# The &kopete; Handbook

&Will.Stephenson; &Will.Stephenson.mail;
&Matt.Rogers; &Matt.Rogers.mail;
&Michael.Larouche; &Michael.Larouche.mail;
&FDLNotice;
2006-12-15
0.12
2003, 2004, 2005, 2006

&kopete; is &kde;'s multi-protocol instant messenger client.

KDE IM Instant Messaging Jabber IRC MSN ICQ AIM Yahoo Gadu-Gadu GroupWise Novell WinPopup SMS

## Introduction

### &kopete;, the &kde; instant messaging client

#### Before starting...

If you're not familiar with Instant Messaging, please read the Getting Started section to learn about this wonderful world before continuing.

#### What is &kopete;?

&kopete; is the &kde; instant messaging (&im;) client. It allows you to communicate with your friends and colleagues using various instant messaging services. A single program is easy to learn and convenient if your friends or colleagues use more than one &im; service.

&kopete; is designed to integrate well with your &kde; desktop; to make it immediately familiar. The user interface is clean and simple, without any frills to distract the user. At the same time, &kopete; aims to make communication the focus of &im;, by removing the differences between different &im; systems. One feature &kopete; introduced to support this is the Metacontact, combining the various means there are to contact someone into a single person in your contact list. Other multiprotocol instant messengers list the same person's various &im; accounts separately, making it confusing for non experienced people. &kopete; makes life easy: a metacontact is a person, and contacts are ways to communicate with that person. You will recognize contacts in a metacontact easily as small icons representing the &im; services you could use to communicate with that person.

&kopete; is intended for all levels of users. Out of the box, it supports a minimal set of functions to make chatting as easy as possible. More advanced users can add extra functions such as Cryptography with &kopete;'s plugin system.

#### More &kopete; Information on the Web

For more info about the &kopete; project; the team maintains a website at &kopetewww;. The latest news and updates are always available there.

If you need to contact the team, the &kopete; developers' mailing list is hosted at https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kopete-devel.

If you want live support, there is an Internet Relay Chat channel for &kopete; where you can find the team discussing technical (well, not always) issues or just hanging out. You can use any IRC client to join the channel (including &kopete;), just add an IRC contact and use `irc.kde.org` as the server and `#kopete` as the channel name. See you there!

### Introduction to Instant Messaging

What is Instant Messaging (&im;)? &im; is a way for you to communicate instantly with your friends over the Internet. That might not sound so different to email. Have you ever noticed how cumbersome it is to have a brief conversation via email? You have to click Reply to each message, then find the right spot in the message to type something new, then send it. Then you have to wait for the next message to arrive! &im; lets you to have a conversation almost as naturally as on the phone or face to face, by typing messages into a window shared between you and your friend's screens.

Another difference between &im; and email is that with &im; you can see your friends' presence, that is, whether they are actually on-line at the same time as you. This lets you send messages truly instantly, instead of sending off a mail and having to wait for your friend to check their mailbox. An &im; message pops up on the other person's screen as soon as you send it. Of course, if you'd rather not be interrupted, you can change your own presence so others will know not to disturb you.

There are lots of other fun and useful &im; features you can explore with &kopete;, like group chats, file transfers and emoticons that reflect your mood. Read on to find out more!

## Getting Started

To use &kopete; you need to set up one or more accounts for the instant messaging services you wish to use.

You've probably already chosen a messaging service, either because you already use &im;, or you need to use the same service as your friends. If you don't fit into either of these categories, please consider using a messaging service based on open standards, because these are designed for use by Free Software. Other messaging services are prone to changing the underlying technology without making the details freely available, making them harder for Free Software developers to support.

The messaging services that &kopete; supports that are based on open standards are Jabber and IRC.

The following section assumes you are registered with an &im; service already. If not, you can register with Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, and MSN from inside &kopete;; for other services, you'll have to register using their respective web site before creating an account in &kopete;.

### Creating Accounts

To create an account, use Settings Configure &kopete;... to display the Configure window.

The Configure window is the main way to set up and customize &kopete;. On the left a column of icons control which aspect of &kopete; is being configured. Click the Accounts icon. The main pane will change to display the account management pane. This is currently empty, but will soon list your &im; accounts. Click New to display the Account Wizard.

The Account Wizard helps you create an &im; account. After the Introduction page, you are asked to select the messaging service that you'd like to use. Click one of the services shown and then click Next. On the following page, you should enter your registration details for that instant messaging service.

Most services just require you to enter a username or unique identifying number (UIN) and password. The special purpose services Winpopup and SMS work slightly differently, so please see their specific sections. There are a couple of other options that apply to most services that you should look at:

Remember password

  When this is checked, &kopete; will store the password for you, so you don't have to enter it every time you connect to the &im; service. If you are security-conscious or want to limit access to the &im; account you can leave this unchecked.

Connect at startup

  When this is checked, &kopete; will try to connect to the &im; service as when it starts. If you use a LAN, DSL or other always-on connection, this is appropriate; dial-up modem users should turn this off and connect manually when you have dialed up.

Once you've entered your &im; details, you can proceed to the Finished! page and then dismiss the wizard and the Configure window.

### Go Online and Start Chatting!

Now you'll notice that an icon representing the account has appeared in the status bar at the bottom of the &kopete; Contact List window. This represents your current presence for this account. Right click on it and you can go online from the menu that appears. The status bar icon will animate while &kopete; connects to the &im; service.

Once you're online, if you've used this &im; service before, your contacts will be fetched from the server and displayed in the Contact List. To start a chat with a contact, just click their name and a Chat window will appear. The upper part of the window is where the conversation appears - to say something, type into the bottom part of the window and click Send.

If you've just created a new account you won't have any contacts. See Adding Contacts for details on how to add contacts.

The shortcut for Send is set to &Ctrl;&Enter; by default; you can change it in the Chat window using Settings Configure Shortcuts....

## Using &kopete;

This chapter gives an overview of &kopete;'s basic features. We will look first at the contact list, where your contacts are displayed, and then at the Chat window, where you carry out a conversation.

### The Contact List

The Contact List appears when you start &kopete;. It's the main window where you can set your presence, start a chat, organize your contacts, configure &kopete; and quit.

#### Layout of the Contact List window

##### Menu

You will usually find the menu bar at the top of the contact list. If it's not there, you might have turned it off; you can re-enable it with &Ctrl;M. Details on each menu item can be found in the chapter on menu structure.

##### Tool bar

The toolbar holds the most frequently used &kopete; actions. You can customize it with Settings Configure Toolbars.... Notice the Show Offline Users and Show Empty Groups buttons. With these you can hide contacts and groups that are offline.

&kopete; makes it even easier to set a status message to let your contacts know about your mood or why you're busy at the moment. Click on the Set Status Message button and start typing to enter a new message, or choose from one of the previous messages you have used.

The Quick Search Toolbar quickly filters the contact list, by typing a few letters from a contact's name.

##### Contact List

The Contact List takes up the main part of the window. All your contacts are listed here, in the groups you have chosen for them. You can open or close groups by clicking the plus symbol adjacent to the group. You can reverse the order the groups are sorted in by clicking the Contacts label above the list.

The context menu in the Contact List changes depending on the item under the mouse. Groups, Metacontacts and &im; system specific contacts have their own options. In empty areas of the Contact List, the context menu allows you to add contacts or groups, or change the viewing options for the list.

##### Status bar

The status bar shows an icon for each &im; account you have created. The icons represent the current presence of each account, which can be changed by right-clicking the account icon.

Kopete also shows your current status message in the Status Bar>. By clicking on the note icon in the corner, you can change or clear the status message as well.

#### Setting Your Presence

We introduced you to setting presence in the previous chapter. 'Presence' determines how visible you are on the &im; network. To use the network at all, you have to connect to the network, so you can send and receive messages and see others' presence. Once you are connected, most &im; systems allow you to indicate what you're doing and whether you want to chat by setting special types of presence such as Away or Free For Chat. The difference presence settings are particular to each away system; but &kopete; allows you some control all your &im; systems at once by setting them to Away or Available at the same time.

You set your presence for individual &im; accounts by right clicking the account's icon in the status bar at the bottom of the Contact List. The context menu for each account lets you choose the possible presence settings for each &im; system.

To change all your accounts' presence together, click the Status, or use the File Status menu.

#### Start A Chat From The Contact List

To start a chat from the Contact List, simply click a contact. A Chat window will appear.

You can also right click a contact and select either Send Message or Start Chat. Send Message works differently in that it just sends a single message without opening the Chat window, using a simple dialog. Use it for fire-and-forget messages.

#### Send A File

You can send files from the Contact List, using the context menu on the person you want to send to. If &kopete; supports file transfer on their &im; system, there will be a Send File... item. Alternatively, you can drag a file from anywhere else in KDE onto their name to start a file transfer.

#### Organising Contacts

##### A Word about Metacontacts

One of the principles behind &kopete; is that it offers a standardized way to use &im; systems. Differences between &im; systems are smoothed over, making it easier to communicate. We follow this principle in the way contacts are organized. When you use &kopete; you just find contacts by name; the actual &im; system used is less important. Some people have more than one &im; account - &kopete; puts the person using the account first.

To support this, &kopete; introduced Metacontacts, which represent the person you want to chat with. One Metacontact contains all the different &im; IDs they may have, making it easy to see with a glance at the Metacontact 'smiley icon' whether someone is available, regardless of which &im; system they are using right now.

##### A Word about Grouping Contacts

&kopete; lets you create groups to sort your contacts. A contact may be in more than one group. Where possible, groupings are saved on server side contact lists, so if you use other &im; programs, group memberships are kept in sync. However, if you change groups in another &im; program, &kopete; cannot know to move a metacontact automatically; it is up to you to resolve this by hand.

To change the group a metacontact appears in, you can use its context menu to move it or copy it to a new group, or remove it from a group. You can also use drag and drop here - just drop the metacontact on a different group name.

##### Adding Contacts

To add a contact, either select File Add Contact... or click the Add Contact button on the toolbar. This brings up the Add Contact Wizard.

The Add Contact Wizard creates a new Metacontact using one or more &im; systems, by leading you through the following pages.

1. Welcome Page. Here you can choose whether you want to use the &kde; Address Book for this contact. Storing &im; information in the &kde; Address Book will enable other &kde; &im; programs to share contact information with &kopete; and in future &kde; applications may use &kopete; to send information via &im;. If you prefer to keep your &im; contacts separated, clear the checkbox here.

2. Choose &kde; Address Book entry. By choosing an entry from your &kde; Address Book, you can use its name as a Display Name in &kopete;. You can also create a new entry here. This page doesn't show if you chose not to use the &kde; Address Book.

3. Select Display Name and Group. Here you can enter a Display Name (the name used for this person inside &kopete;), and choose the groups they are a member of.

4. Select &im; Accounts. Here you can choose which accounts you want to use to chat to the new contact. If you only have one &im; account, you won't see this screen.

5. Account-specific Add Contact Pages. For each account, you'll get one page where you can enter the UIN, buddy name or E-mail address, depending on the &im; system in use.

6. Finish Screen. All done. Except if the &im; system requires authorisation (such as ICQ) to add a contact to your list - in which case, you'll be prompted after the wizard exits.

You can add contacts to an existing Metacontact using its context menu.

##### Renaming Contacts

You can rename a contact using Edit Rename Contact or with the same item on the metacontact context menu.

Some &im; systems allow you to set a Display Name that is different to your username, such as Alice loves crypto!. If you change a contact's name manually, this will override their Display Name. To get it back, open the Properties dialog for that contact and check the Use the name given by the server checkbox.

##### Removing Contacts

If you no longer want a contact to be in the contact list, you can remove a Metacontact and all the contacts under it with Metacontact context menu Remove Contact.

##### Moving Contacts between Metacontacts

You can change the metacontact a contact belongs to. In practice, you only have to do this when you have just added multiple accounts to &kopete;, and you know that HotDog76 and mikejones@hotmail.com are both the same person.

There are two ways to do this:

Drag and Drop

  The contact icon to the right of the metacontact name may be dragged from one metacontact to another.

Contact Context Menu

  The context menu for contacts (Right-click the contact icon) allows you to choose the new metacontact from a dialog.

If the move would leave a Metacontact empty (with no contacts), you'll be asked if you want to delete this contact.

##### Removing Contacts from Metacontacts

To remove a contact from a Metacontact, choose Contact context menu Delete Contact....

#### Configure &kopete;

You can configure &kopete; using Settings Configure &kopete;.... See the next chapter for details.

#### Exiting &kopete;

To exit &kopete; you should use File Quit, &Ctrl;Q, or the &kopete; System Tray icon's context menu. If you just close the Contact List window, &kopete; will continue to run in the &kde; System Tray.

#### Keyboard shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts are supported in the Contact List window:

Keyboard Shortcut | Action
--- | ---
Up Arrow | Select the previous item in the contact list.
Down Arrow | Select the next item in the contact list.
Left Arrow | Close the current group.
Right Arrow | Open the current group.
Enter | Start a chat with the selected contact.
&Ctrl;M | Show/Hide the menu bar.
&Ctrl;U | Show/Hide offline users.
&Ctrl;G | Show/Hide empty groups.

### The Chat Window

#### Layout of the Chat Window

##### The Chat View

The Chat View usually takes up most of the Chat window and is where the conversation between you and your contacts takes place. Messages appear in the order they are received, with the earliest messages at the top of the view.

You can control the appearance of the Chat View, making it look like other &im; clients or create a completely individual look.

##### Chat Members List

Since some &im; systems allow you to chat as a group, it's useful to see who's chatting at the moment. The Chat Members List appears to the left or the right of the Chat View. You can change this using Settings Chat Members List. The contact context menu is available in the Chat Members List.

##### Input Area

The Input Area is below the Chat View. This is where you type messages before sending them. You can change the font and color of the message using the usual tools on the toolbar. If the &im; system supports this, your messages will appear in color when your contacts read them.

By default, the keyboard shortcut to send messages is &Enter;.

##### Status Bar

The Status Bar contains temporary messages, such as notification that someone else is typing, as well as the Send button.

##### Tabbing

&kopete; lets you carry on multiple conversations in one window, by putting each one in its own tab within the window. The tab titles change color to show when a new message has been received:

Red

  Someone typed a message.

Green

  Someone is typing a message.

Blue

  Someone typed a message containing your nickname.

There are several different ways to control grouping. To configure this behavior, go to the Chat tab of the Behavior page of the Configure &kopete; dialog. You can also move chats between windows using the Tabs menu, and control the placement of the tabs in the window.

#### Group Chats in &kopete;

You can use &kopete; to chat one to one, or in a group, where the &im; system supports this.

To invite others into a chat, drag them from the Contact List into the chat window, or use Chat Invite<contact name>.

#### File Transfers

Some &im; systems allow you to send and receive files. You can access this function from the contact's context menu. If you're already chatting, and want to send a file, simply drag the file from any other part of &kde; into the Chat Window, or select the Chat Send File menu.

#### Keyboard Shortcuts

The following keyboard shortcuts are supported in the Chat window:

Keyboard Shortcut | Action
--- | ---
&Enter; | Send the message in the Input Area.
&Ctrl;P | Print the contents of the Chat View.
&Ctrl;S | Save the contents of the Chat View.
&Ctrl;W | Close the current Chat View. The Chat window will close unless there is more than one tab in the window.
&Alt;Left Arrow | Change to the previous tab.
&Alt;Right Arrow | Change to the next tab.
&Ctrl;&Shift;B | Detach a tabbed chat into a separate window.
Tab | Complete a partially typed nickname belonging to someone you're chatting with.

## Configuring &kopete;

To configure &kopete;, look in the Settings menu.

### Global Shortcuts

&kopete; defines some shortcuts which are valid in any &kde; application.

Global Keyboard Shortcuts | Action
--- | ---
&Ctrl;&Shift;I | Read Message. This is useful if you have hidden the Contact List window and the system tray icon is animating to tell you you have a new message.
&Ctrl;&Shift;C | Show/hide (Dock) the Contact List window. Warning: If you have disabled &kopete;'s System Tray icon or don't have a system tray, this can make the Contact List vanish - the only way to restore it is to repeat this shortcut.

### The Configure &kopete; Dialog

#### Adding and Editing Accounts

We briefly showed you how to add an account in Getting Started. To change an account's settings later, open up the Configure &kopete; dialog, with Settings Configure &kopete;. Much like the &kde; Control Center, the configuration is separated into sections. The icons on the left side of the dialog switch between sections.

On the Accounts page, you can Add, Remove, or Modify accounts. Editing accounts is much the same as adding them, but note that you can't change the UIN, buddy name, or whatever account identifier your &im; system uses. This is intrinsic to the account. If you want to change this, you will have to add another account with the new account identifier and (optionally) remove the old account.

You can quickly distinguish between multiple accounts using the same &im; system by giving a custom color to each account's status bar entry and contact icons. To do so, select the account and click the color selector on the right side of the page.

You can control the priority of accounts using the Up and Down icons on this page. If you have more than one way to message a contact, this determines the &im; system &kopete; will use to communicate them.

#### Global Identity

&kopete;'s Global Identity lets you set your own nickname and photo once for all your &im; accounts. You can read these details from the KDE address book entry for yourself, from a single one of your contacts, or add a completely new nickname or photo. If you have an exciting dual life, you can create multiple identites and switch between them in theIdentity section.

#### Behavior

Behavior covers the way &kopete; integrates with your desktop, Away settings, and chat user interface options.

##### The General tab

Here you can customize &kopete;'s desktop integration, and control the way the contact list is laid out.

Show system tray icon

  By default, &kopete; places an icon in the &kde; System Tray. If you prefer, you can turn this off here.

Start with hidden main window

  This causes &kopete; to start with the Contact List window hidden (docked). You can make it visible by clicking the system tray icon or with the Show Contact List global shortcut.

Open messages instantly

  New messages open chat windows as soon as they arrive.

Use message queue

  The message queue is where &kopete; puts messages when there is no chat window open. This allows you to be notified of new messages with popup speech bubbles; or by animating the System Tray icon. If you choose to disable the message queue, chat windows will open as soon as you receive a new message.

Use message stack

  If you use a message stack, &kopete; shows recently received messages starting with the last message received.

###### Notifications

Show a bubble on new message

  This option shows a speech bubble; coming from the System Tray icon when you receive a new message. You can start a chat or ignore the message. URLs are extracted from the message; if you click a link, your preferred browser will open the link and the message will be dismissed.

Flash the system tray on new messages

  This option causes the System Tray icon to animate when you receive a new message. Clicking the icon will show the message in a chat window.

Enable events while away

  If you do not wish to be distracted by these notifications while you are set Away, uncheck this box.

Configure Sounds & Events

  Sounds, flashing taskbar entries, passive popups and more exotic notifications are supported in &kopete; using the &kde; notification system. Type `help:/kcontrol/kcmnotify` in &konqueror; or select the Help tab in the System Notifications section of the &kcontrol; for more information.

  To add custom notifications for a contact, right click that contact in the Contact List and select Properties. This lets you start chats, play a custom sound effect, or display a message for that contact or group. Otherwise you can use the Execute a program notification to perform custom notifications. As an example, if you have XOSD (X On-Screen Display) installed, you can get OSD online notifications by executing the following command when the User goes online event takes place:

  `echo %s | osd_cat -o 100 -p bottom -A center -f -*-helvetica-*-r-*-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-*-* -O 2 -c gold`

  OhReally at the KDE Forum suggests having your online notifications read out by a speech synthesiser, using MBROLA like so:

  `echo %s | sed -e 's/online/onlaain/i' | /usr/local/bin/mbrdico.dutch.female`

  The 'sed' in the middle phoneticises &kopete;'s output to so the synthesizer has a better Dutch pronunciation.

##### Away Settings

Notify all open chats when I go away

  Be careful if you enable this item; it will cause a message to be sent to open chats when you become away, which some people may find intrusive.

###### Auto Away

Here you can choose to have &kopete; set you away after a period of inactivity.

###### Predefined Away Messages

You can define as many custom away messages as you like here, and choose from them when you go Away using the Status button on the main toolbar.

##### Chat Settings

Raise window/tab on new messages

  This causes a chat window to pop up when it receives a new message.

Show events in chat window

  Some &im; systems can give extra information, like people joining or leaving chats. This option lets you receive these messages in your chat window.

Highlight messages containing your nickname

  This simply emphasizes messages in a chat that contain your nickname. For more powerful control over highlighting and other events, see the Highlight plugin.

###### Interface Preference

&kopete; can send messages using either a fire and forget interface that does not wait for a reply, or a chat window where the conversation is visible as it unfolds. Here you can choose which style to use by default.

###### Chat Window Grouping Policy

If you wish to group chats within tabs in a single window, &kopete; lets you choose several ways to determine the grouping.

- Open all messages in a new chat window

- Group all messages from the same account in the same chat window

- Group all messages in the same chat window

- Group all messages in the same group in the same chat window

- Group all messages from the same metacontact in the same chat window

###### Chat Window Line Limit

Maximum number of chat window lines

  This limits the number of lines of text the chat window can display.

#### Appearance

Appearance governs the style of the Chat window, its colors and fonts, and lets you choose your preferred emoticons.

##### Emoticons

Emoticons (also known as smileys) are combinations of characters such as `;-)`that look like a face, and communicate moods or expressions. &kopete; can optionally use graphical emoticons in place of the characters themselves.

On this tab, you can select which emoticon set you prefer, or turn off graphical emoticons altogether.

See Specialized Actions for details of how to install extra emoticon sets.

##### Chat Window

###### Styles

The style of the chat view can be altered to look like other clients. Installed styles are shown in the list on the left and are previewed in the main panel. See Chat Window Style guide for a document how to make your own style.

Third party styles are available at http://kde-look.org. &kopete; 0.12 now supports styles from Adium(an &im; program on Mac OS X). So you can download styles from Adium here: Adium Xtras and select Message View Styles.

To install a style, clickInstal.... Select a archive file containing the style. To delete a style, select a style in the list and click Delete.

Group consecutive messages is a useful option to make your chats more readable. If you receive several messages in a row from teh same contact, they are grouped without repeating the sender name.

##### Contact List

Arrange metacontacts by group

  By disabling this, &kopete;'s groups are hidden, and contacts are divided only into Online Contacts and Offline Contacts.

Show tree branch lines

  Usually &kopete; displays contacts and groups as a tree, where group members are indented. For a simpler appearance, you can disable this, so the contact list becomes a flat list. You can also control whether branches are indented here.

Contact Display Mode

  There are several ways you can present the contact list here. Of particular interest may be the Use contact photos when available option, that shows the contact list using photos chosen by your contacts or the KDE Address Book

Contact List Animations

  This controls the degree of animation of the contact list. Turning this off will make &kopete; more responsive on slower machines.

Contact List Auto-Hide

  By enabling this, the contact list will automatically disappear a few seconds after the pointer leaves the window.

Change Tooltip Contents...

  You have a lot of control over how much or how little detail appears inthe tooltips shown on the contact list using this dialog.

##### Colors and Fonts

###### Chat Window Colors

Here you can alter the base font and text colors used for chatting.

###### Formatting Overrides

If your contacts tend to choose fonts and colors that you dislike, you can tell &kopete; to ignore these and use your regular font.

###### Contact List

Some &im; systems let you see whether contacts are idle at their computers. This option enables you to change the color used for idle contacts.

#### Devices

The Devices section allows you to choose and configure which multimedia devices are used for A/V chatting. Whether this works for you is highly dependent on the hardware you have and how well it is supported by your operating system.

##### Video

&kopete; uses the Video4Linux 2 system for video. This shows a blue square if no video device is found, or a preview if the camera is working. For up-to-date information on &kopete; webcam support, see the Kopete Webcam Support wiki page.

##### Audio

Audio support in &kopete; is at an experimental stage. If you have an Audio tab, you are probably using a preview build of &kopete;.

### Loading Plugins

You can customize &kopete; with special functions that may be useful or just a bit of fun. Bring up the Configure Plugins dialog with Settings Configure Plugins....

Plugins can be turned on or off in the list on the left side of the page. Each plugin may be configured on the right side. See the chapter on plugins for details on each plugin.

## &kopete;'s Protocols

&kopete; calls different &im; systems 'Protocols'. When you add an account, it is specific to a single protocol. Although &kopete; tries to make instant messaging appear the same, no matter what protocol you use, there are some differences in the level of support for advanced features such as file transfer and multimedia.

### Protocols

#### AIM

AIM supports chatrooms. Use the Join Chat... command on the AIM account menu to join a chatroom. Contact pictures and custom emoticons are also supported.

#### ICQ

ICQ has an Invisibility feature which allows you to hide from selected contacts. You may also search the ICQ user directory when adding a contact. A wide range of contact details can be set using the Properties option.

#### MSN

MSN supports the sending and receiving of webcams, if your camera is supported by the Video4Linux 2 (v4l2) standard. To view someone's webcam, right click on their MSN buttefly icon and select View Contact's Webcam. File transfer and multi user chats work. To transfer a file, drag the file from Konqueror or the desktop into the chat window. To invite someone else into a chat, drag them from the Contact List into the chat window. The File menu also contains these commands. In addition, MSN supports custom emoticons.

To use file transfer or a webcam, make sure port 6891 is forwarded to your computer.

#### Yahoo

Yahoo can send and receive webcam video. It also supports Yahoo mail and the Yahoo addressbook from the account menu. Conferencing is also possible.

#### Jabber

Jabber, also known as XMPP, supports file transfer, conferencing and any other services supplied by the Jabber server. For example, many Jabber servers have a user directory, and some provide transports to other messaging systems. To access services, use Services... on the account menu. Jabber file transfer can work without port forwarding, but enjoys better performance where a direct connection is possible. By default, port 8010 is used for port forwarding, but this is configurable in each account's settings.

#### Google Talk

Since Google Talk is based upon Jabber, it is well supported in &kopete; with the exception of voice chat, which is worked upon.

To configure &kopete; for Google Talk: Use your complete Google Mail address as the user name. Check Use protocol encryption (SSL), Allow plain-text password authentication and Override default server information. The server is talk.google.com or gmail.com and ports 443 or 5223 should be used.

#### Novell GroupWise

GroupWise Messenger is an enterprise messenging system from Novell Inc. The full range of features are supported, including privacy, group chat, rich text and user search.

#### Gadu-Gadu

Gadu-Gadu is a chat system originating from Poland. At present, &kopete; supports basic chat functions.

#### WinPopup

WinPopup is a way to use &kopete; to send and receive messages with Windows computers on the local network. The WinPopup protocol only supports single, plain-text messages.

#### Other protocols

As well as the protocols named above, &kopete; has support for several other protocols. In most cases, this is not enabled by default or an additional plugin must be installed. Meanwhile, SMS, Skype and SILC are provided in this way. See &kopetewww; for details, however, the &kopete; team are not responsible for these protocols.

## &kopete;'s Plugins

&kopete; offers plugins that provide functions that aren't essential for messaging, but are useful for some people.

### Plugins

#### Alias

Alias lets you define your own commands, eg /hello, in &kopete; that run scripts and output the result in the chat window. If you know how the alias Unix command works, this is just the same

#### Auto Replace

Auto Replace allows you to correct frequently misspelled words or save typing certain words using abbreviations.

#### Bookmarks

The Bookmarks plugin creates bookmarks in your KDE bookmarks list from URLs that are received in &im; messages.

#### Connection Status

Connection Status is useful for modem users or others who don't have a permanent Internet connection. It watches for an active Internet connection and sets your accounts online when it detects you have dialed up.

#### Contact Notes

Contact Notes allows you to note down any useful bits of information on a metacontact.

#### Cryptography

Cryptography lets you use GnuPG to encrypt conversations. Note that this is not the same as an SSL secured chat session. SSL protects the message from alteration and snooping of the message contents while it is in transit, but it doesn't guarantee the person reading the message is the intended recipient. Cryptography encrypts the message to a single individual - only the holder of the matching key can read it. However, it doesn't guarantee that the message the recipient reads is the message you sent! Since anyone who has the recipient's public key can encrypt to him/her, it is possible that your message could be replaced en route by a completely different message, and the recipient would not know.

To configure Cryptography, select your GnuPG key in the configuration page. If you select Encrypt outgoing messages with this key, then messages will be encrypted to you as well as the recipient, which is useful if you want to read your own chat logs later. Then, using Select Cryptography Public Key from each contact's context menu, choose their public key. You will be prompted for your passphrase when using this plugin.

#### Highlight

Highlight works a little like e-mail filters, in that it allows you to make things happen in response to particular messages. As well as highlighting the text, you can play sounds.

#### History

The History plugin, when activated, records conversations using any &im; system and allows you to view old conversations later. A History item appears in each Metacontact's context menu so you can view the message history for that metacontact.

The following item is added to the Contact List's menus:

Edit View History

  (Enabled when a contact is selected) This displays the History browser for the selected contact.

The following items are added to the Chat window's menus:

&Alt;&Shift;Left Arrow Tools History Previous

  This enables you to view the next oldest set of messages from the History in the Chat window.

&Alt;&Shift;Right Arrow Tools History Next

  This shows the next newest set of messages from the History in the Chat window.

Tools History Last

  This shows the most recent set of messages from the History in the Chat window.

#### KopeteTeX

KopeteTeX allows scientists and mathematicians to hold conversations using the LaTeX markup language. Expressions entered within $$ are rendered as a graphic in the chatwindow, and can be cut and pasted as the original Latex. To use this plugin you must have LaTeX installed

#### Motion Auto-Away

In conjunction with a webcam and the Video4Linux package, this lets you detect when you're no longer at your computer and have &kopete; automatically become Away.

#### Now Listening

With the Now Listening plugin, let people you're chatting with know what you're listening to, by typing `/media` in a chat, or with Tools Send Media Info in the Chat window.

#### Statistics

This plugin uses a database to gather information about your contacts' activity patterns. You can use this to see when a contact is usually online, for example.

#### Text Effect

Text Effect applies funny effects to your messages before sending them, like coloring them or changing the case of the words. Just don't forget you have activated it - we've had bug reports from forgetful Text Effect users!

#### Translator

The Translator plugin lets you define a preferred language for each Metacontact, and then translates messages to or from them using web based translation services such as Google and Babelfish. Set your own preferred language in the Configure Plugins dialog. Each contact's preferred language can be set on its context menu.

The following item is added to the Chat window's menus:

&Ctrl;T Tools Translate

  If you did not turn on automatic translation, this translates the current chat.

#### Web Presence

Web Presence allows you to publicize your &im; presence on the Web. Give it the path to a file on an FTP server (for example), and it will upload a short piece of HTML to that file, which you can include in your homepage. &kde;'s network transparency makes this simple. Useful for bloggers to make friends with, or you could use it to use &im; in your business.

Example: `sftp://username@somehost.org/path/to/homes/user/im.html` uses the SFTP protocol to upload your presence directly onto the webserver.

See the KIO manuals for tips on specific network protocols.

### Contributing a plugin

&kopete; is designed to make it easy to create plugins that give it extra functions. So if you've got a great idea to make &kopete; even better, get in touch!

&kopete-menus;

## Frequently Asked Questions

What does &kopete; mean? How do I pronounce it?

&kopete;'s name comes from the chilean word Copete, meaning a drink with your friends. Duncan, the original author, recorded an audio sample.

When I have more than one messaging service under a user's name in my contact list and I click on that user's name, it will message them on the wrong messaging service.

You can change the order of accounts &kopete; tries to message people with by using the Up and Down arrows in the bottom right corner of the account configuration screen. &kopete; will try to connect with accounts starting from the top. However, if one service has a higher status value than the others for that user, &kopete; will use that one. For example, if a person has three services and two are marked as away and the third is marked as online, &kopete; will always try to message the user using the online service.

If you click on the small protocol icon on the right of the menu item, instead of on the person's name, you will always try to contact the person using that service!

I need to connect via a SOCKS proxy, but I can't find any proxy configuration options in &kopete;. How do I set up &kopete; to use SOCKS?

- MSN, ICQ, AIM, Jabber, and Yahoo use the &kde; network infrastructure. Their SOCKS proxy details are configured with the rest of &kde;, in Control Center, Internet & Network Proxy.

Is it possible to customize the icons I see in &kopete;?

You can switch between different emoticons using the Emoticons tab of the Appearance page of the Configure &kopete; dialog.

To install new emoticons, first look at KDE-Look.org, where there are a lot of additional emoticon sets to download.

The emoticons are easy to install - you just place a directory containing the icon files along with an XML file describing the mapping from text to picture in $KDEDIR/share/apps/kopete/pics/emoticons (or $KDEHOME, for example, in /home/joeuser/.kde/).

1. Copy the extracted directory to $KDEDIR/share/apps/kopete/pics/emoticons or $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kopete/pics/emoticons (or wherever $KDEHOME is)

2. Select Configure &kopete; from the Settings menu and click on Appearance in the left panel of the Preferences window and click on the Emoticons tab

3. Select the emoticons set you just installed from the list

4. Now you can use the newly installed emoticons in &kopete;

To replace the protocol icons, you'll have to replace the icons in $KDEDIR/share/apps/kopete/icons, or provide replacements to override them in the same dir under $KDEHOME. At present there aren't any complete replacement sets that you can simply extract there.

## Specialized Actions

Command line parameters

Installing emoticon sets

## Credits and Licenses

&kopete;: copyright 2001-2005, &kopete; Developers

&underFDL; &underGPL;

### Current Development Team

- Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett (duncan at kde org): Original author, developer, and project leader

- Till Gerken (till at tantalo net): Developer, Jabber maintainer

- Olivier Goffart (ogoffart at tiscalinet be): Lead Developer, MSN Plugin Maintainer

- Andy Goossens (andygoossens at telenet be): Developer

- Grzegorz Jaskiewicz (gregj at pointblue com pl): Developer, Gadu-gadu Plugin Maintainer

- Jason Keirstead (jason at keirstead org): Developer

- Matt Rogers (mattr at kde org): Lead Developer, AIM and ICQ plugin maintainer

- Richard Smith (lilachaze at hotmail com): Developer, UI maintainer

- Will Stephenson (lists at stevello free-online co uk): Developer, icons, plugins, manual author

- Michel Hermier (michel.hermier at wanadoo fr): IRC Plugin Maintainer

- Andre Duffeck (andre at duffeck de): Developer: Developer, Yahoo plugin maintainer

- Michaël Larouche (michael.larouche at kdemail net): Developer, MSN, Chat Window.

### Former Developers (&kopete; Hall Of Fame)

These people have moved on from &kopete;, so don't contact them for &kopete; support. We're eternally grateful for their contributions.

- Christopher TenHarmsel (tenharmsel at users sourceforge net)Developer, Oscar hacker

- Ryan Cumming (ryan at kde org): Core developer

- Richard Stellingwerff (remenic at linuxfromscratch org): Developer

- Hendrik vom Lehn (hennevl at hennevl de): Developer

- Stefan Gehn (sgehn at gmx net): Developer

- Robert Gogolok (robertgogolock at gmx de): Developer

- Nick Betcher (nbetcher at kde org): Original author of ICQ, AIM and IRC plugins

- Daniel Stone (dstone at kde org): Original Jabber plugin author

- James Grant (topace at lightbox org): Developer, importer Plugin author

- Zack Rusin (zack at kde org): Developer, old Gadu-gadu Plugin author

- Gav Wood (gav at kde org): WinPopup Plugin author

- Martijn Klingens (klingens at kde org): Developer, MSN hacker

### Documentation

Documentation copyright 2003,2004,2005 Will Stephenson (lists at stevello free-online co uk), copyright 2005 Matt Rogers (mattr at kde org), copyright 2005,2006 Michaël Larouche (michael.larouche at kdemail net).

## Installation

### How to obtain &kopete;

&install.intro.documentation;

Development versions may be downloaded at &kopetewww;.

### Required Libraries

If you installed &kopete; as part of your distribution, you probably have these installed already.

The Gadu-gadu plugin requires the libgadu package, see this page for details.

The Now Listening plugin needs libxmms if you want to access what xmms is currently playing; this should be available in your distribution but is available as part of the xmms package at the xmms homepage.

### Compilation and Installation

&install.compile.documentation;
&kopete-chatstyle; &documentation.index;