[kde-doc-english] KDE makes chatting easy

[Tom Albers]

Hello, 

I've written a simple manual for IM Proxy in Dutch. And for the new user guide 
I've translated it into English so I hereby enter the competition! But I see 
no chapter in the outline covering this, so maybe it can not be included. If 
not, please let me know, so I can make this info available via www.kde.nl

Tom Albers
KDE Netherlands  | {toma} @ #kde-nl
-----------------

KDE makes chatting easy 

Did it happen to you? You received an email and the first thing you would like 
to do is to give a reaction on it, but not by e-mail. So you switch to your 
instant messaging client and/or IRC client and look if that person is online 
via MSN, Jabber or IRC. Well KDE 3.3 has made that a lot easier. A 
step-by-step manual:

The requirements are KMail, KAddressbook and Kopete (Konversation should do as 
well). Make sure KMail is configured and fully functional for email, and 
Kopete is well configured for IRC, Jabber and/or MSN and/or any other 
protocol. 

If an email comes in from a contact you know, the first thing you have to do 
is to add it to your address book. This can be achieved by right clicking the 
address and choose the entry "Add to Address Book".

If you know the nickname which the user uses on IRC for example, go to Kopete. 
Go to "File"->"Add contact". In the shown wizard, select the checkbox at the 
bottom called "Use the KDE address book for this contact" and choose "Next", 
select the right Address Book entry for that contact and press "Next", now 
you can set the display name and the group it belongs to for Kopete, in the 
next screen select which protocol should be used if you have set up more then 
one protocol. You can select more then one protocol. After that, depending on 
the protocol, there will be asked other questions, please complete the 
wizard.

Although we did specify to choose from the address book, Kopete has not 
automatically linked your contact to the address book. So select the contact 
and choose for "Edit"->"Properties". On the "General" tab check the box 
labeled "Has address book entry". Pres ",,," and select the contact. Close 
these two windows.

Now go to your addressbook, if you select the contact you will see that it 
shows an extra field "Presence", followed by the current status. This status 
will automatically update as soon as the contact goes away, offline, online, 
and so on. 
Now go to KMail, select an other email and return to the original email (in 
other words: reload the current email). You can now see behind the 
emailaddress the current state of your contact. 

If you want to chat with this person, just right click the address in KMail 
and choose "Chat With...". Your Instant Messager will start a conversation 
with the contact.