Kopete contacts in Lancelot
Although my intention was not to make the Contacts section for 4.1 (that is to disable it) and to wait for Telepathy and Akonadi to be integrated into KDE PIM, I just couldn’t wait.
Lancelot now shows on-line contacts from Kopete, altogether with contact pictures. Unfortunately, the D-Bus interface to Kopete is underpowered so the list updating is pooling-based. Alternative would be to make a Lancelot plug-in for Kopete, but that will have to wait for post-4.1 period (if the need for that remains).
No other IM applications are going to be supported for the time being. I intend to make the IM connections pluggable… but it will not be done for 4.1.
The next step will be to populate the left side of the window with e-mail related stuff such as unread messages from KMail.
How about adding count for unread im messages too? So that user would see if someone writes him instant message. And connect online contacts with unread emails so that if you have contact entry that has both email and im that blinking envelope would be displayed next to contact (that should be added to kopete as well).
Comment by cenebris — May 25, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
Well, how to say this… Lancelot is not going to be an instant messenger (and this time I do mean it). The thing that you are proposing is interesting, but:
- those are the features that need to be implemented in KMail and Kopete first.
- those features (when/if they are made) need to be exposed via D-Bus or something similar so that L could access them (and, as I’ve already said, the current Kopete’s D-Bus interface is awful)
- concerning Kopete, the feature of unread messages is (IMO) not needed since Kopete notifies you of newly arrived messages…
That level of integration will probably come eventually, but it is not my burden to bare.
Comment by admin — May 25, 2008 @ 3:57 pm
Any post saying “X integration with Y” should start by clearly (but briefly) explaining what X and Y are. Assume the reader isn’t even a KDE user.
I’m a fairly new KDE *3* user. What *is* Lancelot?
BTW: your comment form is *tiny*. Like 20 characters fit. What would you think of using a shell with 20 columns?
Comment by Nicolas — May 25, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
Well, since I’m mostly writing only about Lancelot, and Lancelot-related stuff, I really can not write what it is every time. You have a link to Lancelot category on this blog if you want more details. (in the last post, you’d even get a link to Lancelot’s website
As for explaining what KMail and Kopete are… well, again, I don’t think that it really is necessary.
Concerning the space, it is (at least in my firefox) 50 characters wide and 11 lines tall. That is large enough for medium-sized comments. (I don’t want to read essays here :P)
Cheerio!
Comment by admin — May 25, 2008 @ 6:01 pm
I use Konqueror, which really should be a target browser for this kind of blog
and it really is 20 characters wide.
Comment by Nicolas — May 25, 2008 @ 11:10 pm
Wow! It really is… a bit (only a bit) small
I’ve checked it now with WebKit (Arora web browser) and it looks ok in ti, it even has a resize handle…
Comment by admin — May 26, 2008 @ 6:19 am
awsome. are there any plans for a generic contacts plasmoid in kde 4.1, i.e. one which is usable outside lancelot?
Comment by and — May 26, 2008 @ 10:00 am
I don’t know. It /was told/ that Akonadi will bring bliss for Plasma applets, but that has not happened yet. As for 4.2, there will be a possibility to add parts of the Lancelot menu to Plasma desktop, so you’ll automatically get a couple of new applets…
Comment by admin — May 26, 2008 @ 10:08 am