Spark client updates

Spark
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Can anyone tell me if there are any official builds on the horizon? I have 3.0.2 running which was released 3 years ago.
I know there are nightly builds, but I can’t find release notes or recommendations on which one might work best.

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Sadly it is feast or famine for Spark, mostly famine.

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Yes, soon it should be a new beta version 3.1.0. It will have a lot of changes comparing with a previous release so it may be not stable. Current nightly build should be stable enough, for the last two weeks I didn’t broke anything significantly.

Once it released I’ll try to fix bugs and then in a month or two release 3.2.0 with update of libraries and Dark theme but also with some default options changed. But then I won’t have much time to dedicate to the Spark unless someone hire me or donate to do the job.

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I’ll post updates on the current development about nightly builds.
Repaired two plugins: Translation and OTR encryption.

The translation plugin sends your messages to LibtreTranslate.com or another server and then adds the translation to a message as a second body. So if a user has the original message language set on its client then he’ll see the original message. Otherwise it will see the translation.
Some clients (Conversation) will show both translated and untranslated texts. I’ll add an option “Known languages” so that if you know multiple languages you will also see them, not only for your app locale.

Now you can also translate incoming messages, but you have to set your language in Preferences. Still, you’ll have to enable translation of the incoming messages manually on each chat. This may be enabled as some option “Always translate incoming” or enabled on a chat level.

The problem is that this is a huge security leak so you must set your own LibreTranslate service and configure a link to it. Also the LibreTraslate.com API has some limits that reached quite quickly.

The OTR (Off-the-record) plugin is used to make end-to-end (E2E) message encryption Off-the-record messaging - Wikipedia. This was an old plugin that was broken for a long time, but now it works and was updated. It has a limitation that you can’t read messages on other devices (which is similar to Secure chat in Telegram). It’s UI should be improved but for now it does a job. In your organization you may want to disable the plugin to monitor what users are saying and do a security audit.
The OTR encryption is supported by other clients: Piding, Psi, Thundebird and Monocles with Another.IM (Conversations forks). It works over messages text so it doesn’t rely on a protocol and can be used with IRC or over gateway transports.
Is old but it’s safe, but might be better. To say simply, it’s improved version now is called OMEMO. We have a task to implement it, but this is a low priority task (and now it’s even lower).
If you are interested to learn about a history of OTR and OMEMO see An odyssey of encryption in XMPP

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Latest changes in the Spark:

  1. Fixed a bug when in a contact list all avatars were shown as your own Jira
  2. Added avatars for group chats (MUCs).
  3. The HTTP File upload plugin was removed and this functionality moved to the Spark core.
  4. Some improvements to Edit my profile (vCard). Now you can specify Date of Birth and Gender ( it’s non standard so won’t work with Prosody and Gajim that supports only vCard v4).
  5. All plugins are now loaded on start asynchronously. This fixed some bugs when chat window was opened before a plugin was loaded so the plugin buttons wasn’t shown.
  6. Fixed user search.
  7. Partial support of XEP-0122 Form validation
  8. Support of XHTML-IM rich formatting (bold, italic) for messages received from Pidgin2 and Psi.
  9. Support for XEP-0394 rich formatting (bold, italic) for messages received from Dino
  10. Some improvements to Jabber Browser to see all services (subdomain) of the XMPP server.
  11. Improved to Spark updates checker.
  12. Improved Login dialog and fixed some bugs. Password is saved by default.
  13. Now you can delete your account on a server. Change password moved to Login tab of Preferences.
  14. Added settings migration. In the spark.properties now is added settingsVersion=2 and we can easily change default values for properties (like show offline contacts).
  15. Chat font size chatRoomFontSize was increased from 12 to 16
  16. contactListFontSize from 11 to 14
  17. Added a new Help / Translate menu item. I translated with AI all the missing translations and added more languages. So if something will be wrong a user can find how to improve this.
  18. Overall improved stability, compatibility and performance.

Here is a list of fixed bugs, improvements that are done or planed for the next release

Please help to translate on the Spark localization | Transifex

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