Ayttm: Universal Instant Messaging Client

Ayttm-0.6.3 has been released, mainly to break the monotony of absolutely _no_ updates since the last few months. This release contains some bug fixes and one very important change. Here is a short summary:

• Yahoo support is now based on the libyahoo2 library. It always was, but earlier we had a copy of libyahoo2 in the source tree. Not anymore. The important thing that changes here is that you'll need the development libraries of libyahoo2 to be able to build ayttm now.
• Fixes to spell check code
• Some code clean up in the module loading section

You can always check the complete ChangeLog to find out the specifics of each of those changes.

Here is another release of ayttm with a bunch of improvements, especially to the UI code:

• Reworked chat window look and also under the hood. The code is much cleaner as a result
• Fixed some linker related bugs raised in Fedora and Debian bug trackers
• Clean up the chat notifications (Buddy arrive,, leave, etc.)
• IRC kick. Go kick your buddy now ;)
• expat security fixes (CVE-2009-3560 CVE-2009-3720)
• Yahoo Buzz
• Yahoo address book fixes
• Fixed multiple buffer overflows and crashes in MSN and Yahoo
• Enchat/hunspell support for spell check. This replaces aspell

Here is the complete Changelog of updates since the last release.

Ayttm now has a wiki! The wiki will be used for documenting various things about ayttm, from the application architecture to the user manual. The user manual is currently a bunch of unwieldy pages in the website. I'm planning to get all of that into the wiki to make things more manageable.

The primary motivation to do this is that I have to provide a link to the application architecture documentation for the Ayttm workout at FOSS.in. I have already written a first draft of the application architecture as well as an article on writing Service plugins, the latter being rewritten from $(topsrcdir)/doc/eb-service-writing-howto.txt.

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

Further updates to this workout proposal will come either as updates to this post or in the comments, so bookmark it or subscribe to our feed to keep track.