Using Kopete
This chapter gives an overview of Kopete's basic features. We will look first at the contact list, where your contacts are displayed, and then at the Chat window, where you carry out a conversation.

The Contact List
The Contact List appears when you start Kopete. It's the main window where you can set your presence, start a chat, organize your contacts, configure Kopete and quit.

Layout of the Contact List window

Menu
You will usually find the menubar at the top of the contact list. If it is not there, you might have turned it off; you can re-enable it with M. Details on each menu item can be found in the chapter on menu structure.

Tool bar
The toolbar holds the most frequently used Kopete actions. You can customize it with Settings Configure Toolbars.... Notice the Show Offline Users and Show Empty Groups buttons. With these you can hide contacts and groups that are offline.
Kopete makes it even easier to set a status message to let your contacts know about your mood or why you're busy at the moment. Click on the Set Status Message button and start typing to enter a new message, or choose from one of the previous messages you have used.
The Quick Search Toolbar quickly filters the contact list, by typing a few letters from a contact's name.

Contact List
The Contact List takes up the main part of the window. All your contacts are listed here, in the groups you have chosen for them. You can open or close groups by clicking the plus symbol adjacent to the group. You can reverse the order the groups are sorted in by clicking the Contacts label above the list.
The context menu in the Contact List changes depending on the item under the mouse. Groups, Metacontacts and IM system specific contacts have their own options. In empty areas of the Contact List, the context menu allows you to add contacts or groups, or change the viewing options for the list.

Status bar
The status bar shows an icon for each IM account you have created. The icons represent the current presence of each account, which can be changed by right-clicking the account icon.
Kopete also shows your current status message in the Status Bar>. By clicking on the note icon in the corner, you can change or clear the status message as well.

Setting Your Presence
We introduced you to setting presence in the previous chapter. 'Presence' determines how visible you are on the IM network. To use the network at all, you have to connect to the network, so you can send and receive messages and see others' presence. Once you are connected, most IM systems allow you to indicate what you're doing and whether you want to chat by setting special types of presence such as Away or Free For Chat. The difference presence settings are particular to each away system; but Kopete allows you some control all your IM systems at once by setting them to Away or Available at the same time.
You set your presence for individual IM accounts by right clicking the account's icon in the status bar at the bottom of the Contact List. The context menu for each account lets you choose the possible presence settings for each IM system.
To change all your accounts' presence together, click the Status, or use the File Status menu.

Protocol Specific Actions
By right clicking the account's icon in the status bar at the bottom of the Contact List, you can also trigger protocol specific actions for that account like joining a groupchat or setting moods.

Start A Chat From The Contact List
To start a chat from the Contact List, simply click a contact. A Chat window will appear.
You can also right click a contact and select either Send Message or Start Chat. Send Message works differently in that it just sends a single message without opening the Chat window, using a simple dialog. Use it for fire-and-forget messages.

Send A File
You can send files from the Contact List, using the context menu on the person you want to send to. If Kopete supports file transfer on their IM system, there will be a Send File... item. Alternatively, you can drag a file from anywhere else in onto their name to start a file transfer.

Organizing Contacts

A Word about Metacontacts
One of the principles behind Kopete is that it offers a standardized way to use IM systems. Differences between IM systems are smoothed over, making it easier to communicate. We follow this principle in the way contacts are organized. When you use Kopete you just find contacts by name; the actual IM system used is less important. Some people have more than one IM account - Kopete puts the person using the account first.
To support this, Kopete introduced Metacontacts, which represent the person you want to chat with. One Metacontact contains all the different IM IDs they may have, making it easy to see with a glance at the Metacontact 'smiley icon' whether someone is available, regardless of which IM system they are using right now.

A Word about Grouping Contacts
Kopete lets you create groups to sort your contacts. A contact may be in more than one group. Where possible, groupings are saved on server side contact lists, so if you use other IM programs, group memberships are kept in sync. However, if you change groups in another IM program, Kopete cannot know to move a metacontact automatically; it is up to you to resolve this by hand.
To change the group a metacontact appears in, you can use its context menu to move it or copy it to a new group, or remove it from a group. You can also use drag and drop here - just drop the metacontact on a different group name.

Adding Contacts
To add a contact, either select File Add Contact or click the Add button on the toolbar. This brings up the Add Contact Wizard.
The Add Contact Wizard creates a new Metacontact using one or more IM systems, by leading you through the following pages.
Welcome Page. Here you can choose whether you want to use the Address Book for this contact. Storing IM information in the Address Book will enable other IM programs to share contact information with Kopete and in future applications may use Kopete to send information via IM. If you prefer to keep your IM contacts separated, clear the check box here.
Choose Address Book entry. By choosing an entry from your Address Book, you can use its name as a Display Name in Kopete. You can also create a new entry here. This page doesn't show if you chose not to use the Address Book.
Select Display Name and Group. Here you can enter a Display Name (the name used for this person inside Kopete), and choose the groups they are a member of.
Select IM Accounts. Here you can choose which accounts you want to use to chat to the new contact. If you only have one IM account, you won't see this screen.
Account-specific Add Contact Pages. For each account, you'll get one page where you can enter the UIN, buddy name or Email address, depending on the IM system in use.
Finish Screen. All done. Except if the IM system requires authorization (such as ICQ) to add a contact to your list - in which case, you'll be prompted after the wizard exits.
You can add contacts to an existing Metacontact using its context menu.

Renaming Contacts
You can rename a contact using Edit Rename Contact or with the same item on the metacontact context menu.
Some IM systems allow you to set a Display Name that is different to your username, such as Alice loves crypto!. If you change a contact's name manually, this will override their Display Name. To get it back, open the Properties dialog for that contact and check the Use the name given by the server checkbox.

Removing Contacts
If you no longer want a contact to be in the contact list, you can remove a Metacontact and all the contacts under it with Metacontact context menu Remove Contact.

Moving Contacts between Metacontacts
You can change the metacontact a contact belongs to. In practice, you only have to do this when you have just added multiple accounts to Kopete, and you know that HotDog76 and mikejones@hotmail.com are both the same person.
There are two ways to do this:
Drag and Drop	The contact icon to the right of the metacontact name may be dragged from one metacontact to another.
Contact Context Menu	The context menu for contacts (Right-click the contact icon) allows you to choose the new metacontact from a dialog.
If the move would leave a Metacontact empty (with no contacts), you'll be asked if you want to delete this contact.

Removing Contacts from Metacontacts
To remove a contact from a Metacontact, choose Contact context menu Delete Contact....

Configure Kopete
You can configure Kopete using Settings Configure.... See the next chapter for details.

Exiting Kopete
To exit Kopete you should use File Quit, Q, or the Kopete System Tray icon's context menu. If you just close the Contact List window, Kopete will continue to run in the System Tray.

Keyboard shortcuts
The following keyboard shortcuts are supported in the Contact List window:
Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Up Arrow	Select the previous item in the contact list.
Down Arrow	Select the next item in the contact list.
Left Arrow	Close the current group.
Right Arrow	Open the current group.
Enter	Start a chat with the selected contact.
M	Show/Hide the menu bar.
U	Show/Hide offline users.
G	Show/Hide empty groups.

The Chat Window

Layout of the Chat Window

The Chat View
The Chat View usually takes up most of the Chat window and is where the conversation between you and your contacts takes place. Messages appear in the order they are received, with the earliest messages at the top of the view.
You can control the appearance of the Chat View, making it look like other IM clients or create a completely individual look.

Chat Members List
Since some IM systems allow you to chat as a group, it is useful to see who is chatting at the moment. The Chat Members List appears to the left or the right of the Chat View. You can change this using Settings Chat Members List. The contact context menu is available in the Chat Members List.

Input Area
The Input Area is below the Chat View. This is where you type messages before sending them. You can change the font and color of the message using the usual tools on the toolbar. If the IM system supports this, your messages will appear in color when your contacts read them.
By default, the keyboard shortcut to send messages is .

Status Bar
The Status Bar contains temporary messages, such as notification that someone else is typing, as well as the Send button.

Tabbing
Kopete lets you carry on multiple conversations in one window, by putting each one in its own tab within the window. The tab titles change color to show when a new message has been received:
Red	Someone typed a message.
Green	Someone is typing a message.
Blue	Someone typed a message containing your nickname.
There are several different ways to control grouping. To configure this behavior, go to the Chat tab of the Behavior page of the Configure Kopete dialog. You can also move chats between windows using the Tabs menu, and control the placement of the tabs in the window.

Group Chats in Kopete
You can use Kopete to chat one to one, or in a group, where the IM system supports this.
To invite others into a chat, drag them from the Contact List into the chat window, or use Chat Invite <contact name>.

File Transfers
Some IM systems allow you to send and receive files. You can access this function from the contact's context menu. If you're already chatting, and want to send a file, simply drag the file from any other part of into the Chat Window, or select the Chat Send File menu.

Keyboard Shortcuts
The following keyboard shortcuts are supported in the Chat window:
Keyboard Shortcut	Action
	Send the message in the Input Area.
P	Print the contents of the Chat View.
S	Save the contents of the Chat View.
W	Close the current Chat View. The Chat window will close unless there is more than one tab in the window.
,	Change to the previous tab.
.	Change to the next tab.
B	Detach a tabbed chat into a separate window.
Tab	Complete a partially typed nickname belonging to someone you're chatting with.