1. Instant Messenger Emoticons
    1. Implementation
    2. Download of pre-built Themes
      1. WebUni
        1. animated
        2. static
    3. Installation of Smiley Themes
      1. Adium
      2. Kopete
      3. Pidgin
        1. Linux
        2. Windows
      4. Psi
        1. Linux
        2. Windows
    4. Discussion

Instant Messenger Emoticons

Spending plenty of time at the internet community WebUni we began to use the smiley aliases used there within our instant messengers just imagining how they are looking. Recent instant messengers like Psi, Adium, Kopete or Pidgin however are capable of using user defined smiley themes so we started creating themes with the smileys of the community website. Growing to more and more messengers we discovered the possibility to create a generic smiley theme generator based on a templating engine and some meta files. To create this generator is now aim of this project.

Implementation

The smiley themes are generated with Perl Template Toolkit 2 which is called by a simple shell script (yes, you need a real operating system to run this). You can browse the files here or check it out from our subversion repository. Note that you don't get ready built smiley themes there, you would still need to install TT2 and build it by yourself!

Download of pre-built Themes

For the sake of friendlyness we offer some pre-built themes. O:-)

WebUni

animated

static

Installation of Smiley Themes

Adium

Follow the following screen shots: im-emoticons/adium!

Kopete

Kopete uses the smiley theme you configure globally in KDE. Other KDE applications like Choqok also use these smileys then, really cool, huh?!

Pidgin

There is a HowTo? for creating and installing Pidgin smiley themes in the developer pages at pidgin.im – if the automatic unpacking doesn't work, try the following manual steps.

Linux

  • copy the file smiley-theme-webuni_pidgin.tar.gz to /home/yourusername/.purple/smileys/
  • unpack with tar: 
    tar -xvzf smiley-theme-webuni_psi.tar.gz
  • you can delete smiley-theme-webuni_pidgin.tar.gz now
  • start Pidgin and call options dialog
  • choose smiley theme

http://tools.penguineering.com/im-emoticons/screenshots/pidgin/pidgin_smileys_01.png

Windows

to be done …

Psi

Linux

  • copy the file smiley-theme-webuni_psi.tar.gz to /home/yourusername/.psi/iconsets/emoticons
  • unpack with tar: 
    tar -xvzf smiley-theme-webuni_psi.tar.gz
  • you can delete smiley-theme-webuni_psi.tar.gz
  • start Psi and call options dialog
  • choose/select smiley theme and adjust order to your needs

http://tools.penguineering.com/im-emoticons/screenshots/psi/psi_smileys_01.png

Windows

to be done …

Discussion

See the thread on magdeburg.webuni.de!