Kopete's Plugins
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Chapter 6. Kopete's Plugins

Kopete offers plugins that provide functions that aren't essential for messaging, but are useful for some people.

Plugins

Alias

Alias lets you define your own commands, eg /hello, in Kopete that run scripts and output the result in the chat window. If you know how the alias Unix command works, this is just the same

Auto Replace

Auto Replace allows you to correct frequently misspelled words or save typing certain words using abbreviations.

Bookmarks

The Bookmarks plugin creates bookmarks in your KDE bookmarks list from URLs that are received in IM messages.

Connection Status

Connection Status is useful for modem users or others who don't have a permanent Internet connection. It watches for an active Internet connection and sets your accounts online when it detects you have dialed up.

Contact Notes

Contact Notes allows you to note down any useful bits of information on a metacontact.

Cryptography

Cryptography lets you use GnuPG to encrypt conversations. Note that this is not the same as an SSL secured chat session. SSL protects the message from alteration and snooping of the message contents while it is in transit, but it doesn't guarantee the person reading the message is the intended recipient. Cryptography encrypts the message to a single individual - only the holder of the matching key can read it. However, it doesn't guarantee that the message the recipient reads is the message you sent! Since anyone who has the recipient's public key can encrypt to him/her, it is possible that your message could be replaced en route by a completely different message, and the recipient would not know.

To configure Cryptography, select your GnuPG key in the configuration page. If you select Encrypt outgoing messages with this key, then messages will be encrypted to you as well as the recipient, which is useful if you want to read your own chat logs later. Then, using Select Cryptography Public Key from each contact's context menu, choose their public key. You will be prompted for your passphrase when using this plugin.

Highlight

Highlight works a little like e-mail filters, in that it allows you to make things happen in response to particular messages. As well as highlighting the text, you can play sounds.

History

The History plugin, when activated, records conversations using any IM system and allows you to view old conversations later. A History item appears in each Metacontact's context menu so you can view the message history for that metacontact.

The following item is added to the Contact List's menus:

Edit->View History

(Enabled when a contact is selected) This displays the History browser for the selected contact.

The following items are added to the Chat window's menus:

Tools->History Previous (Alt+Shift+Left Arrow)

This enables you to view the next oldest set of messages from the History in the Chat window.

Tools->History Next (Alt+Shift+Right Arrow)

This shows the next newest set of messages from the History in the Chat window.

Tools->History Last

This shows the most recent set of messages from the History in the Chat window.

KopeteTeX

KopeteTeX allows scientists and mathematicians to hold conversations using the LaTeX markup language. Expressions entered within $$ are rendered as a graphic in the chatwindow, and can be cut and pasted as the original Latex. To use this plugin you must have LaTeX installed

Motion Auto-Away

In conjunction with a webcam and the Video4Linux package, this lets you detect when you're no longer at your computer and have Kopete automatically become Away.

Now Listening

With the Now Listening plugin, let people you're chatting with know what you're listening to, by typing /media in a chat, or with Tools->Send Media Info in the Chat window.

Statistics

This plugin uses a database to gather information about your contacts' activity patterns. You can use this to see when a contact is usually online, for example.

Text Effect

Text Effect applies funny effects to your messages before sending them, like coloring them or changing the case of the words. Just don't forget you have activated it - we've had bug reports from forgetful Text Effect users!

Translator

The Translator plugin lets you define a preferred language for each Metacontact, and then translates messages to or from them using web based translation services such as Google™ and Babelfish™. Set your own preferred language in the Configure Plugins dialog. Each contact's preferred language can be set on its context menu.

The following item is added to the Chat window's menus:

Tools->Translate (Ctrl+T)

If you did not turn on automatic translation, this translates the current chat.

Web Presence

Web Presence allows you to publicize your IM presence on the Web. Give it the path to a file on an FTP server (for example), and it will upload a short piece of HTML to that file, which you can include in your homepage. KDE's network transparency makes this simple. Useful for bloggers to make friends with, or you could use it to use IM in your business.

Example: sftp://username@somehost.org/path/to/homes/user/im.html uses the SFTP protocol to upload your presence directly onto the webserver.

See the TDEIO manuals for tips on specific network protocols.

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