v1.6.0

1.6.0 (2023-10-19)

• Tagging scheme changed, version tags are now prefixed with a v
• Versioning scheme changed. Now X.Y.Z releases where Y is even are considered stable. This means:
  • Version 1.6.0 will be stable and 1.6.1 may be its patch release in the future. Development will continue in the 1.6 branch.
  • The 1.7.X series will get tags from the master branch until it's time to release 1.8.0 or 2.0.0 with new features.
  • This scheme is used by GNOME, for example.
• Official builds are now built with Qt 6.6.0.
• Summarized, this release brings vastly reduced CPU and memory load along a lot of bug fixes and a bit of UI polish.

Breaking changes

• Pixel-based font sizes are now used, this unfortunately means your previous font settings have been reset.
• For some users, server credentials may get lost and will need to be entered again, sorry.
• WeeChat handshake is enabled by default. Disable this if you're still on WeeChat 2.8 or older. 2.9 was released in 2020 so you're better off updating though.

Bugfixes

• Don't animate BusyIndicator when it's invisible
  • Believe it or not, this changes CPU load on my box from about 8% to not detectable...
• Fix deadlock if notifications service is not registered @chinese-soup
• Fix self-signed certificate error ignoring, clean up socket signal connections #92
• Fix crash coming from the network thread being deleted during shutdown
• Give button icons a size when loading, reduce RAM usage by 10MB
• Load smaller app icon instead of resizing (reduces RAM usage by ~15MB)
• Generate 2, 3, 4x scaled versions of icons to reduce memory load
• Avoid using (alpha) blending as much as possible to improve performance
• Avoid using clip: true to improve performance
• Fix multiple memory leaks coming from HotList
• Reset the reconnect timer after actually successfully connecting
• Clear the input field first, then send a command to WeeChat, fixes a glitch on slow network
• Add alt+up/down to default buffer switch shorcuts #133
  • macOS equivalent of this is Option+up/down, added because Option+left/right is a text editing shortcut
• Add a timeout to color scheme switching to prevent doing it multiple times in a row
• Clearing hotlist in another client is now also propagated to Lith
• All direct user inputs interacting with the channel now clear current hotlist.
  • That means if you send a message, kick somebody or use a /whatever command, hotlist will be cleared;
• Make the BufferList search selection (up, down when filtering) not go out of bounds
• Make some of the views show properly on tiny screens #144
• Implemented a custom effect for Channel scrolling overshoots to prevent it from jumping and glitching

New features

• WASM build of the most recent unstable version accessible through https://lith.app/Lith
• Secure data storage (Keychain, Wallet, etc.) is now used for server credentials.
  • Not enabled on macOS by default because it shows multiple popups on startup
  • Not supported in WASM
• Empty password is now allowed #95
• Stop trying to reconnect after 3 failed password attempts.
• Added a button to reconnect to server from the error popup instead of going through settings.
• Added --help and --version commandline settings. #157
• App version is now displayed on the title screen (accessible by long-pressing the selected buffer in the buffer list).
• Added option to show the date when day changes in between messages. Messages can show the date too now.
• The visual style of all UI elements has been improved, with more contrast and some gradients. Colors are now more muted, too.
  • #155 #158 #164, also closed some issues introduced while working on this.
• Reordered Input Bar settings entries to reflect the real UI order #165

Other and/or smaller changes

Small fixes

• Respect user-set time format when searching through messages
• Added entitlements and app category to the macOS app
• Include the asset catalog in the macOS build too to give it an icon
• Add a message to the Microphone requirement that's (probably?) carried from QtMultimedia
• Show an error messages in image preview popup on error #150
• Change the application organization domain to lith.app (This may reset Lith configuration for some users unfortunately)

Small features

• Allow setting negative line spacing because why not
• Make it possible to always show the scrollbar in buffer and message list
• Add a filter to show only buffers with new messages by default #156

UI Polish

• Balance line layout for messages with emojis
• Improved safe area handling (iPhone notch etc.)
• Views that are out of bounds of the screen are set to invisible to preserve resources.
• Use regular mouse cursor shape over messages (text cannot be selected anyway).
• Removed the custom animated text editing cursor in message input bar. It consumed a lot of resources and was not needed anymore.
• Labels in the buffer header are now aligned and their contents won't overflow the header boundaries. #163
  • This is the reason behind switching to font sizes in pixels.

Development-related

• Android is part of the CI again. Packages are built but cannot be installed at this moment unfortunately.
• Added qtquickcontrols2.conf to set LithStyle to the app
• The codebase is now split into QML modules, C++ types are exposed to QML declaratively.
• For development, there's an option to build an embedded qhot executable to enable hot-reloading of QML code.
• Debug window was added with control over some UI properties like safe areas.
• Internal data view for all WeeChat entities was added.