I’ve been following closely Psi‘s development in the past few weeks. It’s been a long wait, but very much worth it. Through 5 beta versions and 2 test releases, Psi’s new 0.9 version is finally available. At the time of this writing only the source code had been made available, but Windows, Linux and Mac OSX builds are being published in the next few hours/days.
The main improvement and maybe the most important update to this great messaging client is the transparent support of OpenPGP, while implementing the JEP-0027 proposed enhancement. JEPs are mainly a way of documenting how a specific technology or feature should be implemented, independent from its platform.

I participated reviewing and completing the spanish and french translations packs, which will be made available soon.

Nice work Justin 😉

Future versions of Psi are already being discussed and proposed features features include message blocking and file transfer. For more info on psi, also visit the official site. There’s a vibrant community of Psi users in the forums, don’t miss them!

Psi’s home site

(notes and changes extracted from Win32 package)

Notes

– You need the QSSL plugin to utilize SSL connectivity.
See http://psi.affinix.com/

– Upgrading to 0.9 —
* Import support of config < = 0.8.4 is gone. You must upgrade from 0.8.5 or higher to preserve your configuration. * Due to the increased bandwidth used by auto-version checks, they have been disabled in this version by default. * The self-contact is now only shown if there is more than one resource logged in at once. If you'd rather it always show, like in 0.8.7, then there is an option available. * An XML format is now used for storing SSL certificates. In the future, Psi will support importing of PEM files. For now, you will have to create the XML by hand. See certs/README. * You must use the QSSL v2 plugin to utilize SSL. The older plugin will not work. - GnuPG tips -- * Always use the latest version of GnuPG. * On Windows, use a native build instead of one based on cygwin, and make sure it is properly installed in the registry. * Ensure 'gpg' actually works, by testing it from the command-line. * You must have a public and secret keyring. Psi cannot operate without them, and they must be there when you start it. * If you experience fatal GnuPG incompatibilities, you can pass the --no-gpg option to Psi and gpg will not be used. * If you have gpg-agent set up, but you don't want Psi to use it, then you can pass --no-gpg-agent to force the use of Psi's built-in prompt. Changes in 0.9

– Jabber Browsing
– OpenPGP integration (via GnuPG) for end-to-end personal security
– Groupchat: invites, private messaging, nick coloring, word highlighting
– Fixed OS-shutdown problem
– Support for GNOME2 trayicon (freedesktop standard)
– Invisibility
– Option to block popups from unlisted contacts
– VCards are now cached locally
– Fixed build issues on Solaris
– Fixed double-transport item bug
– Version checks are now optional
– Gadu-gadu icons
– Lockdown (undocumented, see profiles.cpp source code for details)
– Default chats to no-resource, as per XMPP recommendation
– SSL Certificate dialog
– Improved SSL Certificate verification and certs format (see certs/README)
– Set WM_CLASS’s on X11
– Account Registration allows specifying separate host from JID
– New Proxy Profiles system, to share proxy configuration between accounts
– Fixed bug where outgoing messages were logged when history was disabled
– Chat dialog no longer logs redundant presence updates
– Fixed chat dialog scrolling annoyance
– Swap yes/no buttons on some dialogs back to normal
– Fixed clipboard URL-grabbing
– win32: Pasting text into Notepad should have proper linebreaks
– win32: fixed idle bugs
– JIDs that have < or > characters are now escaped in the event dialog
– Chat dialog should now wrap long URLs
– Unhiding a chat dialog should bring it to the current virtual desktop
– Tons of other minor bugfixes