Hi all, This is my entry for the doc competition. Its not wonderful, but I hope it is ok. Please CC me for any comments as I am not subscribed.
Thanks Peter Nuttall Intro to Messaging The normal way to send instant messages in KDE is to use the IM client, Kopete. This is a multi-protocol IM client, meaning that it handles several different protocols including MSN, Jabber, AOL and IRC. It also has useful features including support for Kaddressbook, meta-contacts, encryption support and lots more. How to get started: Start up Kopete from the menu (it can normally be found in the Internet folder) When it starts up you should see a window with Kopete at the top, menus and a tool bar below, and then your contacts below. You should add some accounts by clicking on the settings menu and selecting the Configure Kopete option. By selecting the Accounts option you should see a list of your accounts (initially empty) and options to add new accounts and to edit or remove existing accounts. By clicking on the add new account button, you can add a new account using the wizard. When you have added an account, you can connect to this account by clicking on the relevant icon at the bottom of your main Kopete window. This should make your contacts appear in the contacts window. Meta-contacts Meta contacts are one of the features of Kopete that makes sense once you figure out what they are. Until you do, they annoy you. They are basically a way of taking a contact on one network (such as MSN) and linking it to another contact on a different network. This is useful for when people have accounts on different networks as you can chat to them without needing to know which account they are signed on to. This also lets you assign names to your meta-contacts that don't change when people change their names on their account, this is useful if you have contacts who insist upon setting their MSN nick to something like ?. You can do other useful things with meta-contacts like link them to entries in your address book. This will show you their status (online or offline) when sending them emails, and will even let you start a chat with them. IRC Internet relay chat has been around for far longer than most IM systems, and is still widely used. While Kopete has a IRC plugin, and handles both channels and nicks well, long time IRC users might prefer a client designed just for that role, which is what Konversation is. It supports features such as granting and taking op status, banning, easy nick changing, special channel support for passwords and invites, and other things that the power IRC users expect. It also is far better at handling large channels such as #debian. If you have used another power-IRC client before, you should have no trouble using conversation.
