(I'm not sure if this should go into the Kontact & PIM board, please move it if so.)
I'm using version 0.2 of Telepathy and KDE 4.8.00.
Till date, the only way I've used IRC is by the browser interfaces which didn't require any set up, so I'm a little confused about what to put where (All the permutations I've tried, results in a connection failure).

The fields are:
1.Account
2.Server Address
3.Password
4.Port
5.Charset
6.username
7.realname
and two tick boxes: autodetect-utf-8 and ssl .
Is server address http://www.freenode.net/ or irc://chat.freenode.net/kde
What do I have to put in "Account" ? ..and is a password necessary ?

N.B: Port and charset has default values : 6667 and UTF-8 .

The server address will be "chat.freenode.net".

bcooksley wrote:The server address will be "chat.freenode.net".

Thanks, it worked.
(Though I'm puzzled about why "Account" and "username" are different fields.)

Anyway, after I log in, I get a message from nickserv asking to identify the account.
But, after doing so correctly, when I try the "Join Chat Room" menu, the only options shown are from the xmpp accounts; (google and facebook) .
Is this not implemented yet ?

It is possible that it is not implemented yet. You would need to ask on the kde-telepathy@kde.org mailing list to find out however. I would not be surprised if IRC is not yet fully implemented however, considering how Telepathy is very much still under very active development.

IRC does work.

You should only be seeing the fields:
Server Address, Nickname and Real name

Check you have telepathy-idle installed, I think you must be hitting the fallback IRC support that we get through libpurple/pidgin (which is ****, which is why there's no sexy UI for configuring it and you got presented with gibberish fields)

Also for some reason the version from pidgin claims it can't do chatrooms, so we don't show it.

Basically - install telepathy-idle delete your account, and add it again.

Also 0.2 is really really old.

Finally, we're never going to be a really good IRC client. It's not really the use case we're targeting, so if you're a heavy IRC user - stick to Konversation/Quassel.

Post back with updates.