Conversations: IM
After you have started Gaim and signed on as discussed in the Section called Getting Started With Gaim, you can send and receive instant messages.
Starting a Conversation
To send an instant message to one of the contacts in your buddy list, double-click on the corresponding entry in the buddy list, or select the entry and click on IM button at the bottom of Buddy List window.
To send an instant message to someone not in your buddy list, make sure that no entries are selected in the buddy list, and click on IM button. You can also choose Buddies->New Instant Message, or use keyboard shortcut Ctrl-I.
Sending an IM opens a conversation window which will be used to show the conversation. This window is described below. You can have many open conversations; depending on the settings set in the Preferences dialog, these conversations will be shown in separate windows or in different tabs within the same window. See the Section called Tabs and Windows.
Receiving an IM
When someone starts a new conversation with you by sending you an IM, a new conversation window or tab is created. Gaim will also play a sound to alert you to the new IM (see the Section called Sounds).
Gaim allows you to block some of the incoming IM messages, allowing you to "blacklist" a certain user so that all messages from him will be blocked, or by allowing incoming messages only from certain users. See the Section called Blocking Unwanted Messages for details.
Conversation Window
shows a typical conversation window. This window contains the following elements:
- Message Window
This window shows the previous conversation, both your messages and your buddy's messages. It uses different colors for messages as follows. FIXME You can scroll thsi window up and down using the scrollbar or keyboard shortcuts Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown. You can also search it by using keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F and clear it using Ctrl-L
You can change the format used by the message window using the Preferences dialog. In addition, you can use keyboard shortcut F2 to show/hide the timestamp shown next to the messages. FIXME: doesn't seem to work in 0.75
- Input Window
This is where you type your messages. You can start typing at any time, without waiting for your buddy's reply. You can edit the message while typing, by using the the arrow keys and Backspace key. After you finished typing, click on Send button in the bottom right corner of the window or use one of keyboard shortcuts to send it. By default, both Enter and Ctrl-Enter send mesage; you can disable this in Preferences dialog.
- Formatting Toolbar
This toolbar, placed between the message window and the input window, can be used to change font size, face, and color, use bold or italic for part of the message, and so on. See the Section called Fonts, Smileys, and Spellchecking below.
- Buddy Icon
This is your buddy's icon, also sometimes called"avatar", i.e. a custom image he has chosen for himself. It is only shown if the protocal supports buddy icons and if your buddy has chosen an icon for himself. Currentley, only AIM/ICQ protocol supports buddy icons. (FIXME: is this correct??)
- Actions Toolbar
This toolbar, placed at the bottom of the conversation window, contains buttons for the following actions:
Warn FIXME
Block. Block this user (see the Section called Blocking Unwanted Messages). FIXME: does it only work if you use "block the users below" in privacy settings? What if I use some other setting?
Add/Remove. Add or remove this user from your buddy list.
Info. Show information about this user. Depending on the protocol, this information may include user's IP address, time online, user's real name, and so on.
- Typing Notification Icon
This icon shows that your correspondent is typing a message to you. This only works if his IM client is set up to inform you when he starts typing; in Gaim this can be configured in Conversations tab of the Preferences dialog.
Fonts, Smileys, and Spellchecking
You can add some formatting to your messages, for example, setting some words in bold font, or in different color. To do it, click the corresponding button on the formatting toolbar. Gaim uses the same buttons as most word-processors, so the buttons should be familiar. If you can not recognize one of the buttons, move the mouse cursor to it and leave it there for several seconds to see the tooltip. You can also use keyboard shortcuts described in the Section called Keyboard Shortcuts.
Each of these buttons will create a pair of HTML tags; e.g., Bold button will insert in your message tags <B> </B>. The text to be made bold should be entered between these tags.
You can also insert an image (residing on your computer) or a link to a web location into your message.
Finally, the rightmost button on the formatting toolbar allows
you to insert a "smiley" (also called
an "emoticon"), i.e. a small icon used
to show one's emotions, such as this one 
.
Experienced
users can also insert smileys by typing the corresponding key
combination, or by using keyboard shortcut as described in
the Section called Keyboard Shortcuts. The most commonly used smileys are
:) for
and :( for
.
You can also choose a different collection of images to be used for smileys ("smiley theme"). This is described in the Section called Interface section of the Preferences dialog.
Sounds
By default, many events in Gaim are accompanied by sounds. For example, a special sound is played whenever you receive an instant message. You can configure the sounds Gaim uses, or disable sounds completely, in Preferences dialog.
Tabs and Windows
You can have several active conversations at the same time. Depending on the settings set in Preferences dialog, these conversations will open in different tabs in the same conversation window (default) or in different conversations windows.
To switch between conversations, click on the corresponding tab. To rearrange tabs, drag the tab with the mouse. You can also convert a tab to a separate window by dragging it away, or convert a separate window to a tab by dragging the window title inside another conversation window.
Gaim will change the tab color to show you the status of this conversation:
Table 1. Tab colors used by Gaim.
| Color | Conversation status |
|---|---|
| Red | There is a new message in this conversation |
| Green | Your correspondent is typing his message |
| Yellow | Your correspondent started typing his message and then stopped |
| Gray | Your correspondent has signed off. In chat conversations, it means that someone has joined or left the chat. |
Logging
Gaim allows logging, i.e. recording all or parts of the conversations. These records (logs) can later be saved as files on your computer.
To start recording a conversation, select Options->Enable logging in the Conversation window. You can stop recording at any time by unselecting this option, and then restart recording by selecting this option again.
To save the conversation log to a file, select File->Save as. If you quit Gaim without saving logs to a file, these logs are lost and can not be retrieved later. FIXME: is this correct??
You can set the logging settings (format for log files and whether logging should be on by default) using the Preferences dialog.
Transferring Files
Most IM protocols support file transfer. However, Gaim support for this is currenlty very limited. The developers are working on adding file transfer support to Gaim. FIXME
Ending a Conversation
To end a conversation, select Conversation->Close (Ctrl-W), or click on the Close button (which looks like a small "x") on the corresponding tab.
You can also temporarily suspend a conversation without ending it by setting your status to "away"; see the Section called Going Away.