After a year of development, the Dino 0.4 communications client has been released, supporting chat, audio calls, video calls, video conferencing, and text messaging using the Jabber/XMPP protocol. The project code is written in the Vala language using the GTK toolkit and distributed under the GPLv3+ license.
The connection uses the XMPP protocol and generic XMPP extensions (XEP-0353, XEP-0167), which allows you to make calls between Dino and any other XMPP clients that support the appropriate specifications, for example, you can set up encrypted video calls with Conversations and Movim applications, as well as unencrypted calls with the Gajim app. End-to-end messaging encryption and validation is performed using the OMEMO XMPP extension based on the Signal protocol.
In the new release:
- Added support for reactions that allow the user to quickly respond to a message with an appropriate emoji character, such as emote (π€―), agreement (ποΈ), or disapproval (ποΈ) without typing.
- In group chats, direct messaging and channels, support has been added for a direct reply that is tied to a specific message and allows you to quickly go to view it.
- Transitioned from GTK3 to GTK4 and the libadwaita library, which offers ready-made widgets and objects for building applications that comply with the new GNOME HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) recommendations. The user interface is adapted to work correctly on screens of any size, including small screens of mobile devices.
Main features of Dino and supported XEP extensions:
- Multi-user chats with support for private groups and public channels (in groups, you can only chat with people included in the group on arbitrary topics, and in channels, any users can only chat on a given topic);
- Use of avatars;
- Message archive management;
- Marking the last received and read messages in chats;
- Attaching files and images to messages. Files can be transferred directly from client to client, or uploaded to the server and provided with a link by which another user can download this file;
- Support for direct transmission of multimedia content (sound, video, files) between clients using the Jingle protocol;
- Support for SRV records to establish a direct encrypted connection using TLS, in addition to sending through an XMPP server;
- Encryption with OMEMO and OpenPGP;
- Distribution of messages by subscription (Publish-Subscribe);
- Notification of the status of a message set by another user (you can disable sending notifications about the set in relation to chats or individual users);
- Delayed delivery of messages;
- Bookmarks for various services and resources stored on the server;
- Notification of successful message delivery;
- Advanced tools for searching messages and filtering output in the history of correspondence;
- Support for working in one interface with several accounts, for example, to separate work and personal correspondence;
- Work in offline mode with the actual sending of written messages and receiving messages accumulated on the server after a network connection appears;
- SOCKS5 support for forwarding direct P2P connections;
- Support for vCard XML format.
Source: opennet.ru