# The &kapp; Handbook

2009-03-27
&version;
Mike
K.
Bennett

    mkb137b@hotmail.com

Diederik
van der Boor

    vdboor@codingdomain.com

Valerio
Pilo

    valerio@kmess.org

Heimen
Stoffels

    cooleboy121HS@hotmail.com

Panagiotis
Papadopoulos

    pano_90@gmx.net

2002
Mike K. Bennett
2007
Diederik van der Boor
2009
Valerio Pilo

&kapp; is an alternative &Windows; Live Messenger chat client for &Linux;. It allows &Linux; users to chat with friends who use &Windows; Live Messenger on &Windows; or MSN Messenger on &MacOS;. The strength of &kapp; is its integration with the K Desktop Environment (&kde;), its focus on &Windows; Live Messenger specific features and an interface which is both clean and easy to use.

KDE
KMess
Chat
Windows Live
Live Messenger
MSN
Client
Messenger
Instant Messenger
IM
&FDLNotice;

## Introduction

&kapp; is an alternative Instant Messaging client for &Linux;.

Instant Messaging is a form of real-time communication, commonly involving hand-typed chat messages. This can be considered more akin to genuine conversation than the email's letter format. In contrast to email, the parties always know whether their peer is available to start an interactive chat conversation.

&kapp; is specifically designed to access the &Windows; Live Messenger Service, an Instant Messaging service developed by &Microsoft;. This allows &Linux; users to chat with friends and colleagues who use MSN Messenger in &Windows; or &MacOS; X. MSN Messenger has been renamed to &Windows; Live Messenger in February 2006. Its name is still commonly known and often shortened to MSN, or nowadays WLM, by its users.

The strengths of &kapp; are its integration with the K Desktop Environment (&kde;), the focus on &Windows; Live Messenger specific features and a clean and easy-to-use interface. Like many &Linux; and &kde; applications, &kapp; is free software. The licensing terms are the &GNU; General Public License.

Some feature highlights:

- Communicate with contacts who use other &Windows; Live Messenger client software.

- Rich, colorful chat styles.

- Multiple accounts are supported.

- Chat log browser to show old discussions.

- Chat logs styled as the original conversation.

- Fast file transfers including thumbnail previews for any file type.

- Automatic reconnection in case of connection failure.

- Chat windows can be used again after reconnecting.

- Non invasive and customizable notifications and warning messages.

- Notifications can be blocked when the status is set to Busy.

- Nudges can be blocked, winks can be hidden.

- Annoying custom emoticons can be blacklisted.

- Many options to customize the chats and the contacts list.

At the moment, &kapp; supports these WLM-specific features:

- Display pictures exchange.

- Fast file transfers.

- Chatting with offline and invisible contacts.

- Nudges.

- Custom emoticons.

- Winks.

- Ink (hand-written) messages.

- Exchange of Now Playing... information.

- Email notifications for Hotmail/Live Mail accounts.

- Messenger Plus! features: text formatting, tabbed chat windows.

## Using &kapp;

### Logging in

Because &kapp; is a &Windows; Live Messenger client, you need to have an account at the online &Windows; Live Service. If you already have an existing account - &eg; you have used &Windows; Live Messenger before - you can use this account for &kapp; too. Otherwise, you can create an account at the &Microsoft; Passport web site. After you created the account, you can log in to use &kapp;.

#### Creating an Account

To create a new account, you can either create a new free &Windows; Live Hotmail address, or register your own email address at register.passport.com . A link to this site is also found at the login screen of &kapp; After you have completed the registration process, you can use your email address to login.

You will also receive a confirmation email from the &Windows; Live Service. This email contains a link which you have to click on in order to confirm your account. Until you have confirmed your account, your account will be restricted: you will only be able to add very few contacts and you will not be able to change your own friendly name. You can ask the &Windows; Live Service to send you another confirmation email by clicking on the Request verification email link in the account settings page of &kapp;.

You can manage the accounts saved within &kapp; from the &kapp; settings dialog. To learn more about it, see .

#### Logging in

Enter the email address and the password of your account to connect. It is recommended to enable the Remember account option, as it saves your account preferences before you quit &kapp;. If you want &kapp; to store your password, you can also enable the Remember password checkbox. Use Connect to continue.

To ease the login process by only using the keyboard, you can press &Tab; to switch to the next field after you are done filling it, then press &Enter; to start connecting. If your account email is already memorized by &kapp; just choose it from the drop-down list. The display picture will reflect the last known picture for that account or the &kapp; logo if none was found. Clicking on the display picture will open the settings of the selected account, using the mouse wheel will switch between the saved accounts.

You should not enable the Remember account option, if you are using a public computer: this is because others may see your email address or even use your account without authorization. If you choose not to remember the account, it will disappear when you logout or exit &kapp;. Also any changes made to the settings of a guest account will be lost.

If the &kde; Wallet is enabled in your &kde; installation (and it is by default), you may see a confirmation dialog or a quick wizard you can use to protect your account passwords. This will only appear once, and the next times you will only be prompted for your wallet's password, to unlock the &kapp; passwords. However, if the &kde; Wallet is not available, &kapp; will store the unencrypted account passwords in the file `~/.kde4/share/config/kmessrc` (`~` is your home directory). This file is not accessible by other users of your system, so it is not seen as a security issue. If you do not wish to have your password saved anywhere at all, or if you are on a public computer, uncheck the Remember password checkbox provided in &kapp;'s startup screen.

The &kapp; startup screen
The &kapp; startup screen

After logging in, your contact list appears. This is described in the next section.

### Using the Contact List

The contact list gives you an organized overview of the buddies (the contacts) you can chat with. To view the contact list, you need to be logged in first. The following image gives an example of a typical contact list:

The main window and contact list
The main window and contact list

To start chatting with a contact, just click his or her name on the list. Please note that many of the actions and operations you can perform on the items of the contact list, can be performed directly by clicking the &RMB; on the contact. This will pop up the following context menu:

The context menu of a contact in the contact list
The context menu of a contact in the contact list

Hovering with the mouse over the name of a contact, brings up a tooltip with information about that contact.

#### Setting your Appearance

##### Changing your Status

There are three ways to change your current status when you are connected to the &Windows; Live Messenger Service. The first is to use the dropdown menu in the main &kapp; window. The second way is to change the status with Connect My Status from the main &kapp; window. The third is to click with the &RMB; on the &kapp; tray icon, then click My Status. You can select from the following different states:

- Online

- Away

- Away with Auto-Reply

- Idle

- Be Right Back

- Busy

- Out to Lunch

- On the Phone

- Invisible

The status context menu
The status context menu

The last item of the menu allows you to disconnect from the Live service.

&kapp; differentiates between two Away states:

- The standard Away status which is the one you may be familiar with from other Instant Messenging clients.

- When you set your status to Away with Auto-Reply, a window appears where you can type in an automatic away message. This message will be sent automatically to every person who starts a chat with you.

By default, &kapp; switches your status to Idle after 5 minutes of inactivity. This setting can be changed or disabled in the Account Status Options section of the Account Settings.

#### Starting Chat Conversations

##### Starting a Chat with a Contact

Click with the &LMB; on an available contact in the contact list, or choose Chat from its context menu, accessible by clicking with the &RMB; on the contact. The chat window will open and you can start chatting with the contact.

##### Starting a Chat with Multiple Participants

Open a chat with a contact as described in . In the opened chat window, go to Chat Invite.... A window will appear, showing all available contacts. On the left, you can click on the contacts you want to add to the chat. Then click the right arrow icon button. On the right you will then see the contacts who are going to be invited. To remove some from there, select them, and click the left arrow icon button. You can also invite contacts that are not on your contact list, by directly entering their email address in the field on the left and clicking the add button.

#### Managing Contacts

##### Adding a Contact

Use the menu Actions New Contact.... A dialog will appear, where you can enter the email address of the contact you wish to add. Optionally, you can also add the new contact directly to one or more groups, by enabling the checkboxes of the desired groups in the list. After clicking on OK, the contact will be added to your contact list.

##### Removing a Contact

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the contact you would like to remove. Choose Delete Contact from the context menu. A dialog will open, where you can select to either:

- Remove the contact but still allow him or her to see your status.

- Remove and block the contact, to disallow him or her from either talking to you, or even seeing your online status.

After clicking on OK, either option will cause the contact to disappear from your contact list.

##### Blocking a Contact

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the contact you would like to block. Choose Block Contact from the context menu. The contact will no longer be able to initiate a chat conversation with you or see your online status. You can still see that contact's online status and you can still initiate a chat if you want to.

##### Unblocking a Contact

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the contact you would like to unblock. Choose Unblock Contact from the context menu. The contact will be unblocked.

##### Copying a Contact to Another Group

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the contact you would like to copy to another group. Choose Copy to Group and then, from the popup menu which appears, choose the group where you would like to copy the contact to. The contact is then copied to the chosen group.

##### Moving a Contact to Another Group

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the contact you would like to move to another group. Choose Move to Group and then, from the popup menu which appears, choose the group where you would like to move the contact to. The contact is then moved to the chosen group.

##### Renaming Contacts

Contacts can be renamed from the properties dialog. This makes it possible, for example, to replace the long annoying name of a contact with a short descriptive name. For more details, see .

##### Removing a Contact from a Group

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the contact you would like to remove from a group. Choose Remove From Group. The contact is then removed from the group.

If the contact is not present in any of your groups, &kapp; will automatically place him or her in a special group called Individuals.

#### Managing Groups

##### Adding a Group

Use the menu Actions New Group.... A window appears, where you can enter a name for the new group. Confirm your choice by clicking OK. The new group will be added to your contact list.

##### Rename a Group

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the name of the group you would like to rename. Choose Rename Group from the context menu. You will now be asked for a new name for the group. After confirming the action by clicking OK, the group will be renamed.

##### Removing a Group

Make sure that the group you want to remove is empty and has no contacts in it. If the group is not empty, you will first need to remove all contacts from the group, before you can actually remove the group. On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the name of the group you would like to remove. Choose Remove Group from the context menu. You will need to confirm the action, by clicking on Remove.

#### Changing the Contact List Appearance

##### Sorting Contacts

Use the menu View Sort Contacts by. There are three different sorting modes available:

Group

  Your contacts will be each placed in the groups they belong to.

Online/Offline

  The contact list will only show the Online and the Offline groups, and your contacts will be shown in one or the other, depending if they are online or not.

Mixed

  This will make the contact list to display all available contacts in their respective groups, like with the Group. Unlike it however, all contacts who are currently offline will only appear in the Offline group.

##### Show Allowed Contacts

This option is available by using the menu option: View Show Allowed Contacts. When enabled, it adds an additional group to your contact list, named Allowed. It contains all contacts that you have allowed to see your online status and start chats with you, but that you did not add to your contact list. Contacts can only be removed entirely from the Allowed group if they no longer have you listed in their contact list.

##### Show Removed Contacts

This option is available by using the menu option: View Show Removed Contacts. When enabled, it adds an additional group to your contact list, named Removed. It contains all the known removed contacts, who are contacts that you removed from your contact list.

#### Other Actions in the Contact List Window

##### Changing your own Personal Message

&kapp; supports &Windows; Live Messengers Personal Message feature: under the displayed friendly name in the contact list window, you will see the text: <Enter your personal message here>. Click it, and you will be able to enter a personal message. To confirm your changes, press Enter or click somewhere else on the window. If you want to no longer display a personal message, just clean up the text field.

##### Send an Email to a Contact Using your Live Mail Account

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the name of the contact you would like to send a mail to. Choose Send Email from the context menu. &kapp; will open your Live Mail Account in your favorite web browser, direct at the Compose page.

This feature is also easily accessable while you chat with a contact. Click on the contact's picture in the Contacts Panel and then choose Send Email from the context menu. To read more about the Contacts Panel, see .

##### See the Live Profile of a Contact

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the name of the contact you would like to see the profile of. Choose View Profile from the context menu. &kapp; will open, in your favorite web browser, the profile page of the chosen contact. You can also do this while in chat with a contact. Click on the contact's picture in the Contacts Panel and then choose View Profile from the context menu. To read more about the Contacts Panel and how to open it, see .

##### Viewing your Personal Live Profile

Go to Connect Show My Profile. &kapp; will then open your personal Live Profile in your favorite web browser.

##### Open your Live Mail Inbox Using &kapp;

This option is only available if your email address has been created with Hotmail or &Windows; Live.

The contact list window displays a link to your Live Mail account. The link states how many unread email messages you have. Clicking on this information will open your Live Mail Inbox in your preferred web browser.

To enable or disable this option, see .

### Using the Chat Windows

The Chat window is the place where your conversations happen. You can chat with one or more contacts together in a single chat window: for more details, see and .

By default, &kapp; will display all your chats within a single window, each one within a tab: you can learn more about this behavior in .

The &kapp; chat window
The &kapp; chat window

#### Chatting

Once you have a chat window open, either opened by you or by a contact who has started a conversation with you, the chat can begin. Arrived messages are visible in the big upper area of the window, and you can type in your own messages in the smaller area on the bottom of the window.

When you are done writing a message, you can press &Enter; to instantly send it, or click the Send button at the bottom right of the message editing area.

To insert a new line in your message, press Shift+Enter or click the New line button at the bottom right of the message editing area.

On the right side of the window, you will see the Contacts Panel, present by default. To learn more about the panels, see .

Near the top, below the toolbar, you will find the Tab Bar, which lists a box for each chat currently active. New chats opened by your contacts will appear there. To learn more about the tabs, see .

You can define shortcuts for all the actions you can perform in chat. You can go to Settings Configure Shortcuts... to define them. Many actions already have default shortcuts, some of which are similar to those of Live Messenger. A couple handy shortcut worth mentioning are: &Esc;, which closes the chat window; Alt+Z, to send a nudge, and Ctrl+Up and its counterpart Ctrl+Down, which allow you to easily scroll through the past chat messages and read what has been written previously.

#### Emoticons

&kapp; comes with the default emoticons theme made by David Vignoni.

The default &kapp; Emoticons
The default &kapp; Emoticons

Below the message editing area you can find a button with a smilie. By clicking this button, the message editing area will change, displaying all the available emoticons from the emoticon theme which is currently selected. Clicking on one of the shown emoticons will return to the normal message editing area, inserting the clicked emoticon in your current message. Sending the message will then display the emoticon in the chat.

You can also enable a separate Panel to always keep your emoticons at hand. To learn more about the panels, see .

#### Custom Emoticons

&kapp; can send your own created emoticons to your friends, and receive theirs.

To use them click - below the message editing area - at the button with the purple smilie. The message editing area will change, displaying all the available custom emoticons. Clicking on one of the shown emoticons will return to the normal message editing area, inserting the clicked emoticon in your current message. Sending the message will then display the emoticon in the chat. Your contact will receive and see it shortly.

You can also enable a separate Panel to always keep your custom emoticons at hand. To learn more about the panels, see .

When you use &kapp; for the first time or create a new account, the list will be empty. But adding new ones is easy! You can do it in two ways:

- Save the emoticons you received from contacts

- Add emoticons by choosing images from your computer

When a contact you are chatting with sends you a custom emoticon, you can click on it to save it to your own custom emoticons. A dialog window will pop up:

The Add Custom Emoticon dialog
The Add Custom Emoticon dialog

You may also use this dialog to can change the text shortcut associated with the new emoticon. By clicking the Ok button, the new emoticon will instantly be available.

Alternatively, you can manage your emoticons from the Account Settings dialog. To learn more about the Account Settings, see .

#### File Transfers

&kapp; supports transferring files through MSN. To send a file to a contact, you first have to open a chat with him or her.

Then you can send a file by choosing from the menu Chat Send File. Choose the file you want to send to the contact. Confirm the action by clicking OK. Otherwise, you can click on the Send a File button, located on the chat toolbar.

But by far, the easiest method to send one or more files to your contacts is drag and drop. Drag some files from the desktop or a directory in &dolphin; or &konqueror;, and drop them at the chat messages view, or message editing area. The files will be sent immediately.

After your contact accepts the file transfer, the &kapp; file Transfer Window will appear and the file transfer will start.

Please note that Live Messenger does not allow to its users to accept more than five file transfers at once for each contact.

Additionally, that there could be problems if you are behind a router or a NAT. Currently it is required to manually open the TCP ports 6891-6900 in your firewall. The port range can be changed from the settings panel, see . If you're behind a NAT router, you also need to make sure these ports are also forwarded to your local computer.

#### Panels

The panels are movable and closeable areas of the chat window, where additional information and other useful things are displayed. Currently &kapp; provides the following panels:

- Contacts

- Emoticons

- Custom emoticons

The Emoticons and Custom emoticons panels can also be displayed as buttons below the message editing area.

Chat window with the contacts panel (on the right side)
Chat window with the contacts panel (on the right side)

The panels can be moved wherever you like: just click and hold the &LMB; on the panel title, then move them around: they will stick on the chat window borders. When a panel is placed on the top or bottom border, rather than the left or right side, its behavior will be different. For example, the contacts panel when at the top or bottom will only show the contact names, status and personal message of the chat participants.

If you do not like a panel, you can click on the little X button near the panel name, or you can do it from the menu: View Panels then choose the panel to hide.

##### Contacts Panel

The contacts panel provides you with information and functions associated with each contact who is participating to the chat. Information includes:

- Display picture

- Email address (by clicking on the display picture)

- Contact status

- Personal message

Click with the &LMB; or &RMB; on the display picture of a contact in the contacts panel, to bring up a context menu with even more operations:

A contact's context menu
A contact's context menu

The contacts panel has some additional features: when the person is writing a message, his or her display picture becomes brighter. If you would like to see your own display picture more than just those of your contacts, you can enable the account settings option Display your own display picture in the chat window. Clicking your display picture there will bring up the account settings. To learn more about how to enable this option, see .

Contacts panel adjusts its layout when it is placed at top or bottom of the chat window. For example, it will not display the pictures for contacts, nor the picture of your account.

##### Emoticons Panels

There are two emoticon panels: the emoticons panel and the custom emoticons panel. The only difference between them is that the first one shows the default emoticons (which are like the standard MSN emoticons but with the &kapp; style), and the second one shows the custom emoticons you currently have.

The emoticon panels also have a small preview area, which will show a bigger animated version of the emoticon you hover your mouse cursor on.

#### Nudges

&kapp; can send and receive nudges, just like &Windows; Live Messenger. They are a good way to require attention from your contacts, but may also annoy them.

To send a nudge, you can either click on the Nudge toolbar icon, or select Chat Send a Nudge!. Sending a nudge will cause your chat window to shake momentarily. Your contact will receive the nudge in the same way. His or her chat window will shake and they will also hear a sound as if they have received a message.

Unlike &Windows; Live Messenger, &kapp; does not limit the number of nudges you can send or receive every minute. Try not to abuse this, as it is easy to make someone angry just by using them a bit too much. If you do not like the shake effect nudges cause, you can disable this in the account settings; see .

#### Zooming

You may find that the text in your chat window is too small or too big. Use the menu items View Zoom In and View Zoom Out, to increase or decrease the font size displayed in the chats.

#### Save Chat Sessions

To save an active chat session to a file, you can click on Chat Save Chat... in the chat window menu. Choose the directory where the chat should be saved and name the file. Save the chat now by clicking OK. Also see .

### Using Chat History

If chat logging is enabled the Chat History dialog will display all of your saved chats with your contacts. You can select which contact's chat history to view and then you can choose to filter the saved chats. Filtering allows you to select a specific chat to view, or, you can view all chats that occurred between two dates.

To access the chat history dialog you can:

- Click with the &RMB; on a contact in the contact list and choose Show Chat History... , or,

- Choose Actions Show Chat History... from the contact list window.

Note: Chat logging is not enabled by default; see for information on enabling it.

The &kapp; chat history dialog
The &kapp; chat history dialog

### Exporting your Contact List

Occasionally it is helpful to export your contact list. &kapp; supports export of your contact list into either CSV or XML format.

Choose Actions Export Contact List... from the contact list window to open the Export dialog.

From this dialog you can choose which contacts you wish to export (the default is all contacts) as well as the pieces of data you wish to export. &kapp; allows to export three pieces of data: The contact handle, their friendly name, and their current personal message.

Finally, select which filetype to export to and choose Export....

The &kapp; export contact list dialog
The &kapp; export contact list dialog

## Configuring &kapp;

&kapp; can be customized as you wish. The settings of &kapp; are organized in the following groups:

- Global settings (&eg; which web browser to use).

- Personal settings for every account (&eg; your name, and picture).

- Settings for a specific contact (&eg; a setting a contact alias).

The account settings dialog should cover most of your needs to personalize your account. You can also personalize many details about your contacts with the contact settings, and change many application-wide settings, like the favorite browser &kapp; will use, from the Configure &kapp; dialog.

To learn more about the account settings, see . To learn more about the contact settings, see . To learn more about the configure &kapp; dialog, see .

### The Contact properties Dialog

On the contact list, click with the &RMB; on the contact you would like to customize. Choose Properties and the contact properties dialog will appear.

The Contact Settings dialog
The Contact Settings dialog

The first tab allows you at one glance to see some information about the contact. It also contains some useful options: by just checking or unchecking the group names within the list at the middle, you can move the contact around the available groups. You can change the display picture of the contact with one of your own. To do this, just click on the display picture of your contact. You will be asked to choose a picture file. The image you choose here will be used instead of the picture set by the contact.

Below, a checkbox allows you to enter a custom name for the contact, which will be used instead of the name used by the contact. You can also choose to disable notifications for a contact. This is useful, for example, if that person connects and disconnects from MSN very rapidly and you keep seeing notification popups about that contact. Uncheck the box Disable notifications for this contact. &kapp; also allows the user to choose a particular sound to be played when the contact comes online or goes offline.

The second tab, Display Pictures, contains a list of all display pictures the contact has used. By clicking on Clear Cache you can delete the display pictures. You can also steal a display picture from the contact, using it as your own, by clicking on Use As Display Picture.

The third tab, Notes, allows you to keep some annotations about the contact. You can also access these notes directly from the contacts panel of the chat window. To learn more about the contacts panel, see .

The fourth tab, Emoticons, allows you to restore previously hidden emoticons from that contact. Just select the entry you want to restore and click on Restore.

### The Settings Dialog

The settings dialog allows to customize your account settings and personalize your account. Settings are divided in pages, accessible with the icons on the left area. Each page represents a different aspect of your account.

You can open this dialog from your contact list window, via the menu: Actions Configure Account..., or from the tray icon, clicking with the &RMB; on the &kapp; tray icon, then clicking Configure Account....

#### Account Page

From this page you can manage the most important details of your MSN account.

Account Settings Dialog - The Account page
Account Settings Dialog - The Account page

The friendly name field contains the name that your contacts will see in their contact lists. You cannot change it if your account is not verified with Passport (see for more details). You also cannot change it unless you are currently connected with that account.

You can change the email address of your account, in case you have changed your MSN address. This makes sure youre preferences are not lost.

The password field is usually blank. If you wish that &kapp; remembers your password, you can enter it here and check the checkbox next to Remember password.

Your display picture can be easily changed by clicking on the Change... button. A menu with three options will appear:

Browse...

  Use this option to select an image from your computer. The picture will be automatically scaled to the mandatory size of 96x96 pixels.

Browse and Crop Picture...

  Use this option to select an image from your computer and crop it yourself. This allows you to select a certain part of an image and use it as your display picture. Drag a square on the image preview to specify which part you want to use. The selected part will be highlighted and the part about to be discarded will be darkened. When you have found which part of the image you want to use, click OK, and &kapp; will resize it and set is as your display picture automatically.

Set Previous Image...

  Use this option if you want to choose a display picture you previously already had used.

Below the button, the Do not use checkbox allows you to not use any display picture at all.

The Log in with this account automatically checkbox, when enabled, causes &kapp; to automatically connect to MSN with this account every time the application is started. Choosing an MSN status from the Login as dropdown list, will make &kapp; set that status everytime you login to the &Windows; Live Messenger service.

The second tab, Status Options, contains some status-related options. The Change status to Idle when inactive checkbox causes &kapp; to change your status from Online to Idle whenever you you do nothing for some time, which defaults to 5 minutes. You can change this period from the spin box below the checkbox.

The Disable notifications when your status is set to Busy checkbox will prevent all contact status and message notifications from disturbing you if your status is set to Busy.

#### Contact List Page

Account settings dialog - The contact list page
Account settings dialog - The contact list page

This page contains some options which affect the contact list window.

The Display a count of unread email checkbox will show a link to your Live Mail inbox, showing how many unread email you have. This however, will only be used if your email account was created with the Live service.

Live Messenger is able to show your contacts the music you are listening to. Unlike WLM, which only notifies them about what is playing in &Windows; Media Player, &kapp; will discover which media player you are using and automatically show your friends the details of the tracks you are listening to. Enable the Show contacts which song I am listening to checkbox to activate this feature. When you listen to music, &kapp; will show the track name in the upper part of your contact list. &kapp; supports a wide range of media players: all players supporting the MPRIS specification are automatically supported. The following list shows some of the currently supported players:

- amaroK 1.x

- &amarok; 2

- Audacious

- BMPx

- Dragon Player

- &juk;

- Kaffeine

- &kscd;

- Qmmp

- VLC Media Player

- XMMS2

Disabling the option Show background image removes the &kapp; logo, the hummingbird, from the contact list background.

The next two options affect how the friendly names of your contacts will be displayed. The Enable "Messenger Plus!" formatting checkbox will show the colors and text formatting used by your contacts in their friendly names and personal messages. By default, this option is turned off: all the formatting is by default stripped out from the names, to improve the readability of the contact list. The checkbox named Show the email address of contacts instead of their friendly name does just that, if you prefer seeing the email address of your contacts instead of their friendly name, you can enable it.

#### Emoticons Page

Account settings dialog - The emoticons page, emoticon themes tab
Account settings dialog - The emoticons page, emoticon themes tab

&kapp; supports many different emoticon themes and can use those of other instant messaging applications, such as &kopete;. New themes can be downloaded by visiting the www.kde-look.org site.

The default &kapp; emoticon theme is named &kapp;-New, which contains the emoticons created by David Vignoni.

Note that not every emoticon from an emoticon theme can be used by &kapp; currently. Instead of replacing all your emoticons and emoticon shortcuts, &kapp; uses the emoticon theme as overlay. All emoticon shortcuts remain identical and all emoticon images are replaced with the ones from the emoticon theme, which have the same shortcut. In other words, &kapp; looks if the emoticon theme has a new image for the :) shortcut, one for the :P shortcut, etc..

From the left tab, Emoticon Themes, you can choose which emoticon theme &kapp; will use to show the default MSN emoticon shortcuts, like :-) and :P.

Account settings dialog - The emoticons page, custom emoticons tab
Account settings dialog - The emoticons page, custom emoticons tab

Besides MSN emoticon themes, &kapp; can also manage custom emoticons. Each account has its own set of custom emoticons. From this account settings page, you are able to browse, rename, create or delete the custom emoticons of your accounts. See the to learn more about their usage.

Any item you see in the list is an emoticon, with the shortcut displayed below it. Select an item and click the Remove button to delete it. Click the Rename button, or directly click on an item, to change the shortcut for the selected emoticon.

To create a new custom emoticon from an image on your computer, click on the Add New... button. A dialog window will pop up:

The Add Custom Emoticon dialog
The Add Custom Emoticon dialog

Click the ... button to select an image from your computer. You can also directly type or paste from the clipboard the path of the file, in the field next to the ... button. If the image is valid, it will be displayed in the square on the top left corner of the dialog. Then choose a text shortcut to associate to the new emoticon. Finally, click the OK button to instantly add it to your custom emoticons theme.

To save your changes to the theme, be sure to confirm them by clicking the OK or the Apply buttons.

#### Chatting Page

This page customizes the appearance of your chat windows, and the formatting of chat messages.

##### Chat Style

Account Settings Dialog - The Chat page, Style tab
Account Settings Dialog - The Chat page, Style tab

The first tab of this page contains many options to customize how the chats look like. &kapp; allows you to choose between various styles for your chat windows. To learn more about the available chat styles, see .

You can choose the chat style between the available ones using the Chat style drop-down menu. If you want to try out new things, click the Get New Styles... button: you will be able to browse and download new chat styles in just a few seconds: just choose, click install, and your new styles will be available for you to try!

Just below the style selection option, a box shows how chats will look like. At the bottom, a the options make it possible to further customize the chat looks. With the Show emoticons checkbox you can choose whether to show any emoticon in chat, or not. The Show winks checkbox allows you to hide received winks, which may be annoying.

When the Group follow-up messages from the same contact checkbox is active, all messages sent by you or your contacts will be grouped together until another participant writes something. In many cases, this will save a lot of space and make the chat a lot more readable.

The Show timestamp checkbox controls if the time of arrival or sending of messages is displayed. If it is enabled, you will also be able to show the seconds or the date when the message was sent or received, instead of just the hours and minutes.

###### Chat Styles

&kapp; allows you to choose between various styles for your chat windows. The default theme is called 'Fresh', which displays the participants' pictures:

The Fresh chat style
The Fresh chat style

Another style is Classic. This theme comes into two flavors, default and compact. The second lets &kapp; display the messages in a more compact fashion than the first. Take a look at the image below to see the difference:

The Classic chat style
The Classic chat style
The Classic-compact style
The Classic-compact style

##### Chat Text

Account Settings Dialog - The Chatting page, Text tab
Account Settings Dialog - The Chatting page, Text tab

The second tab of the settings page, Text, allows to define how the text in chats will be shown.

To change how your own chat messages are formatted, use the controls below Your message font. The big button on the left allows you to change the used font and its attributes (like size, italics, bold) and will show a preview of your choice. Clicking the button on the right will change the font color.

Sometimes your contacts use fonts or colors that you might not like or that are difficult to read: activating the Force messages from your contacts to use this font, and setting up the font setting controls below it, will display all the messages incoming from your contacts in the font and color of your choice.

Use font effects in messages will enable font effects as often seen in IRC clients: Words surrounded by asterisks (&eg; *bold*) will be displayed with a bold font, those surrounded by forward slashes (&eg; /italics/) will be shown italicized, and those surrounded by underscores (&eg; _underline_) will be underlined.

The last checkbox, Enable "Messenger Plus! formatting, will enable Messenger Plus! formattings to the sent and received messages. By default, this option is turned off: all the formatting is by default stripped out from the messages, to increase the readability of the chat messages and friendly names shown.

##### Chat Behavior

Account Settings Dialog - The Chatting page, Behavior tab
Account Settings Dialog - The Chatting page, Behavior tab

The third and last tab contains some options important to define how the chat windows will behave and will look like.

To disable the graphical effects seen when receiving and sending nudges, you can disable the Shake the chat window when a nudge is received or sent checkbox.

If Display your own display picture in the chat window checkbox is enabled, your own display picture will be displayed in the contacts panel, along with those of the contacts in that chat. To learn more about the contacts panel, see .

The last option of this page controls how your chats will be grouped together in windows or tabs.

###### Tabbed Chats

Tabs are little labels at the top of your chat window, which allow you to keep many chats in the same window, as opposed to having one chat per window. Unlike &Windows; Live Messenger, which does not support this feature at all, &kapp; comes with tabbed chats enabled by default.

Each tab in the chat window has a little close button on its label, to close it. You can also do it by using the Ctrl W shortcut. Clicking the window's close button will pop up a dialog box asking if you want to close all the open tabs. Of course, it will not be shown if there only is one tab in the chat window.

If you have more than one tab in a chat window, you will be able to move them around by dragging and dropping them using the &MMB;.

These are the available chat grouping options:

Always

  All your chats are grouped together in one chat window, separated by tabs.

Never

  This option will mimic the &Windows; Live Messenger behavior of one window per chat. Tabs are never used.

For contacts in the same group

  If you choose this option, &kapp; will use tabs for contacts in the same group. For example, suppose you have the Friends and Coworkers groups. If you chat with two friends, you will see the two chats as tabs in the same window: but if a coworker contacts you, her chat will be shown in another window.

#### Chat Logging

Account Settings Dialog - The Chat Logging page
Account Settings Dialog - The Chat Logging page

&kapp; gives you the opportunity to automatically save all chats when they end (which means that a chat will be saved when you close its chat window or tab).

Enable the Enable chat logging checkbox to have &kapp; save all chats. You will be able to look them up later in the Actions menu of the contact list window, or through the right click context menu of a contact.

The chats logs are not readily available without having &kapp; open: if you want, you can have &kapp; save your chats also in a common format, to be able to access your chat logs even if &kapp; is not running. To do so, enable the Additionally save chats logs to file checkbox.

You can choose the format to save the additional logs in by using the File format used for saving drop-down list. Normally you want to go for the Web Pages (&HTML;) option, because &HTML; pages show all emoticons and colors you and your contacts used. Please note that &HTML; chat logs that are opened on another computer, will not contain any emoticons and display pictures. With the other option, Plain Text, the saved files will only contain basic information displayed in an IRC-like fashion.

You can also select how to separate and organize your additional chat log files: &kapp; will create nested directories named as the chat's date and time, based on which option you choose here. The choices are to organize by Year, by Year then Month, by Year, Month then Day or to Do not organize files at all.

The organizing directory will be created, accordingly to your choice, within the directory you can choose at the bottom. After applying the settings, &kapp; will start to automatically saving all chats.

### The &kapp; Settings Dialog

The &kapp; configuration dialog allows to customize the general application behavior. It has been divided in pages, accessible by the icons on the left area of the window.

You can open it from your Contact List window, via the menu: Actions Configure &kapp;..., or from the tray icon, clicking with the &RMB; on the &kapp; tray icon, then clicking Configure &kapp;....

#### Accounts Page

&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Accounts page
&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Accounts page

This page lists all the accounts known by &kapp;. All changes made in this page will be applied immediately, without you having to press the OK or the Apply buttons.

By selecting an account from the list, you can choose to open the Account Settings dialog for that account with the Edit button, or remove it with the Remove button. In the latter case, you will be asked if you are sure you want to delete the account.

Click on the Add New... button to create a new account: the Account Settings page will appear, to allow you to immediately change its details.

#### Notifications Page

&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Notifications page
&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Notifications page

From this page, you are able to configure how &kapp; notifies you about contacts who come online, new incoming messages, and also how it will show you informations and errors.

The list shows the various event types supported by &kapp;, along with the current status of each event. The event status is a list of icons representing the various actions that will be taken when that event will occur.

The following events are available:

- A contact has started a chat with you

- A contact has gone offline

- A contact has come online

- A contact has changed its MSN status

- You have received a new email

- You received a message from a contact

- A contact requires your attention

- Information on network and application status

For each event, you can choose many actions to perform:

Play a sound

  A sound will be played: there are default sounds played for most actions, but you can change them with your favorite ones. The little Play button allows you to preview the selected sound.

Show a message in a popup

  If this option is checked, a message will be shown within a passive notification. If you are using &kde; as your desktop, you will see a Plasma notification; otherwise, a notification box will appear near your &kapp; tray icon.

Log to a file

  The event will be noted into a file of your choice.

Mark taskbar entry

  The event will cause the corresponding window to be highlighted in your task bar.

Run command

  When the event occurs, a shell command of your choice will be executed.

#### Settings Page

This page contains some generic settings of the application.

##### Web Browser

&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Settings page, Web Browser tab
&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Settings page, Web Browser tab

Here you can define which web browser will be invoked by &kapp; when you open your webmail or click on a link in chat. &kapp; provides the option to use a custom web browser instead of the &kde; default one (which is &konqueror;, usually).

To use for example Firefox instead of the &kde; default browser, change the radiobutton from Use the &kde; default browser to Use an installed browser: and choose the one you want to use from the drop-down list.

Additionally, &kapp; allows you to run your own browser, if it is not present in the aforementioned list. Select the Specify a custom command radiobutton and enter the path or the name of the browser. To specify the &URL; that the browser should open, add %u to the parameters.

##### Email Client

&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Settings page, Email Client tab
&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Settings page, Email Client tab

Here you can define which email client will be invoked by &kapp; when you want to send mail on a non-Live account. If you are using a Live account, you can choose to open the Live Mail website instead of your email client, by enabling the Use Live Mail if the account supports it checkbox.

To use Thunderbird for example instead of the &kde; default email client, change the radiobutton from Use the &kde; default email client to Use an installed email client: and choose the one you want to use from the drop-down list.

Additionally, &kapp; allows you to run your own browser, if it is not present in the aforementioned list. Select the Specify a custom command radiobutton and enter the path or the name of the browser. To specify the &URL; that the browser should open, add %u to the parameters.

##### File Transfers

&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Settings page, File Transfers tab
&kapp; Settings Dialog - The Settings page, File Transfers tab

Here on the File Transfers tab, you can set a couple of important options.

When a contact sends you a file, you may want to always save it in a certain directory on your computer. Select the checkbox next to Save all received files in one directory: and specify the path to the directory you want all files to be saved in, by clicking the ....

You can also specify the ports you want to use for file transfers. Make sure these ports are also forwarded correctly by your router, if you have one. Check the settings of your router for this.

## Questions and Answers

&reporting.bugs;

Do I need a hotmail account to chat with &kapp;?

No, you can register any email address at the Passport site.

Can you add voice chat and webcam support to &kapp;?

Sure! We will add it for the next major release: version 2.1.

Why can't I play winks in &kapp;?

To play winks, you need to have a Flash-player and cabextract installed. These packages can be installed after &kapp; is installed.

Also verify whether you can play flash files in &konqueror;. If flash can be played in &konqueror;, it will work in &kapp;. Use the &konqueror; plugin settings to detect new plugins.

Finally, verify if they are enabled in your Account Settings. See .

Why do the emoticons just show up as white squares? or Why does &kapp; not have any images?

You installed &kapp; to the wrong directory. Basically, it should be configured to install to your &kde; 4 directory. This directory should be auto-detected, but you can also tell the configure script where to find it. For example: `./configure --prefix=/opt/kde4` To find out where KDE 4 is installed, you can run `kde4-config --prefix`.

What ports do I have to open in my firewall to get the file transfer working?

The default interval of ports is 6891-6900 TCP. You can specify which ports you want to use in the &kapp; Settings. See .

Why the contacts cannot see the size of my chat font?

Because neither the official client nor other clients support them. The font size information is not exchanged between clients, just the name and the formatting options.

Can I send you a theme I made, that uses &Microsoft;'s MSN emoticons, to be added to &kapp;?

We are sorry, but we cannot accept it. Despite the fact that other Live Messenger clients for &Linux; use them, we will not use them as well, because there are some copyright issues in doing so. This means that the MSN emoticons are protected from unauthorized usage, which includes us using them in &kapp;. That is one of the reasons we have our own complete emoticon theme, released under the open source GPL license, for use by other Live Messenger clients for &Linux; clients if they should start feeling the same way we do.

However, nothing stops you from distributing it yourself: for example, via the www.kde-look.org site!

How do I use &kapp; from SVN?

Please take a look at the Accessing SVN page of our project's web site.

How do I build RPM/DEB packages?

Please see .

Have you considered joining forces with &kopete;?

It has been considered and rejected. The two programs may have similar functionality in the MSN department, but they are built with radically different goals in mind. We have always felt that those multiple-protocol supporting IM programs suffer from the least-common-denominator problem. For example, if 4 protocols don't support different fonts and one does, then none will probably get font support; though they are getting better, lately. We however, focus on the MSN-specific features and the Messenger experience, making it very easy for people apt to Messenger to feel at home with &kapp;.

Why should I use &kapp; instead of Pidgin/&kopete;/aMSN?

Short answer: if you have a &kde; desktop and use only the &Windows; Live Messenger Service, &kapp; is made for you.

Some clients are written to support multiple protocols. &kopete; for example supports many. &kapp; on the other hand, tries to support only one and its developers are working at their best to support the MSN native features and optimizing the user interface for one protocol. &kapp; also stays true to &kde; standards for look and feel. There is a choice for everyone, you are free to use what you like!

What is the story behind the name of &kapp;?

There was already a KMsn, though that was later changed to KMerlin. Mess is a short form for Messenger and also to be a self-deprecating joke.

When I named it that, I didn't think anyone would actually end up using it. ;-) -- Mike K. Bennett

How do I change the size of the display pictures in the contact list?

From the contact list window, go to View Display Pictures Size and choose the size you would like.

How do I show my own display picture in the chat window?

You can set this by going to Account Settings Chatting Behaviour Display your own picture in the chat window.

## Credits and License

&kapp;

Copyrights:

- © 2002-2009 Mike K. Bennett mkb137b@hotmail.com
- © 2005-2009 Diederik van der Boor vdboor@codingdomain.com
- © 2007-2009 Valerio Pilo amroth@coldshock.net

The program's developers are:

- Mike K. Bennett mkb137b@hotmail.com
- Michael Curtis mdcurtis@users.sourceforge.net
- Diederik van der Boor vdboor@codingdomain.com
- Valerio Pilo amroth@coldshock.net
- Antonio Nastasi sifcenter@gmail.com
- Ruben Vandamme vandammeru@gmail.com
- Sjors Gielen sjors@kmess.com
- Adam Goossens fontknocker@gmail.com

For a more detailed analysis of the commits to the source code, consider visiting our &kapp; trac timeline, and the list of &kapp; contributors at ohloh.net

Code was taken from:

- KMerlin, which provided the original inspiration for this program.

- &kopete;, from which the old popup balloons and initial MSNP2P designs were taken; those were both ultimately replaced. The MSN Challenge handler from &kopete; is still used.

- KScreensaver, from which idle detection code was taken.

- BasKet, which has a nice close-to-tray icon screenshot feature and LikeBack to let users contact the developers easily.

- Amarok, which provided the inspiration for the custom crash handler implementation.

Special thanks to:

- Dane Harnett (Web design) dynamitedane@hotmail.com
- David Vignoni (The main and yellow/blue/violet emoticon sets) dvgn@libero.it
- Julien Joubin (Cartoon emoticons) jujubinche@netscape.net
- Christian Müller (Default sound theme) cmue81@gmx.de
- Michael Anderton (&kapp; icon in Oxygen style) mike.s.anderton@gmail.com

Translators:

- Panagiotis Papadopoulos (Translations Maintainer) pano_90@gmx.net
- Mohamed Aser (Arabic) mohasr@link.net
- Youssef Chahibi (More Arabic) chahibi@gmail.com
- Ma'moun Diraneyya (More Arabic) mamoun.diraneyya@gmail.com
- Mauricio Rother (Brazilian Portuguese) mauricio@digicomm.com.br
- Leonel Freire (More Brazilian Portuguese) leonelfreire@gmail.com
- Sergio Rafael Lemke (More Brazilian Portuguese) bedi.com@gmail.com
- Maurício Arozi Moraes (More Brazilian Portuguese)
- Jaume Cornadó (Catalan) jaumec@lleida.net
- Adrià Arrufat (More Catalan) swiftscythe@gmail.com
- Lin Haoxiang (Simplified Chinese) linhaoxiang@hotmail.com
- Liu Sizhuang (More Simplified Chinese) chinatslsz@hotmail.com
- Cheng Yang (More Simplified Chinese) yangzju@gmail.com
- Yen-chou Chen (Traditional Chinese) yenchou.mse90@nctu.edu.tw
- Tryneeds-Chinese Translation Platform (More Traditional Chinese) tryneeds@gmail.com
- Lars Sommer (Danish) admin@lasg.dk
- Pascal d'Hermilly (More Danish) pascal@tipisoft.dk
- Arend van Beelen Jr. (Dutch) arend@auton.nl
- Diederik van der Boor (More Dutch) vdboor@codingdomain.com
- Jaap Woldringh (More Dutch) jjh.woldringh@planet.nl
- Elve (More Dutch) elve@savage-elve.net
- Sander Pientka (More Dutch) cumulus0007@gmail.com
- Heimen Stoffels (More Dutch) djmusic121@gmail.com
- Jyri Toomessoo (Estonian) nuubik@hotmail.com
- Markus Vuori (Finnish) markus@vuoret.net
- Joonas Niilola (More Finnish) juippis@roskakori.org
- Jussi Timperi (More Finnish) jussi.timperi@gmail.com
- Antony Hussi (More Finnish) antony.hussi@tranciend.com
- Choplair (French) pachilor@yahoo.co.jp
- Vincent Fretin (More French) fretinvincent@hotmail.com
- Andrea Blankenstijn (More French) darkan9el@gmail.com
- Barthe Guillaume (More French) gu_barthe@yahoo.fr
- Scias (More French) shining.scias@gmail.com
- Jan Tönjes (German) jan.toenjes@web.de
- Panagiotis Papadopoulos (More German, Greek) pano_90@gmx.net
- Dimitrios Glentadakis (More Greek) dglent@gmail.com
- Páder Rezsõ (Hungarian) rezso@rezso.net
- Pauli Henrik (More Hungarian) henrik.pauli@drangolin.net
- David Vignoni (Italian) dvgn@libero.it
- Valerio Pilo (More Italian) amroth@coldshock.net
- Vincenzo Reale (More Italian) smart2128@baslug.org
- Andrea Decorte (More Italian) adecorte@gmail.com
- Daniel E. Moctezuma (Japanese) dmoctezuma@kmess.org
- Park Dong Cheon (Korean) pdc@kaist.ac.kr
- Øyvind Sæther (Norsk Bokmål) oyvind@sather.tk
- Zoran Milovanović (Serbian) provalisam@gmail.com
- Rastislav Krupanský (Slovak) ra100@atlas.sk
- Matjaž Kaše (Slovenian) matjaz.kase@g-kabel.si
- Johanna Gersch (Spanish)
- J.C.A. Javi (More Spanish) yovoya30ks@hotmail.com
- Alejandro Araiza Alvarado (More Spanish) mebrelith@gmail.com
- Jaume Corbí (More Spanish) jaume4@gmail.com
- Christian Kaiser (More Spanish) k39@users.sourceforge.net
- Juan Pablo González Tognarelli (More Spanish) jotapesan@gmail.com
- Alexis Daniel Medina Medina (More Spanish) alexismedina@gmail.com
- Manuel Ramírez (More Spanish) elpreto@kde.org.ar
- Mauricio Muñoz Lucero (More Spanish) real.mml@gmail.com
- Christian Lundgren (Swedish) zeflunk@gmail.com
- Mattias Newzella (More Swedish) newzella@gmail.com
- Rachan Hongpairote (Thai) rachanh@yahoo.com
- Gorkem Cetin (Turkish) gorkem@gelecek.com.tr
- Barbaros Ulutas (More Turkish) tebarul@yahoo.com
- Uğur Çetin (More Turkish) ugur.jnmbk@gmail.com

Note that some translators also made other contributions.

Contributors - which without them &kapp; wouldn't be where it is:

- Richard Conway (MSNP12 support, various patches) richardconway@users.sourceforgenet
- Guido Solinas (Pictures in contact list code, contact client info, chat font zoom) whereismwhite@gmail.com
- Pedro Ferreira (File transfer thumbnails) pedro.ferreira@fe.up.pt
- Liu Sizhuang (P4-Context field support) chinatslsz@hotmail.com
- Scott Morgan (Xinerama fixes) blumf@blumf.freeserve.co.uk
- Laurence Anderson (Original file receive patch) l.d.anderson@warwick.ac.uk
- Lin Haoxiang (file send bug fix, proxy connect code) linhaoxiang@hotmail.com
- Mohamed Aser (internationalization of file saving fix) mohasr@link.net
- Alexandre Peixoto Ferreira (Various internationalization fixes) alexandref@o2.net.br
- Choe Hwanjin (Some internationalization fixes) hjchoe@hancom.com
- Vincent Fretin (MSN6 emoticon definitions) fretinvincent@hotmail.com
- Damien Sandras (GnomeMeeting developer) dsandras@seconix.com
- Tobias Tönjes (Guy with a bag over his head)
- Heimen Stoffels (updated the User Manual for version 2.0) cooleboy121HS@hotmail.com
- Andrea Decorte (Group selection in 'contact added user' dialog) adecorte@gmail.com

Documentation copyrights:

- © 2002 Mike K. Bennett mkb137b@hotmail.com
- © 2007 Diederik van der Boor vdboor@codingdomain.com
- © 2007-2009 Valerio Pilo amroth@coldshock.net

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### Obtaining &kapp;

&kapp; is not a part of the official &kde; project.

It can be downloaded instead from http://www.kmess.org/. The download page also provides links to distributions which include &kapp; in their package repositories. You can usually install &kapp; directly with your package manager, without having to download it from the &kapp; website.

However, some distributions may not supply the latest version yet. In that case it is recommended to use the &kapp; Installer, found on top of the &kapp; download page.

### Requirements

In order to successfully use &kapp;, you need kdelibs-4 and qt-4 installed. At &ubuntu; and Debian, kdelibs-4 is named kdelibs-5. &kapp; should be able to run on any system where kdelibs can be installed. This includes &GNU;/&Linux;, &UNIX; variants, but also &Microsoft; &Windows; and &MacOS; X.

To play winks, you need to have the Adobe™ Flash Player and CabExtract installed. See .

To see a list of changes in newer versions, see:

- The &kapp; homepage: http://www.kmess.org/
- The changelog online: http://www.kmess.org/changes/
- The developer weblogs: http://www.kmess.org/blogs/

The ChangeLog and NEWS file of the release should also be installed in `/usr/share/doc/packages` somewhere.

### Installation

&kapp; can be installed through several channels:

- The &kapp; Installer package

- Official packages supplied by your own distribution/vendor

- Compiled from source code

Each method has its own advantages. We recommend to use the &kapp; Installer package from our download page, as it always contains the most recent version of &kapp;.

To download the &kapp; Installer package or corresponding source code package, visit: http://www.kmess.org/download/

#### Using the &kapp; Installer

The &kapp; Installer package works on every x86 &Linux; system. It needs a &kde; version of 4.1 or higher. Please follow the instructions to install the package. It is worth mentioning the installer has a user-friendly look.

#### Installing from Source Code

Installation from source code is more difficult, as it may require some troubleshooting during the installation process. This is only needed when a binary package is not available, or doesn't support the system you use. All binary packages at the download page are also created from the source package.

##### System Preparation

Before a &Linux; system is able to install from source, a few additional packages need to be installed:

- make

- gcc-c++

- autoconf

- automake

- build-essential

- gettext

In many &Linux; distributions, many packages have a separate dev or devel package too. Use your package-manager to find the following packages, and install them:

- qt-devel (can also be called qt4-devel)

- kdelibs-devel (can also be called kdelibs4-devel, kdelibs5-devel on Debian/&ubuntu;)

- x-devel (can also be called xfree-devel/xorg-x11-devel/xorg-devel)

- libstdc++-devel

You might need some creativity here, the package names differ slightly between &Linux; distributions.

It is very likely that you will be prompted to install the dependencies of these packages. If this doesn't happen, make sure you have the following packages installed as well:

- fontconfig-devel

- freetype2-devel

- libjpeg-devel

- libpng-devel

- zlib-devel

##### Extract the Source package

After you downloaded the source package, extract it with:

    $ tar zxvf kmess-&tarversion;.tar.gz

Then navigate to the newly created directory:

    $ cd kmess-&tarversion;/

##### Starting the Compilation

This step translates the &kapp; source code to an executable program. Run the following commands to compile &kapp;:

    $ ./configure
              $ make

The first command verifies your system. It stops if a required package cannot be found. This often happens when you forgot to install some of the accompanied devel packages.

The second command builds the application. This step can take from 2 up to 5 or even 10 minutes, depending on your system. When this command completes you will have a runnable program at:

    $ ./kmess/kmess

##### Installing

It is finally possible to install! Run the following command. It will ask for your root password first.

    $ su -c 'make install'

On Debian and Debian based systems like &ubuntu; (and all of its derivates, like &kubuntu;) use the following command:

    $ sudo make install

Alternatively, you can use Checkinstall to install the application instead. This makes it easier to uninstall &kapp; later. Using checkinstall, the installation becomes:

    $ su -c 'checkinstall'

Or on Debian based systems:

    $ sudo checkinstall

#### Building a &kapp; Package

The rpmbuild command is suitable for distibutions using the RPM package format. This includes distributions like SuSE, Mandriva, Redhat and Fedora. A &kapp; RPM package can be created with the command:

    $ rpmbuild -tb kmess-&tarversion;.tar.gz

The rpmbuild command runs a full source-based installation, but builds a package instead of installing &kapp;. The final package can be found in a subdirectory of `/usr/src/packages` or `/usr/src/rpm`. You can use that package to install &kapp;.

If you have a clean, newly-installed system, without any &kde; upgrades, you can share the package with others. Make sure users can always download the source package too, as required by the GPL license. However, we recommend to use our &kapp; Installer whenever possible.

Tip: when you install the autopackage-devel tools before building the RPM package, the rpm spec script uses apbuild to create a cleaner binary.

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