Using KDE-Telepathy

By EricMesa

- 3 minutes read - 429 words

A few months ago I took a look at KDE-Telepathy from within Fedora Rawhide. I said I would check it out after upgrading to Fedora 16 and then I got busy getting ready for the arrival of my daughter. (my first kid) So I just kept using Kopete for my multi-protocol IM needs. It’s the only way I keep up with anyone on Gchat or Facebook chat because I refuse to have to keep any specific tab open on my web browser for chatting. Also, it tends to be more annoying to chat - instead of chatting in a small window that I can put off to the corner of whatever virtual desktop or activity I’m in, I’d need my entire web browser.

But recently I came across this blog post in planet KDE that talks about what’s coming in KDE-Telepathy 0.4. I really like logging for my chats because it can be very useful to go back and look for a reference or a URL that someone mentions. So, even though there isn’t an easy way to view the logs right now, the fact that the logs are being saved was enough to allow me to over to KDE-Telepathy. I’m also really excited for the Gchat-like interface coming in 0.4. It’s mentioned in that previous link as well as here.

Right now in Fedora 16 we’re stuck with version 0.1 so the UI hasn’t changed much from when I took a look back in December. Really, there are two things you lose right now vs Kopete. First of all, there’s no text formatting. That’s fine - other than bold or italics, I haven’t done any text formatting since I was in high school. The other thing you lose are the plugins - although I don’t really use any of those, some of them are neat - like LaTEX input. Here’s a quick look at the basics:

[caption id=“attachment_5490” align=“aligncenter” width=“296” caption=“kde-telepathy contacts window and chat window in Fedora 16”] kde-telepathy contacts window and chat window in Fedora 16[/caption]

Now, they do have this pretty neat plasmoid for setting your status across all the accounts or individually - so you could do that even without going to the contact list window. I think it’d be pretty useful if it had a taskbar version - I tried to stick this one in the taskbar without success.

[caption id=“attachment_5491” align=“aligncenter” width=“433” caption=“kde-telepathy presence plasmoid in Fedora 16”] kde-telepathy presence plasmoid in Fedora 16[/caption]

I’ve been using it for a few days now without any issues vs Kopete and I can’t wait until 0.4 comes out and we can take advantage of that Gchat-like interface.