Introduction
============

pidgin-sipe is a third-party plugin for the Pidgin multi-protocol instant
messenger. It implements the extended version of SIP/SIMPLE used by various
products:

    * Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS 2007/2007 R2 and newer)
    * Microsoft Live Communications Server (LCS 2003/2005)
    * Reuters Messaging

With this plugin you should be able to replace your Microsoft Office
Communicator client with Pidgin.


Features
========

The plugin has support for

    * Instant Messaging (IM)
    * Multiparty chat
    * Enhanced presence
    * Calendar integration with Exchange 2007/2010
    * Contact details information - company, phones, web site, etc.
    * Contact search
    * Encrypted file transfer
    * Call initiation through PBX
    * Kerberos and NTLMv2 authentication, TLS support
    * Translated to many languages


Advantages over Office Communicator products
============================================

    * Available on broader range of platforms: Linux, *BSD, Maemo, OSX,
      commercial UNIX, Windows.
    * Ability to simultaneously connect to several Office Communicator 
      accounts in addition to public IM network accounts like MSN, AOL,
      Yahoo. For example one account is in vendor company and another is 
      in client company.
    * Keeps history of communications in environments without Outlook. For
      example in companies where Lotus Notes is deployed as a default
      groupware client instead of Outlook.
    * Lotus Notes/Domino calendar integration. Unique to SIPE.
    * Open development model, open source product. License is GPLv2+


Support
=======

The Pidgin project does not support third-party plugins! If you have problems
with this plugin then please check out the support forums:

    http://sf.net/projects/sipe/forums/

Bugs should be reported here:

    https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=949931&group_id=194563


Localization
============

SIPE has already been localized for several languages. You can help to
translate SIPE to your native language at Transifex:

    http://transifex.net/projects/p/pidgin-sipe/c/mob-branch/

The service offers a convenient web editor and automatic submission to the
repository.


Installing from a distribution repository
=========================================

Many Open Source OS distributions have a ready-made package "pidgin-sipe".
Before trying to compile it from the source code yourself, you should try
to install this package with the standard installation method provided by
your OS.


Do It Yourself I: compiling against "pidgin" package
====================================================

If you already have installed the "pidgin" package from your distribution
repository and want compile pidgin-sipe from source code yourself, then you
need to install the necessary headers first. Depending on your distribution
you'll need to install one of the following packages

	libpurple-dev
	libpurple-devel

For the compilation you'll need to install a C compiler and some of the
following packages

	libtool
	intltool
	libglib2.0-dev
	gettext-devel

Now you should be able to compile the source code with

	./configure --prefix=/usr
	make

If you get errors then you are missing some required package. After
successful compilation you can install pidgin-sipe with:

	su -c "make install"

If you get errors from configure or libtool about version conflicts then
you need to regenerate the autoconf files. You'll need these additional
packages

	autoconf
	automake

Now you should be able to regenerate the files with

	autoreconf --verbose --install --force

After that go back to the configure step above.


Do It Yourself II: compiling against self-compiled pidgin
=========================================================

If you have compiled pidgin from source code yourself then you'll have to
specify the correct installation path in configure. Usually pidgin is
installed in /usr/local so the following command should work

	./configure --prefix=/usr/local

The rest of the steps are the same as in the previous section.