Certificates

All SSL certificate checks currently fail a correct solution would be to take the Installed Windows certificates additionally to the kdelibs default certificates.

Plugin Performance

The loading of plugins, especially the kcm modules for the configuration Dialog take unnaturally long to load for the first time. Depending on your Machine this can be 10-40 seconds.

Sumarry Screen

Clicking on the Summary Screen in Kontact seems to trigger a very large query. Used with multiple large accounts Kontact started to loose stability and ultimately began to freeze um with some Akonadi ressources crashing.

Seamless Crypto

There needs to be a build of the gnupg development libaries that better integrates with gpg4win. The selfbuilt camakeified Versions do not have any upstream support and are built without smime support. The upstream gpg4win-dev package was built against gpg 1 and does only work after some tricks. Kleopatra master on Windows also seems a bit buggy (refreshing way too often) but this might be a side effect of the libraries.

Dialogs in background

Many Dialogs (for example the "ignore ssl errors" dialog can open in the background) and be missed by the user that then is confused by the behavior of kontact.

Kwallet warnings

The Kwallet warnings don't make sense as they do not add any kind of security. The processname can easily be faked and they are just written in a plain text file. They often open in the background and are confusing.

Minimum System Requirements

The minimal system requirements (CPU/RAM/Disk Space) for Kontact on Windows are currently unkonwn since it is much more standalone then on a GNU/Linux System those need to be measured and communicated. Windows apperantly expect something like that.

Multiuser Support

Kontact on Windows currently can be run on the same machine twice with different users but there are appearantly some problems on Windows Server installations.

LDAP Support

Done by integrating a binary package of openldap into the build.

There are two options to get LDAP support for PIM on Windows:

OpenLDAP

• Pro:
  • Would offer the same API as on GNU/Linux
  • Is proven to work on Windows with KDEPIM
  • If just a binary package is used, the effort is small.

• Contra:
  • Current Openldap is not ported to be buildable natively on Windows. So far it would need to be cross compiled, or cygwin compiled or the binaries taken.
  • More effort to do a good port to a decent buildsystem which fits the toolchain like cmake/emerge to be build with msvc or mingw-w64 on Windows.
  • Can not be debugged with msvc for above reasons
  • Is another dependency we have to take care of, which increasing code and complexety, more chance for security issues and the port needs to be maintained.

WinLDAP

Windows has native LDAP support with winldap:

• Pro:
  • Integrated into the platform, maintained by Microsoft
  • API differences should be Minimal so kldap calls could stay the same
  • Behaviour consistent with other LDAP client behaviour on Windows.

• Contra:
  • Efforts comparable to OpenLDAP with initally ported build system. In particular higher than the simple "take binary" approach.
  • kdepimlibs is build with -DUNICODE, but expects LDAP system calls o return ascii, so this needs conversion. There is a bit code in kdepimlibs/kldap/w32ldaphelp.h which works fo WindowsCE, but now Windows>=NT.
  • Is propietary we do not know the implementation details and cannot debug it.
  • Might show slightly different behavior than OpenLDAP, which raises potential testing and support costs when Kontact behaves differently here.
  • Might not implement all functions used by kldap so working around it in kldap would be necessary.

Search

There are several issues with Nepomuk / Soprano and the redland rdf libraries on Windows, they are currently disabled because there is no stable build for Windows.

Nepomuk

For a virtuoso installation to work regsvr32 has to be called on the virtuoso odbc driver at the moment. Soprano has to be fixed so that it checks if that driver is availble and if not registers it. The NSIS installer does this currently

Akonadi Notifications

DBus problem that has been fixed in newer versions of DBus > 1.4.1

Design

Oxygen Theme looks strange and alien on Windows 7 default style but ok on Windows XP style Currently the Packaged Style in the Enterprise 5 package is optimzed for XP and Vista/7 looks.

Best solution would be to check what the System Style is or package the KDE-Systemsettings to customize that style.

Akonadi Start Stop

Akonadi startup can take a while on slow systems which delays the first Kontact startup.

Once akonadi is running it can not be stopped from the UI

GPG4Win Integration

Crypto is now working again the reason was an error in libstdc++ on windows that caused std::strings to corrupt the heap.

General Hints

Shutdown everything from KDE

Either run killkde.bat in your installation\bin directory or run kdeinit4 --terminate to shut down everything.

Delete all configuration

To delete all configuration files remove the folders .local .config .kde in your userdata directory. (e.g. c:\documents and settings\testuser\ on xp c:\users\testuser on win7) Also delete .kde in your application data directory (e.g. c:\documents and settings\testuser\Applicationdata on xp c:\users\testuser\Applicationdata\roaming on win7)

Switch to English

To change the application language of Kontact from German to English please use a text editor and change the locale settings in the file 'kdeglobals' to:

 Country=en
 Language=en_US

and restart all KDE processes (esp. logout, login). You'll find this file usually under the installed directory in 'Kontact\share\config' (e.g. c:\Program Files\Kontact\share\config\kdeglobals).

Or goto: help -> change application language

Backtrace for Crash reporting

If you encounter crashes, a backtrace might help the developers to find the defect faster. There are some hints doing a backtrace with gdb on windows in http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Debugging/Debugging_on_MS_Windows#MinGW_debugging_hints

Diagnostics

General debugging techniques of KDEPIM Software are also available on Windows. There is akonadiconsole installed as a tool to debug akonadi, as well as qdbusviewer.

DebugView and some other tools from the following URL can be useful to diagnose problems: http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_on_Windows/Tools

DebugView will let you see the message of the KDE runtime system, which on GNU/Linux you can see on stdout or stderr.

---

Some notes from the original porting project

Integration into the Windows Explorer & Desktop

Note

jstaniek 22:01, 14 January 2008 (CET): TortoiseSVN is GPLed SVN client which is nicely integrated with Windows Explorer. Perhaps we can use its source code as a reference...

Registry settings for default apps and services

Introduction: We can detect whether KMail is the default e-mail client. If set as default, KMail should act as a default mailer, and thus be invoked automatically for actions like RMB "Send To -> E-mail Recipient". This shall be also reused by others for KOrganizer and Konqueror. The solution is relatively simple modifications to the Windows Registry. See Mozilla's solution.

First, we can use HKLM node for system-global settings or HKCU node for current-user-only settings. If the attempt to set the value in HKLM fails, usually because of unsufficient permissions, HKCU should be used. As expected, HKCU overrides HKLM settings. See KB297878. Below we'll use HKCU.

• HKCU\Software\Clients\StartMenuInternet key is used to specify default web browser; could be set to Konqueror
• HKCU\Software\Clients\StartMenuInternet\app.exe\shell\open\command key is used for "Internet" start menu shortcut, can be set to Konqueror. Note from the KB - "The command might open the browser on the users home page, for example. However, it might launch some other introductory user interface that the ISV feels is appropriate." So this is not the same as 'default browser' setting.

• HKCU\Software\Clients\Mail\Appname - registered email client, there can be more entries within the 'Mail' node. Adding KMail here makes it available for users to select as a default browser using 'Set Default Programs' system window.
• HKCU\Software\Clients\Mail - default email client, 'Windows Mail' by default; could be set to KMail.

• HKCU\Software\Clients\Calendar\Appname - registered calendar application, there can be more entries within the 'Calendar' node. See the note for HKCU\Software\Clients\Mail\Appname.
• HKCU\Software\Clients\Calendar - default calendar application, 'Windows Calendar' on Vista; could be set to KOrganizer.

• HKCU\Software\Clients\Contacts\Appname - registered contacts client, there can be more entries within the 'Contacts' node. See the note for HKCU\Software\Clients\Mail\Appname.
• HKCU\Software\Clients\Contacts - default contacts application, 'Address Book' by default; could be set to KAddressBook.

• HKCU\Software\Clients\News\Appname - registered newsgroup client, there can be more entries within the 'News' node. See the note for HKCU\Software\Clients\Mail\Appname.
• HKCU\Software\Clients\News - default newsgroup application, 'Windows Mail' by default; could be set to KNode.

From the KB: After updating the registry keys, the application broadcasts the WM_SETTINGCHANGE message with wParam = 0 and lParam pointing to the null-terminated string "Software\Clients\StartMenuInternet" to notify the operating system that the default client has changed.

Using MAPI

HKLM\Software\Clients\AppName\DllPath points to a dll implementing MAPI interface. Internet Explorer uses Windows Messaging by default to invoke a mailer on a mailto: link. Only if the MAPI install is misconfigured will it resort to directly accessing the mailto association key.[2] Example implementation of MAPI services is Thundebird's mozMapi32.dll (the key is usualle equal to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\mozMapi32.dll).

KDE-related notes

• KDElibs execute default web browser or email client for protocols like http(s): and mailto: via QDesktopServices::openUrl(), which in turn uses ShellExecute(). openUrl() is widely used in Qt e.g. for hyperlinks in text boxes and label widgets.
• A general rule of KDE/win: not to duplicate registry settings in any rc file and use default applications if possible, to avoid changing behaviour expected by users.
• jstaniek 12:06, 18 June 2008 (CEST): Before LinuxTag I've performed some tests of setting default clients, and looks like it's is not possible to set onlt writing registry entries. Some API calls may be needed, especially because locked at least one registry key is locked for writing during the session.

Links

• The KDE on Windows Project
• Missing features of kdelibs on Windows - KDE PIM may depend on them