Kopete Celebrates First Anniversary, Improves Usability

The Kopete Project celebrated its
first anniversary yesterday by
announcing
the release of Kopete 0.6. Kopete is KDE's all-purpose, modular and
extensible chat client, which currently supports the MSN Messenger, ICQ,
AIM OSCAR, Jabber and IRC protocols. A sampling of the great new features
includes sophisticated (HTML) text rendering, signing / encrypting chats
and sending SMS messages to mobile phones, as well as chat tabs, translucent
windows and web presence notification. In addition, the Kopete developers
made a number of usability improvements based on
usability studies
conducted by the KDE Usability Project.
Congratulations to all involved!

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Comments

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

dict:orthogonal

by Grumpy (not verified)

Not culturally.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

ah. well, i suppose that just makes me practical and boring then. could be worse, i suppose. i could be grumpy. ;-)

(spoiler: yes, that was meant in a light hearted manner, said with a devious smile and a pint raised high)

by Grumpy (not verified)

I thought I was the practical and boring one? Aaron, what's going on?

I'm definitely still grumpy. But I was born that way.

by Kde User (not verified)

Why would it be? The translucent windows are
turned off by default.

There's only need for some little switch
somewhere on the "advanced" page.

by Evan "JabberWok... (not verified)

Actually, an IM client (and possibly an audio player application) are about the only two applications where translucent windows (or on screen display interfaces) are actually useful.

--
Evan

by heironymouscoward (not verified)

This is simply your list so far. I can think of a couple of other interesting uses for translucent windows, mainly in the realm of building visuals out of layered applications. Translucent windows lets one use the desktop as a canvas. Draw an image from a web camera. Now layer some text over that, perhaps using a browser window. Now drawn an animation over that.

by Joe (not verified)

I couldn't find in the release documentation whether the jabber plugin supports group chat yet? That is the only thing keeping me from using Kopete instead of PSI.

by Spencer (not verified)

If you compile from source, and have libpsi installed, you should get the Jabber plugin.

by Joe (not verified)

That doesn't answer my question though. I know it has Jabber support. I am asking specifically if it has the IRC-style Jabber multi-user group chat functionality that is in PSI.

by LMCBoy (not verified)

Nice work so far on kopete, I'm looking forward to trying out 0.6!

Congratulations,
Jason

by Aleks Ivic (not verified)

I have tried both versions 0.5 and the CVS (Early Feb) for a week each. The interface is very attractive and so are the features. Unfortunately I did have to switch back to gaim due to the unstable nature. I got random crashes when I received AIM messages (Not ICQ & MSN messages) and when I log onto ICQ/AIM at certain times.

Although thumbs up so far. Once the bugs gets sorted out, Kopete will blow all the other Multi-Protocol IM's out of the water (I can just feel it).

An option I would really like to see in future versions of kopete is to override the html of the received message. Say for example, you receive a message from a certain *cough* female *cough* that sends messages with huge bright purple fonts with a black background.

by Brunes (not verified)

>An option I would really like to see in future versions of kopete is to override the html of the >received message. Say for example, you receive a message from a certain *cough* female >*cough* that sends messages with huge bright purple fonts with a black background.

You can already do this. The message formatting is just done by HTML, all you have to do is remove the special formatting tags for user sent background color and font color under the Chat Appearance config. We do need better docs for these options though.

by anonymous .. (not verified)

Why exists so many projects with a same function in KDE ?
such as: kinkatta, kyim, kmess, kopete, konverse, kwinpopup ............. ,psi ..
Why not work only in the kopete and make better ?

by Vajsravana (not verified)

Why are there so many messages in this board?
Why not work only in one and make it better? :)

by jd (not verified)

ROTFL!

by Justin (not verified)

All of those other programs existed before Kopete. Even so, consider that the other programs might perform their native function better than an all-in-one app? Btw, Konverse is dead. Also, there is some collaboration: for instance, Kopete and Psi share the same Jabber code.

Also, some are not KDE-only: Psi and Kinkatta both run on other platforms.

Don't forget LightHawk: (site seems to be down)
http://freekde.org/neil/lighthawk/

To each his own, I guess.

by loopkin (not verified)

and there are discussions between kyim and kopete about the yahoo plugin that a lot of people seem to be missing... so hopefully both projects will benefit of that work.
but i'll always prefer kyim to kopete (or any other all-in-one), because yahoo has a lot of specificities (sp?) that i don't, and probably can't find in all-in-one apps (email warning, profile, specific smileys, IMvironments, Buzzer, status notification, members lookup, audio, video, whatever, etc.) Certainly everything is not implemented is kyim as well, but some of these "extra-features" are not, and cannot be found in all-in-one apps, because they are not possible to "meta-describe".
oh, and Kinkatta and KYIM also share common problems: very few developers that have a very rich personal life (to the detriment of their KDE life ;-)), so i'm not very sure that their help would be very interesting for Kopete (both projects are going veeery slow for a while).

by André (not verified)

Maybe people like to have a *choice*? Why use Linux and KDE? Let's all use windows and make it better!

by balerion (not verified)

Does anyone know which KDE theme is being used on the 0.6 screenshots? Looks kinda QNXish but I don't think it's identical to the QNX themes currently on kde-look. Any ideas?

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

widgets: keramik
window deco: web

by balerion (not verified)

http://kopete.kde.org/img/screenshots/0.6/chatwindow1.png
http://kopete.kde.org/img/screenshots/0.6/icq-prefs.png

The 0.6 screenshots are definately not keramic. I'm pretty sure the window decoration is .NET, but I'm not sure about the widget theme...

by fault (not verified)

Looks like QNiX to me.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

erf... yes, helps if i scroll down far enough ;-) ... it does look like the qnx styles avail on kde-look, but the tabs look different from either one.. i'm stupmed =)

the window deco in those shots is quartz.

by mETz (not verified)

that's qinx pre0.5 (I'm visually debugging it with the author, that's why I use it) and quartz window deco. The color-scheme is a tweaked keramik-emerald.

by Sarang (not verified)

Hi guys,

Please provide a Yahoo plugin fast!!

Thanks
Sarang

by Costin (not verified)

I'm also visiting the site pretty often hoping i would see "yahoo" word on the page, but ... until then i'm stick with gaim ... :|

by Juan Domínguez (not verified)

Yes, plz.

I'm locked in gaim till then :)

Anyway the app's great!

by Andrew (not verified)

Why not use the jabber client and use a yahoo transport?

or use Psi for that matter?

by V Leher (not verified)

I am looking forward to the yahoo plugin too.
I used to use gaim and then moved to everybuddy as gaim didnot support file transfers. i am pretty happy with everybuddy....but i like kopete better. I will move to this as soon as the yahoo module comes out.

I havenot been able to connnect to the jabber as yet with kopete as yet. Wondering if there is a bug.

by LinuxLover (not verified)

Has it been create or not? I am still using Gaim, but I would like to move over to kopete. Please let me know if anyone has managed to get Yahoo working on Kopete

by sarah haile (not verified)

hey! please can u provide me with the yahoo plug in
thanks.
sarah

by cm (not verified)

The current kopete version has a yahoo plugin. (I haven't tested it though, as I'm not using Yahoo IM...)

by mr p[hillipssssssss (not verified)

is there any plugings for yahoo messenger , like in msn messenger please post here , and developers please hurry yahoo needs something fresh ect..... example something like stuff plug '

by david__cc (not verified)

let me shae a cool peice a software ( Y! plugin ) with you..
it tells you who is offine and who is just pretending to be so..
gr8 s/w to know who avoids you :(
http://www.tricks4fun.com/2006/11/29/yahoo-messenger-invisible-status/

by Jan (not verified)

Well I tried the new version but it still
crashes on exit. I use only the ICQ plug-in.
Only one plug-in, starting and closing
should work without any crash. And it crashes
on all 5 machines I tested it on (all SuSE 8.1,
some immediately after a fresh install).
This is an application which usually isn't
closed, so this wouldn't be a problem. The
next "bug" (or is it a feature?), however,
makes all this really annoying:
If the Kopete window is open and you click
close, I would expect that Kopete minimizes
to the panel. Instead it closed completely -
and crashes. The only way to minimize Kopete
to the Panel seems to be to click on the
Panel icon again - not very user friendly.
So, it's the small things that keep me from
using this app. I appreciate all the work though
and I'm patiently using SIM until Kopete works
properly ;-)

by Jörgen Lundberg (not verified)

I actually haven't tried kopete at all, but the same discussion about close came up about gnomeicu. The conclusion? Having the "X" minimize the application to the systemtray is inconsistant with all other applications. Minimize could maybe do it, but that's also somewhat inconsistant. So why does people excpect it to minimize to the systemtray if close is pressed? Simple answer: The so called UI from AOL callad ICQ (AIM problably does the same thing, I have never tried it though...). The ICQ-UI have more flawes than, than, than well I honestly don't know ;-).

My point: keep the close button for *really* closing apps.

Regards,

Jörgen

by Googol (not verified)

Er, I'm sorry. You press the "close" button and expect the program to minimise?

Sorry, I know that windows programs do this.. but try this: Speak loudly and listen to your words "I am pressing the CLOSE button to make the program MINIMISE"

Doesn't anything strike you odd? Maybe the program is working fine, it's just not used right? ;)

by Adrian Bool (not verified)

When you hit the close button it should close (not minimise) the *window* - not the whole application in an application with more than whan UI element. If the application has a docked item on the tray this should be uneffected by the opening or clsoing of windows.

by luisdlr (not verified)

When I click close, I expect to close the window. I don't agree the idea of docking, but most people expect the docking (my sister and brother for example).

How can we be free of windows programs?
Everybody wants windows' behaviour in Unix/Linux, but noboby says "hey, windows is wrong, my kde does it well".

luisdlr.

by Resist (not verified)

As far as I know, there is no way to enable a buddy icon, or see other users icons with AIM. I know this may seem silly to some, but just having a little icon gives the person you are talking to some personality. This is one feature that GAIM has that I wish Kopete would adopt. Besides this good work guys! This is much much improved over the last release.

by Ned Flanders (not verified)

... to change its name.

Kopete seems to have a brilliant future, but its name sounds too much like Muppet with a "K" instead of the "M" :-)

If someone change the name Kopete, please (oh please!) don't give it another name beginning with a "K". If all Windows apps were beginning with a "W", we would have WOffice, WMessenger, WNotepad, maybe W.Bush, etc...

> If someone change the name Kopete, please (oh please!) don't give it another name beginning with a "K". If all Windows apps were beginning with a "W", we would have WOffice, WMessenger, WNotepad, maybe W.Bush, etc...

Ever heard of Microsoft Office, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Windows? k is just a branding thing, as is most company's name, etc...

GNOME does it (a bit less than KDE, although still quite a lot), Xfree86 does (even more than KDE).. everyone does it :>

Although I agree, it's more creative to have unique names :)

by Ned Flanders (not verified)

Are you the same fault who disliked the name Kroupware? (see http://dot.kde.org/1032748629/ ).

If you are, I think you can understand why I don't like the Kopete name...:-) But I must admit that Kopete is way better than Kroupware (remembers the Foresight suggestion?)

by will (not verified)

Oh - I wish that KDE would drop the K naming convention. The problem is that the marjority of the decision takers are engeneers with poor taste, so I don't see that happening any time soon -or ever. The developer centric nature of KDE means that it lacks a fundamental "elegancy" as Bart Decrem said. It will probably never change, so I have lost some interest in KDE myself.

My conclusion is that such changes will probably must take place at the distribution level. Problem is that haven't been that good either - but I'm a big fan of Xandros, so I rest my hope on that distribution. There are signs that the others will follow.

To summarize KDE needs IMO to do four things to gain a certain elegancy:

1. Drop the K naming convention

2. Clean and redesign Kicker

3. Drop the cogs-and-wheels style-elements and replace with something that speaks to the values of non-engeneers

4. General cleanup - less options, less elements etc.

by Matias Fernandez (not verified)

If you were chilean, you could inderstand it's name
right duncan? ;)

by Ned Flanders (not verified)

No problemo!

by ac (not verified)

Hi,

the version inside the mandrake 9 rpm states:
Version 0.58 (cvs 20030131)

and it crashes quite alot, especially when trying to move contacts
to the top-level directory.

And, I really like the fact that the sounds come in ogg format, but
kde3.1 seems being unable to play them... except when using ogg123
as external player

I stay with 0.5 for now

by Nick Betcher (not verified)

To be honest, it's not Kopete's fault. Kopete has been valgrind'ed and tested for over a year now, and 0.6 is no exception. The only place I could blame such problems for is in kdelibs. There are a couple known critical bugs in 3.0.x and one critical bug in 3.1. HEAD is fine, although that doesn't help the users much.

Please don't whine about how KDE is unstable. KDE is just now becoming mature and its API is not being re-written every release. Many important bugs are being fixed every release, and it's important that users keep up-to-date with KDE when also keeping up-to-date with Kopete, at least until kdelibs becomes a little less buggy and Kopete stabilizes API-wise.