KTp

Introduction

Real time Communication has traditionally been a detached feature of Desktop Computing, provided via stand-alone Instant Messaging clients with poor integration into the desktop experience. One of the primary goals of the KDE 4 series is to tighten integration between different components of the environment. The Realtime Communication and Collaboration (RTCC) project aims to tackle just this.

Our aims are:

• To integrate Real Time Communication deeply into the KDE Workspaces and Applications
• To provide a infrastructure to aid development of Collaborative features for KDE applications.

If you find these goals appealing, why not consider getting involved. C++ programming is *not* a necessity.

Technical Information

• The RTCC project uses the cross-desktop Telepathy Framework as the basis for our work.
• We should try and reuse code from Kopete/other already existing code wherever possibly. However, this should be balanced with the need to refactor/rewrite where appropriate to keep the new code true to Telepathy idioms.

Frequently Asked Questions

You can find a list of answers to frequently asked questions here: FAQ.

See also https://gkiagia.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/what-is-telepathy-kde/

Getting Started

Before you start playing with/hacking on the Telepathy integration stuff, you need to get it all compiled: Instructions

Warning

If you are a distro packager, please see here for information on packaging KDE-Telepathy

The Plan

1) Build components equivalent to a traditional IM application, using Kopete code as much as possible, and integrating with other Pillars of KDE where appropriate.

2) Add advanced Telepathy features such as voice/video.

3) Build components and Convenience classes to enable real-time communication and collaboration features in any KDE SC app that wants them.

The Work

What we need to get done. This is divided into two sections:

• Phase 1 contains the tasks which *must* be completed in order for us to make a first preview release.
• Phase 2 contains other speculative major features that we will probably implement once Phase 1 is complete.

Phase 1

These are the essential tasks which must be completed before we can make a first release. Adding or removing tasks from this list requires a consensus on the kde-telepathy mailing list first. Click on a task title for further information about that task.

Status	Task	Developers	Source Code
RELEASED	Account Management GUI	George Goldberg <grundleborg googlemail com>	See here
RELEASED	Chat Window App/Lib	David Edmundson <kde davidedmundson co uk>	See here
RELEASED	Buddy List App	Marty Klapetek <martin.klapetek gmail com>	See here
RELEASED	Desktop Wide Tp::Approver	George Kiagiadakis <kiagiadakis.george gmail com>	See here
IN PROGRESS	Telepathy Integration Daemon	George Goldberg <grundleborg googlemail com> Dario Freddi <drf kde org> Help much appreciated	See here
RELEASED	Presence Plasmoid	Dario Freddi <drf kde org>	See here

Phase 2

This section contains features that will *probably* be implemented once the first preview release has been made.

Status	Task	Developers	Source Code
IN PROGRESS	Logger Application	Stefano Sanfilippo <stefano.k.sanfilippo gmail com>	Still in a scratch repo
IN PROGRESS	Call UI	George Kiagiadakis <kiagiadakis.george gmail com>	See here

Getting Involved

At this stage, the best way to get involved is to contact the existing team, either on IRC (#kde-telepathy channel on irc.freenode.net) or on our mailing list.

Workflow

If you want to work on a feature, clone the git repository on the server side and then clone your personal clone on your local machine. Make a new git branch and start working there. Try to keep commits small and meaningful. Once you are finished, push the branch on your server-side clone and ask someone of the team to review it. Once it is reviewed, you can merge it on the master repository (or ask someone else to merge it).

Events

• Telepathy sprint - September 2010
• Telepathy sprint - September 2011