The Configure Kopete Dialog
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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.

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 the system tray icon

By default, Kopete places an icon in the KDE System Tray. If you prefer, you can turn this off here.

Start hidden

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.

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.

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, or you can invent your own style here. Installed styles are shown in the list on the left and are previewed in the main panel.

Third party styles are available at http://kde-look.org.

To modify a style, click Edit.... Kopete represents chats internally as XML and uses the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) to specify how this should be transformed into HTML for display. You need to be familiar with HTML and XSL to edit styles.

Chat Window

Kopete supports translucent chat views. You can control the degree of translucency and add a color tint here. Changes to the translucency settings only become visible when a new chat view opens.

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 Detailed with contact photos style, that shows the contact list including photos from the IM system 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 Tootip 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.

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.

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