Kontact [1] is a new KDE [2] application for managing personal information like mail, appointments, todo lists and contacts. It is based on existing KDE applications which are embedded into a container framework by using KDE component technology and extending it where required. Figure 7 shows a screenshot of the organizer component in Kontact.
The functionality of Kontact emerges from integration of the components on the application level. It doesn't compromise the ability of the components to run as individual stand-alone applications. The user retains the choice whether to use the components as one application aggregating all the functionality or to use some or all parts as separate applications.
KDE is one of the major desktop environments for Linux and Unix systems. it is based on the Qt toolkit [29] and mostly written in C++. It consists of a framework providing the desktop infrastructure and a wide range of applications, from web browser and mail client, through music players, games and educational software to text editor and integrated development environment. Kontact is part of the kdepim module of KDE which contains tools for personal information management.
After a short discussion about components and monolithism (section 2) this paper will give an introduction into the Kontact component model (section 3) and a detailed overview of the integration technologies used in Kontact (section 4). It will discuss the importance of open standards (section 5), give an insight into Kontact as project (section 6) and will conclude with information about the availability of Kontact (section 7), final remarks (section 8) and some information about the authors of Kontact (section 9).