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Can Kopete replace GAIM and XChat? (NewsForge)Can Kopete replace GAIM and XChat? (NewsForge)Posted Mar 29, 2004 22:25 UTC (Mon) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266)Parent article: Can Kopete replace GAIM and XChat? (NewsForge) I've recently switched from Licq to Kopete. Kopete seems nice but I find that it has a couple annoying bugs (it never remembers the window or toolbar positions/sizes) and it is missing some features that Licq had. That being said, it does seem to work reasonably well. The multi-protocol thing is very nice; I use the ICQ and MSN protocols and everything works fine. I can't figure out how to customize the away messages permanently, which is annoying. Also, the meta-contact thing, one of Kopete's neatest features, isn't quite perfect. I can't seem to be able to control which account it picks for sending when I double-click on a contact. Also, if a contact sends me a message from two accounts, they appear in different chats, even though the history is logged together. But overall the program is nice enough for me to use. I would like to see some of its features enhanced, however. Better auto-message (away message) support would be nice... in Licq you can have an away message that is the output of a program. Better support for configuring the appearance of the text in chat windows would be nice... currently you have to edit an xsl file. And most importantly, it needs to better support people who don't use the dock icon. Even with the dock icon disabled, I still have to do File-Quit because clicking on the X in the window closes only the window and leaves the program running. With no dock icon, this means the program is inaccessible and you have to killall kopete.
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Can Kopete replace GAIM and XChat? (NewsForge) Posted Mar 30, 2004 13:22 UTC (Tue) by wstephenson (subscriber, #14795) [Link] Hope this helps:
As regards the system tray/dock problem, we're in a tight spot there as we follow the KDE standard that says that apps with a dock icon hide to the dock when you close the window - so they're all lost until you add a system tray somehow, JuK, KsCD. How about using a panel/Kicker that autohides, is sized 10% expanding, and only holds a system tray applet?
Can Kopete replace GAIM and XChat? (NewsForge) Posted Mar 31, 2004 1:55 UTC (Wed) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link] Hey, you CAN set custom away messages! That's great, thanks for tellingme. As for my ideas about the metacontact issue, you're right about the problem with sending to a metacontact who is sending to me from multiple accounts. I'm not sure how to best handle this in the UI. But what I DO know is that it is inconsistent for messages to appear in different chats but be logged in the same history. I did figure out how to manually select a protocol for sending by clicking on the protocol icon, but on my screen the icon is (rightfully) very small and clicking on it is harder than double-clicking on the contact name. It would be helpful if when I am in a chat with a user, it indicates which protocol I am using (wait... I just noticed that the window icon matches the protocol). It would also be nice to be able to hit a button in the chat window to switch to another protocol (this could maybe help with the first issue about metacontacts too). Finally, it would be nice to be able to set the default protocol, especially for cases like ICQ vs MSN, where I may want to prefer sending an offline message over ICQ than sending an online message on MSN. Of course, the number of possible situations/combinations is endless, but at least being able to specify "If the user is online with both protocols, use this one first" would be nice. Finally, regarding the system dock, the reason I do not use the system dock icon is because I often (say, > 50% of the time) use Kopete from my work system, which is Windows/cygwin, and thus has no dock (I ssh to my home computer and run Kopete over the tunnel). The dock icon shows up on Windows as a tiny, ugly window, that's impossible to use. So I just turned it off, but the problem is that then the main window can be closed without terminating the program. I understand the KDE requirements, but when the dock icon is turned off and the main window closes, there is no window left with which to control the program. The Licq behaviour is to terminate the program when the main window closes, unless the dock icon is turned on, in which case the icon keeps the program alive).
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