I just noticed that KDE telepathy became available in Debian testing at last! I installed kde-telepathy to compare it to Pidgin and too see if I can switch to it. So I found two plasmoids available - "Instant Messaging Presence" and "Quick Chat". I installed both in the panel. Presence is working fine (just an icon with presence status and context menu).

Quick Chat though looks weird. First of all it appears as empty space in the panel (taking a place of 2 icons). When someone sends me a message, an icon appears there (with avatar of that user and messages number). When I click on that it opens an applet, which isn't usable except for clicking a chat icon there, which opens another window for a conversation. A bit strange workflow if you ask me. When no messages appear in Quick Chat (just empty space) - clicking there produces nothing. Is it just buggy (version 0.4) or I'm missing something about how to use these?

shmerl wrote:Quick Chat though looks weird. First of all it appears as empty space in the panel (taking a place of 2 icons).

It's meant to be used only when you are actually chatting, otherwise there's not much use for it..

shmerl wrote:When someone sends me a message, an icon appears there (with avatar of that user and messages number). When I click on that it opens an applet, which isn't usable except for clicking a chat icon there, which opens another window for a conversation.

It is fully usable as a chat replacement, my bet would be on some bug in plasma (we experienced and helped fixed quite a lot of them) - try clicking the bottom input field, type something even though it is not focused or you don't see anything being typed (happened especially with dark plasma themes), then just hit enter to send it and see if it works.

shmerl wrote:When no messages appear in Quick Chat (just empty space) - clicking there produces nothing

On the other hand - what would you expect to happen?

shmerl wrote:Is it just buggy (version 0.4) or I'm missing something about how to use these?

Well it is still marked as a tech-preview, we still need to do lots of work on this (any help happily welcomed

mck182 wrote:It is fully usable as a chat replacement, my bet would be on some bug in plasma (we experienced and helped fixed quite a lot of them) - try clicking the bottom input field, type something even though it is not focused or you don't see anything being typed (happened especially with dark plasma themes), then just hit enter to send it and see if it works.

I tested it - you are right, that's what happens. I can't see any input after focusing, but after pressing Enter - the data is sent. Good that it's a known bug. I'm using the Naked theme. If needed - can file a bug report.

mck182 wrote:

shmerl wrote:When no messages appear in Quick Chat (just empty space) - clicking there produces nothing

On the other hand - what would you expect to happen?

At least I'd expect the empty space to be collapsed when nothing is present there. Right now it always takes the space of 2 icons no matter what (may be widgets locking doesn't allow such collapsing, but then UI has to be reworked - such empty space is rather cluttering). Thanks for your work - I hope these will be ironed out, and XMPP/Jingle will start working better too. Right now it's rather erratic (Pidgin isn't much better, and it also relies on Farstream, which may be the cause).

shmerl wrote:I tested it - you are right, that's what happens. I can't see any input after focusing, but after pressing Enter - the data is sent. Good that it's a known bug. I'm using the Naked theme. If needed - can file a bug report.

No need, afaik it has been fixed in plasma for 4.9

shmerl wrote:At least I'd expect the empty space to be collapsed when nothing is present there. Right now it always takes the space of 2 icons no matter what

That makes a lot of sense and if you would file a bug about that, it would be fantastic

First I have to say I really like it so far, using the same version under Debian Sid.
Everything works except the 'useless' quick chat, same I think as described by OP, I do not need it anyway.

Only downsides, my mic does not work with Gtalk but does so on Google's webmail interface.

Keep up the work. In general I really appreciate KDE Telepathy.

dusanic wrote:Only downsides, my mic does not work with Gtalk but does so on Google's webmail interface.

Can you try it with the latest 0.4.1? We fixed some bugs around that area, should work now.

mck182 wrote:Can you try it with the latest 0.4.1? We fixed some bugs around that area, should work now.

Sounds good. Will do it but would have to wait until it hits Debian Sid.

How can one build it from source? I can give it a try, if it won't conflict with the rest of KDE 4.8 which is installed in my Debian testing.

Filed a bug about Quick Chat plasmoid non collapsing empty space: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=304468

shmerl wrote:How can one build it from source? I can give it a try, if it won't conflict with the rest of KDE 4.8 which is installed in my Debian testing.

No, it won't conflict with any of KDE, but it will conflict with installed KDE Telepathy from packages.

It's very easy, here are instructions on how to get set up: http://community.kde.org/Real-Time_Comm ... ing_Set_Up

Instead of the git repos, you can use packages for 0.4.1, which you can download here: http://download.kde.org/unstable/kde-te ... 0.4.1/src/

Let me know if you need any help.

shmerl wrote:Filed a bug about Quick Chat plasmoid non collapsing empty space: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=304468

Yeah I saw, thanks a lot!

(Apparently we already had that one filed, I just completely forgot about it )