Integrating AIM Call Out into KDE

Today I used Twinkle (an Open Source SIP Softphone) to add the ability to call phone numbers out of my KDE addressbook with AIM Call Out. The versions of software that I'm using:

• Debian Lenny
  
• KDE v3.5.9
• Kontact v1.2.9
• Twinkle v1.2

I followed our instructions to setup Twinkle to get the SIP calls working. Once I had that going, I did the following:

1. Start up Kontact.
2. Under the "Settings" menu, choose "Configure Kontact..."
3. In the left hand component menu, choose "Contacts -> General" settings.
   
4. There should be a section called "Script-Hooks". In the "Phone:" field type "twinkle --call %N".
5. Click "Ok" to save your settings.

Note: The AIM Call Out service expects E.164 compliant phone numbers. We do this because it is an international service and we'd be insane to try to guess what your dialing plan should be. A lot of the phone numbers in my address book are NOT E.164 compliant and I didn't really feel like going through and converting them all so instead I setup a conversion filter in Twinkle:

The expression here will work for 10 digit North American phone numbers. For a complete list of country calling codes, see the Wikipedia entry on the subject.