It's an absolutely wicked messenger and I love it, but I just feel like it needs a bit more love and a bit more attention! Releases are rarer than others like Pidgin and Empathy, and it just doesn't seem to be moving as fast as many other projects. Does anyone else feel this?

Don't get me wrong, it's still my favourite messenger I have ever used, but I just feel like it could be so much better...

What do you guys think?

Hoppi

Since it's part of the official KDE distribution, it follows the usual Shuttleworth-6-month-cycle, so the new changes are not visible until KDE point-release.

Ah I see, but it's just there is no PPA, like their is for Pidgin. Although to be fair even Pidgin has not implemented the new Facebook protocol yet (one problem I had with Kopete)..

Actually Pidgin does have a Facebookchat plugin.

There's actually one for Kopete too, but it is pretty unreliable (I don't chat on Facebook - I just use it to add people's photos to my addressbook :)

I think kopete needs to be taken out and get the same status as amarok, related to but not part of kde4, so it can release faster, it can really be annoying when a protocol changes and you have to wait for a kde update...

actually this needs to be done with many apps in kde

Alec wrote:Actually Pidgin does have a Facebookchat plugin.

Yeah and I just realized that if I grabbed the latest .deb directly from the plugin's homepage instead of just using the pidgin-developers PPA, it now works with the current protocol!

Still doesn't help us on Kopete though! heh

hoppimike wrote:

Alec wrote:Actually Pidgin does have a Facebookchat plugin.

Yeah and I just realized that if I grabbed the latest .deb directly from the plugin's homepage instead of just using the pidgin-developers PPA, it now works with the current protocol!

Still doesn't help us on Kopete though! heh

Actually, for me the Kopete facebook plugin works just fine (and the version in Karmic is up to date, which I assume is relevant to you since you're talking about PPAs, heh).

aapgorilla wrote:I think kopete needs to be taken out and get the same status as amarok, related to but not part of kde4, so it can release faster, it can really be annoying when a protocol changes and you have to wait for a kde update...

actually this needs to be done with many apps in kde

That may be true, but I've noticed a lot more development in Kopete as of late, since it has been re-integrated with the mainline of KDE (it was previously separate like Amarok). So if it's a choice between faster access to the new development or faster development itself, I choose the latter, although yes it isn't the best of both worlds. But hey. A lot of the time you could just compile Kopete from SVN and make a .deb with checkinstall, no? I've pulled things from KDE's SVN plenty of times between releases (especially serviceconfig.py, which works just fine and is a HUGE missing element of SystemSettings . . . but for some reason is never included in the releases).

No matter how often Kopete gets an update, the fact remains that the 3rd party services like Yahoo! will continue to provide Windows users with an excellent experience with their native client, and treat us GNUX users with contempt.Kopete team needs Yahoo's cooperation to provide top-notch support such long-desired features as video chatting, voice and file/photo sharing and gaming etc.But I don't see that coming in the foreseeable future.

I'm saying as long as Kopete relies on 3rd party chat services as the main method of providing chat features to us users, it simply will lag behind.I believe this.

mehrmor wrote:No matter how often Kopete gets an update, the fact remains that the 3rd party services like Yahoo! will continue to provide Windows users with an excellent experience with their native client, and treat us GNUX users with contempt.Kopete team needs Yahoo's cooperation to provide top-notch support such long-desired features as video chatting, voice and file/photo sharing and gaming etc.But I don't see that coming in the foreseeable future.

I'm saying as long as Kopete relies on 3rd party chat services as the main method of providing chat features to us users, it simply will lag behind.I believe this.

I disagree with the bit about Yahoo IM, etc. being the "3rd party" in this relationship. Users are registered with Yahoo IM and MSN Messenger and Google talk accounts and want a messenger client that supports each of them so they can chat with their friends. These different services are both the protocol of communication and the network of users who have contacts on those services. Kopete is the 3rd party (like Pidgin and Epiphany) trying to support these different services/protocols and people aren't going to just switch which service they use to use Kopete's "native" service because that would mean having all of their contacts also switch to Kopete's "native" service, etc. Or do you suggest that Kopete's "native" service be an intermediate service which provides support for all of these different protocols/networks so that users can still use their existing contacts via Kopete's "native" service?

On the other hand, I do agree that Yahoo IM on anything other than Yahoo's official Windows client is pretty ****, and even using the official Windows client I've still seen problems (we try and hold monthly conferences via IM involving about a dozen people spread over the US and Canada using probably a couple different versions of Yahoo's official client and pidgin, and always have someone who doesn't see someone else's messages and vice verse - very frustrating; but this seems to be more evidence of underlying problems with Yahoo's IM service than with the clients used).

I think Kopete is awesome!!! But yes it does need some love. One thing that really bugs me is the fact that it cant do proper msn file transfer, and the bug report for it has been around since 2005. I also agree that kopete should stand on its own. For some applications its good to be part of the kde release cycle but for others like amarok standing alone makes it get a life of its own and gives it the chance to become best of breed like amarok was in the 1.4 series.

airdrik wrote:

mehrmor wrote:No matter how often Kopete gets an update, the fact remains that the 3rd party services like Yahoo! will continue to provide Windows users with an excellent experience with their native client, and treat us GNUX users with contempt.Kopete team needs Yahoo's cooperation to provide top-notch support such long-desired features as video chatting, voice and file/photo sharing and gaming etc.But I don't see that coming in the foreseeable future.

I'm saying as long as Kopete relies on 3rd party chat services as the main method of providing chat features to us users, it simply will lag behind.I believe this.

I disagree with the bit about Yahoo IM, etc. being the "3rd party" in this relationship. Users are registered with Yahoo IM and MSN Messenger and Google talk accounts and want a messenger client that supports each of them so they can chat with their friends. These different services are both the protocol of communication and the network of users who have contacts on those services. Kopete is the 3rd party (like Pidgin and Epiphany) trying to support these different services/protocols and people aren't going to just switch which service they use to use Kopete's "native" service because that would mean having all of their contacts also switch to Kopete's "native" service, etc. Or do you suggest that Kopete's "native" service be an intermediate service which provides support for all of these different protocols/networks so that users can still use their existing contacts via Kopete's "native" service?

Well, you are right that the third party side here is actually the client software used.I looked at it as though Kopete has got a service of its own and other services are regarded as 3rd party relatively; like how Yahoo Messenger can be used to connect to Yahoo's own service as well as to Windows Live which is sort of a 3rd party provider compared to Yahoo in this case.But I admit that 3rd party may not be the correct term here.

Using the example of Yahoo!/Windows Live interoperability, what I meant by a native service was a concept similar to the same; such that Kopete will have a native chat service but at the same time supports other popular protocols like Live or Yahoo albeit to a lesser extent and with fewer features just like how some features of Yahoo service are unavailable to Live users and vice versa.
But the native Kopete service would have a relatively complete feature-set that may include from high-quality video chatting to seamless file sharing and entertainment e.g music streaming and/or gaming.These are the same features that are currently absent or lacking quality in Kopete due to the reason I implied in my previous post: Yahoo! and MS Live and [name of another proprietary provider here] simply don't care about the GNUX world.