[kde-doc-english] Competition entry

[Peter Nuttall]

Hi all,

This is my entry for the doc competition. Its not wonderful, but I hope it 
is ok. Please CC me for any comments as I am not subscribed. 

Thanks

Peter Nuttall 
Intro to Messaging

The normal way to send instant messages in KDE is to use the IM
client, Kopete. This is a multi-protocol IM client, meaning that it
handles several different protocols including MSN, Jabber, AOL and
IRC. It also has useful features including support for Kaddressbook,
meta-contacts, encryption support and lots more.

How to get started:

Start up Kopete from the menu (it can normally be found in the
Internet folder) When it starts up you should see a window with Kopete
at the top, menus and a tool bar below, and then your contacts below.
You should add some accounts by clicking on the settings menu and
selecting the Configure Kopete option. By selecting the Accounts
option you should see a list of your accounts (initially empty) and
options to add new accounts and to edit or remove existing accounts.
By clicking on the add new account button, you can add a new account
using the wizard. When you have added an account, you can connect to
this account by clicking on the relevant icon at the bottom of your
main Kopete window. This should make your contacts appear in the
contacts window.

Meta-contacts

Meta contacts are one of the features of Kopete that makes sense once
you figure out what they are. Until you do, they annoy you. They are
basically a way of taking a contact on one network (such as MSN) and
linking it to another contact on a different network. This is useful
for when people have accounts on different networks as you can chat to
them without needing to know which account they are signed on to. This
also lets you assign names to your meta-contacts that don't change
when people change their names on their account, this is useful if you
have contacts who insist upon setting their MSN nick to something like
.

You can do other useful things with meta-contacts like link them to
entries in your address book. This will show you their status (online
or offline) when sending them emails, and will even let you start a
chat with them.

IRC

Internet relay chat has been around for far longer than most IM
systems, and is still widely used. While Kopete has a IRC plugin, and
handles both channels and nicks well, long time IRC users might prefer
a client designed just for that role, which is what Konversation is.
It supports features such as granting and taking op status, banning,
easy nick changing, special channel support for passwords and invites,
and other things that the power IRC users expect. It also is far
better at handling large channels such as #debian. If you have used
another power-IRC client before, you should have no trouble using
conversation.