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This should sound nuts but I've thinking about this for quite a time and somehow seems it makes sense.

SInce I learned about Telepathy-KDE, I had hope about a full IM solution for KDE Desktop Environment. But with the raise of privative protocols (Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts...) Telepathy-KDE became a zombie. Which is bad, not just because now we must use closed-source IM services to communicate with people that use those protocols, but because we must do that with a smartphone or web app - that isn't as 'integrated' as we were used to with Telepathy-KDE. You need a whole web browser (plus your smartphone connected and set up, as with Whatsapp) to chat with someone.

But here's the thing: I've been using for quite a time a multi-service IM app called Disa. Currently it supports Whatsapp (without video calls and the sparkles, but who cares?), Telegram, Facebook Messenger and SMS (an alleged plugin system would allow to add more services, but I haven't seen another one), all of them within the same app. Actually I ditched Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger (and Facebook app, too) and Telegram and I just have Disa.

The best part is that Disa is opensourced with LGPL 2.1, so anyone could check or join its development.

So now that we have kdeconnect and a zombie Telepathy-KDE... I think it would be great if KDE devs can join forces with Disa devs and, via kdeconnect, build a bridge to bring Disa chats, contacts and such to Telepathy-KDE, thus bringing seamlessly Whatsapp, Facebook, Telegram and etcetera to our desktops. Picture chatting with your Whatsapp or Facebook within Plasma, sending them files you have stored on your PC from Dolphin, pictures from Gwenview, screenshots from Spectacle or whatever, and all just via right-click...

Even Disa would benefit from this, their number of users would grow and eventually more people would be involved on its development.

I know there's even a KDE Connect connection manager for Telepathy in development, so seems at least someone is thinking something similar. What do you think?

Another option could be to skip kdeconnect and the phone and just have Telepathy(-KDE) integrate the Disa framework directly (I could see benefits and use cases for either/both).

airdrik wrote:Another option could be to skip kdeconnect and the phone and just have Telepathy(-KDE) integrate the Disa framework directly.

Don't know if that could be possible, but not needing to have a phone connected to chat with someone over Whatsapp sounds really cool! Just like in the old days

Should be possible. On their github repo they advertise that it's written in C# with the intent to be cross-compilable to any platform supporting .NET/Mono. I'm not sure how much effort will be needed to get a C/C++ app to integrate with a .NET/Mono framework; but there are ways to do that even if the app can't just build against the framework directly.

Another possibility is for them (or someone) to create a front-end for it that'll work on Linux (and Windows).

As a side note: there is a telpathy-kdeconnect plugin that actually works. (I use it) See:
https://github.com/KDE/telepathy-kdeconnect
It is just unreleased, and I think that it may remain that way because of the seeming lack of interest in kde-telepathy.
For what its worth, I still use kde-telepathy extensively for google and skype. It is a shame that there aren't reverse engineered plugins for whatasapp and the like, especially since they a modified version of xmpp. Whatever the case a nicely integrated chat/sms client the plasma desktop that is not a webbrowser in a box will be great.

bugzy wrote:As a side note: there is a telpathy-kdeconnect plugin that actually works. (I use it) See:
https://github.com/KDE/telepathy-kdeconnect

I had already mentioned telepathy-kdeconnect plugin on OP.