Ayttm: Universal Instant Messaging Client

This release brings in a number of bug fixes along with a few features:

• Fix a number of MSN related crashes
• Personal status messages support for MSN
• Fix a Yahoo authentication bug
• Yahoo File Transfer
• MSN Invisible login preference finally works again
• Fix the "Check new release" button
• Fix date/time bugs in the tool tips
• Notifications in chat windows
• Autotranslate is fixed. Uses Google Translate now
• SMTP and Livejournal should be working again

See the complete Changelog or download the source from the files section.

FOSS.IN workouts are a good way to get a lot of real work done. The FOSS.IN/2009 Call for Participation is out and we're putting in a workout proposal this year too.

We did a submission last year but it was not accepted. Philip then arranged for a BoF at the event, where he helped to build ayttm on a Ubuntu box and I tried getting async DNS lookups going. Since then, we have managed to take care of a lot of last years wish list with 0.6.0. There are still some remaining and based on that and a few new ones, here's a list of TODOs for the ayttm workout for FOSS.IN/2009.

1. Revive the Windows port. This should be a little easier than before due the fact that a lot of networking code has now been modularized into a single library
2. MSN File Transfer
3. A nice clean smiley set in MNG/PNG format
4. Icons
5. Update translations
6. Implement name completion in chat rooms
7. Package ayttm for $MY_FAVOURITE_DISTRO
8. Port ayttm to $MY_FAVOURITE_OS

Prerequisites

0. Register as a delegate at FOSS.IN/2009

Other than that, the most important prerequisite to participating in this session is to have a prior idea of what you're planning to do. A prior study of the code base would only make things easier. Other prerequisites vary for the tasks and can be mapped by serial number:

1. Knowledge of build tools for Windows. Programming: C/C++, gtk2, glib2
2. C/C++, wireshark dump/tcpdump analysis
3. An eye for design. Knowledge of FOSS design tools (gimp, inkscape, etc.)
4. An eye for design. Knowledge of FOSS design tools (gimp, inkscape, etc.)
5. Should know how to write/update translations
6. C/C++, gtk2, glib2
7. Packaging guidlines for $MY_FAVOURITE_DISTRO. Basic knowledge of building autotools based applications
8. Knowledge of build tool chain for $MY_FAVOURITE_OS

Ayttm has moved to git now! You can browse the source code online or clone the repository as shown in the developer instructions.

This is a heads-up for those who are building ayttm 0.6.0 with the --enable-posix-dlopen to avoid using libtool unnecessarily. There was a bug due to which the msn module would not load. I have fixed that in the latest cvs update (0.6.0-1). Please pull in that fix if you need support for msn and are getting a module load failure message on ayttm start up.

For those who don't really mind libtool and have not used the --enable-posix-dlopen option, this will have no effect on you.

This is by far the biggest release in that last two years because of the sheer number of components that have been touched. Here's an overview of the things that have changed in this release:

• MSN Protocol updated to MSNP15
• Yahoo protocol updated to YMSG16
• Fixes to jabber. We now have service discovery and GMail notifications if you want it. The option is in your account preferences
• Spellcheck is now provided by aspell by default. Pspell is long dead and we have finally let go
• Overhaul of the networking code. We now have a transparent connection layer which takes care of SSL, proxies, etc. for the protocols. What's more, it's multi-threaded, and hence lives life on the edge. The good thing is that the interface will no longer hang when you're looking up a host name or connecting to your proxy.
• Improvements in support of character encodings other than UTF-8. Ayttm now tries to convert incoming data into the correct encoding than crashing or whining. Look up the "encodings" option in your ~/.ayttm/prefs if you want to tweak its behaviour
• Ayttm now uses stock icons wherever possible. This has resulted in a fair decrease in binary size (do I see Barry Kauler smiling? ;) ) and also makes the interface a little prettier.
• Various fixes to the status window and chat window UI
• Removed deprecated AIM-TOC, ICQ-TOC and ICQ modules from the package. You can still get them out of CVS, but I'll be removing them from there too pretty soon.

Here's the full Changelog for a full list of things that changed during this release.

Some features will be seen as missing, especially in the MSN protocol. The reason for this is that the MSN protocol module has been written from scratch now and hence a number of features such as File Transfer, netmeeting integration, etc. are missing. Those things will come in when they're ready.

The livejournal and smtp plugins have not yet been updated to work with the new networking subsystem and will thus fail to work and crash. They will be addressed in the next update.