The Proposed Answer
Enter KDE Telepathy. KDE Telepathy is, as you might have guessed, based on Telepathy. As for what telepathy is, it is defined on the Telepathy web page asa flexible, modular communications framework that enables real-time communication via pluggable protocol backends. Telepathy is a communications service that can be accessed by many applications ("clients") simultaneously.So, by moving to the Telepathy framework, one might guess that there could be many uses for a more flexible framework going forward. One example would be to see a contact's presence in Kontact, for example, and just message them instead of emailing them. For now, however, the goals have been to meet and exceed the current functionality of Kopete, aMSN, and other Linux oriented IM clients out in the wild.
This allows any application to access presence information, request a communications channel (potentially handled by another client), or collaborate contact-to-contact.
Recently the team released .4 version, which supports many IM protocols and brings many new features.All of the popular IM formats are supported, as shown:
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Selecting IM Protocols From KDE Telepathy |
KDE Telepathy Plasmoids | Photo From KDE.org |
How To Install KDE Telepathy
Before the team can ship KDE Telepathy with the upcoming 12.10 release of Kubuntu, they would like users to test it out and give feedback. So here is how to install it to give it a test drive:
First, add the following repository using the Muon Package Manager if it is not already installed: ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports. Then install the KDE-Telepathy package. Also note that to have the ability to review chat histories, you will need to install the telepathy-logger-qt package. This was omitted on the install instructions on the official announcement, but I'm assuming most people would want access to their IM chat histories. This will install an application in your menu called KDE IM Contacts, and launching will open up the application for you to add accounts and start chatting.
Although not necessary. you will likely want to add the instant messaging presence plasmoid to your taskbar's system tray. This will allow you to see your current status at a glance, and will also allow you to be notified and act on incoming messages. Also, right-clicking the plasmoid will expose a full menu of available actions, as shown:
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KDE Telepathy's Presence Plasmoid Right-click Menu |
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Plasmoid Presence Icon (circled in red) sitting in the system tray |
Letting The Team Know What You Think
Once you've used KDE Telepathy, be sure to let the Dev Team know what you think! As per the announcement page, there are a few ways to do this:
Feel free to provide feedback here as well, as any feedback will be forwarded to the the developers for consideration.We would greatly appreciate feedback. You can either post over in the kubuntuforums thread, send a mail to our mailing lists kubuntu-users or kubuntu-devel as well as stop by for a chat on our IRC channel. The Community page has all the details.
Links:
- Announcement and call for testing from Kubuntu: http://www.kubuntu.org/ktp-0.4
- KDE Telepathy .4 release announcement: http://dot.kde.org/2012/06/11/new-kde-telepathy-version-features-audio-and-video-calls
- Current feedback via Kubuntu Forums: http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?59475-KDE-Telepathy-0-4-feedback-requested
Looks the same-worse than Kopete.
ReplyDeleteAnd bravo to the geniuses who changed the icon color from the blue of Kopete to a green that looks just like the Skype icon.
Bravo. The one thing that is different will be confusing users....