Gaim 2.0.0beta1 Released

BerkeleyDude writes "Gaim 2.0.0beta1 has been released! Here is the changelog. New features include account status, away messages, etc, UPnP and NAT traversal support, new UI for buddylist, chat windows and preferences."

Darwinports update for gaim?

[ubiquitin]

It looks like the version of gaim in Darwinports [darwinports.com] is still 1.5. Will be interesting to see how fast this gets updated. ;) Didn't know that the Mac version of gaim has a variant with support for MSN in it.

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[Tiberius_Fel]

For GAIM functionality in OS X you can try Adium X [adiumx.com] It doesn't do IRC (by design choice), but the functionality for a lot of protocols is there.

(Also, IIRC, Adium X does use libgaim.)

Been running this all night.

[Tezkah]

I have been running this since last night and I must say, it is a nice release.

Two things I have noticed that impress me the most:

1) They finally fixed tab chatted, so if someone on your MSN list decides they want a 20 character display name, their tab wont take up 20 spaces on your chat window. Instead it truncates it and evenly spaces the tabs.

2) When you type/recieve a message you see it scroll in from the bottom of the message window. Really neat effect when you are typing, as it looks like it zooms from the text input field into the conversation window. Nothing major, but neat.

All in all, its a pretty good release.

That's a _feature_?

[Anonymous Coward]

* Added support for sending (with the /nudge command) and receiving

What possible use could something like that have other than to piss people off?

Re:and what about the passwords?

[Monkelectric]

To me, it seems like their stance on not encrypting passwords is a backwards. Having a non-encrypted passwords policy does not make sense to me, as it leaves things wide open.

Encrypting the passwords would mean the key would have to be stored in the program. The key could be retrieved from the program. This is *EXACTLY* how the DVD encryption was broken. It didnt work there, and its not gonna work here.

Re:and what about the passwords?

[wfberg]

Actually, if you read the page you're linking to, you should really find it makes perfect sense. Either you store the password in such a way that you need user interaction to retrieve it, or you use some sort of obscurity approach which is worse than nothing. As it is, gaim stores it in plain text, yes, but there's nothing to keep you from either not storing the password OR using file-system or file based encryption - which is actually perfectly feasible. If you're using windows XP for example, just right-click the accounts.xml, properties, advanced, encrypt. (The encryption key is linked to your XP login password)

On the other hand, yes, some sort of OS specific hooks to make this easier would be sensible. For example, using Mac OS's "keychain", or Windows XP's "secure storage".

Still, even using these built-in encrypted storages only protect against a very very short list of threats.

Now, if you just stored accounts.xml on a hard-ware level encrypted harddrive that needs a smart-card and a passphrase to work, you'd be getting somewhere..

Re:away messages

[slavemowgli]

The ability to set away messages is not new - not at all. I don't know what the submitter was smoking, but maybe he didn't understand that part of the changelog that says that the code dealing with away messages (as well as other parts) has been completely rewritten.

What's new!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the changelog [sourceforge.net].

Posted anony to avoid karma whoring.

Re:No support for video camera

[slavemowgli]

gaim-vv [sourceforge.net] is being merged back into the trunk, so at some point, 2.x should have video support as well.

For WIndows users

[The Hobo]

A couple things, if you can't find where to get the windows version (the windows port page hasn't been updated yet) it's here (with GTK) [sourceforge.net]or here (without GTK) [sourceforge.net]

Second, if you want bigger text for everything since the default is fairly small, make sure you install No Theme (or anything BUT the WIMP theme) and then goto your C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\etc\gtk-2.0 folder and edit the gtkrc file with notepad or something and change the one line from sans 8 to say, sans 10

There's a few more things I like to do to mine but it's all personal, I thought I'd throw out those two things though.

Re:encryption

[davie]

Gaim offers two ways to conduct secure conversations over AIM: the gaim-encryption plugin and the OTR plugin.

In Case of Slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Gaim: The Pimpin' Penguin IM Client that's good for the soul!

version 2.0.0:
Status System:
* The code dealing with buddy and account status, away messages,
away states, online/offline, etc has been completely rewritten.
Huge thanks to Christian Hammond, Dave West, Daniel Atallah and
Sadrul Habib Chowdhury.
* Your status can now be set from inside the buddy list using the
selector at the bottom of the window.
* To see messages when a buddy signs on or off, goes away, or
becomes idle, load the "Buddy State Notification" plugin

Buddy List:
* Buddy icons are now shown in tooltips (Felipe Contreras)
* Tooltips now contain additional information about a "Person" that
contains multiple online buddies
* Added a "Last Seen" field to buddy tooltips (Richard Laager)
* Contacts will auto-expand when buddies are dragged around
* If Gaim is exited with the buddy list hidden in the docklet, it
will remain hidden when Gaim is started again (Scott Shedden)
* Improved buddy list searching with CTRL+F

Conversations and Chats:
* Messages from buddies in the same "Person" will automatically
use the same conversation window.
* The "Send As" menu has been replaced with a more appropriate
"Send To" menu based on "Persons" on your buddy list
* Message formatting persists between messages (Igor Belyi)
* Full message background colors are now supported
* Smooth scrolling when receiving a new message
* Screenname colors in chats now chosen intelligently from GNOME
color palette
* Conversation buffer scrollback limited to avoid large memory
usage in active conversations
* Control-Shift-Tab will reverse cycle through the conversation tabs
(James Vega)
* Many problems related to having an IM conversation and a chat open
with the same name are fixed (Andrew Hart)
* Warning dialog when closing a window with unread IM messages
* In chats right-click on names in the conversation window to
IM/Send File/Get info/ignore the user
* Added tab management options to the tab right-click menu (Sadrul Habib
Chowdhury)
* Brand new message queueing system (Casey Harkins)

Sounds:
* Beautiful new default sounds (Brad Turcotte)
* Use libao for playing sounds via NAS instead of accessing NAS directly

Log Viewer:
* Log viewer aggregates logs from the same Contact (Richard Laager)
* When opening the log viewer, show the most recent log by default
(Peter M

Re:and what about the passwords?

[lengau]

How about what Kopete does? encrypt the password with a key that the user enters (another password, essentially). Doesn't that make more sense anyway, since the user has the ability to store passwords like that?

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[porkThreeWays]

Use the idle maker plugin. Sure, it's a little more hassle, but it's better than nothing.

Just an FYI - Kopete supports this

[brunes69]

In case you can't wait.

http://kopete.kde.org [kde.org]

Re:Darwinports update for gaim?

[dcclark]

You are correct. Adium X is basically gaim with a pretty GUI.

No. Adium X uses libgaim, which is the protocol-handling code from Gaim, and that is it. The majority of the app -- all of the interface and logic that doesn't explicitly talk to servers -- is original work. Even some of the protocol-handling code isn't libgaim -- for example, Bonjour (i.e. Rendevouz) support. If you try it, you'll find some significant feature differences from Gaim as well.

Re:Binary Packages

[ocelotbob]

Dude, there's this thing called multitasking. Download the client, check back in a bit. Jump to the console, run:

tar xfz gaim-x.x.x.tar.gz && cd gaim-x.x.x && ./configure && make && make install

Simple, doesn't take all of your time. Besides, they don't compile for anything else because it builds for a lot of different gtk/gnome versions. Easier to let the knowledgable people build it themselves, and let the uninitiated wait for their distro makers to include it - cuts down on people complaining because of ancient library versions, etc.

Re:Binary Packages

[nwbvt]

Each Linux distribution has its own form of package management, thus gaim can't exactly offer ready made packages for each distribution. Most distributions have plenty of people out there building these packages, so you should be fine.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[junk]

It's not that you can't hide your idle time, it's that it doesn't allow you to choose what it uses to report idle time. Instead of giving you the report-idle-time-base-on options, it just uses your keyboard/mouse to determine how idle this you are. It used to also allow the option of reporting idle time based on gaim usage only (you could work on your computer all you want and it would consider you idle until you typed into a gaim chat window). If you don't want people to know whether your idle or ignoring them (don't debate it, you know you all use it to ignore people) then don't report your idle time at all. Or use idle maker like that one guy suggested...

Google Talk?

[Jsutton1027w]

I just downloaded and compiled the beta, but I was a little disappointed. Wasn't this version was supposed to have some support for Google Talk? At least, that's the impression I got from this post [sourceforge.net].

Re:Binary Packages

[Jsutton1027w]

Some binary RPMs just showed up on the download page [sourceforge.net]. They weren't there last night when the beta first became available. Looks like they have them for Redhat9 through Fedora4. Sadly, they don't have any Debs up there for Debian/Ubuntu...

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[EnronHaliburton2004]

There are many times when I am working, but not at my keyboard mouse. Perhaps I am in the server room. Perhaps I am at my desk reading or writing notes (on paper!!!).

As fucked as it seems, many people seem to think that if my status is "Idle" I am not working. That's why I turn it off.

I use an Away message, but Gaim doesn't always send your Away message when people write to you on the AIM protocol. So they write, get no response, and think you're goofing off.

When I move to Gaim 2, I'll probably check out one of the plugins.

Screenshots of Gaim 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anyone is interested, here are some screenshots for GAIM 2.0.

http://process-of-elimination.net/wiki/Gaim_CVS/2. 0_Preview_with_Screenshots [process-of...nation.net]

Re:Google Talk?

[trans_err]

./configure --enable-vv note: this might only be in CVS and not in the Beta release.

Re:Idle Time Reporting Option Removed

[javabsp]

A developer has said that this will likely come back because a lot of people complained and their arguments are reasonable.

Kopete has its own share of problems...

[Freggy]

While Kopete could be a very nice application (it has some great plug-ins, particulary I like the listening-to plug-in), it has some serious flaws. Usability wise, I think it is overcomplicated, with protocol actions in a submenu of the right click menu (I have seen a screenshot of Gaim 2.0 showing the same, uh oh...), and too much toolbar buttons while Kopete does not show tool text by default... Furthermore it is rather buggy. I have Kopete from KDE 3.5 crashing often when leaving IRC chats, on IRC, it considers almost all messages as "priority messages", and makes a sound for that, MSN avatar sending does not work according to my buddies, in some cases, it only downloads avatars when starting a chat with somebody,... Most of these problems have been reported on kde's bugzilla, but I haven't seen much progress lately. It seems developers do care more about adding yet more (useless and buggy?) features instead of fixing current problems.

Re:For WIndows users

[arodland]

No, not very positive. Mostly it just displays your ignorance.

1) This has nothing to do with gaim. GTK+ leaks memory like a sieve and somehow nobody's ever fixed that.

2) Why not find out instead of speculating? In any case, it does that.

3) Ever hear of a text editor or web browser?

4) This also has pretty much nothing to do with gaim. GTK+ allows you to style not only your whole system, but also any app however you want, without the "permission" of the app. If you haven't, that's your fault. But on that topic, Trillian is an ugly piece of shit.

5) It's been completely rewritten. Pay attention.

6) There's a manual option. You can put it in any order you want. Or you can write a script to put it in any order you want.

7) Gaim has more features than most anything. It's just that it's useful features instead of the kind of shit you get with, say, the ICQ or Yahoo clients. In any case, why do you need someone to "give you a piece"? You apparently know what you want to see, so go and write it!

Re:i'll never use gaim

[darkmeridian]

Well, in a perfect world GAIM developers would be really nice and code everything to your whims. But you have to realize that you were probably the tenth guy in that hour to send him a nice e-mail about how NAT file-transfers do not work. He knows that already and each other person that tells him is doing nothing unless they picked up a keyboard and started hacking. So he's disgruntled, sure. Look how they treat the Gentoo folk who compile with all sorts of weird flags and then bug Gaim devs when it doesn't work. But Gaim is a strong piece of OSS and it is of good quality. It's plugin API is stable and it is very well-developed, I would say, in terms of software architecture. It's childish to let feelings get in the way.

Not quite what I wrote

[BerkeleyDude]

New features include account status, away messages, etc

You're right, that's BS. But that's not quite what I submitted. I wrote this:

... account status, away messages, etc. completely rewritten ...

- but apparently, the editor didn't understand me...

Re:Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

[One Div Zero]

"Couple projects have tried to fork gaim, now you don't really hear any of them."

Adium [adiumx.com] is the single most popular non-bundled IM client for OS X.

It is essentially a gaim fork.

Annoying "Feature" still in?

[Dracil]

Does it still do the annoying throw-you-out-onto-the-desktop-from-your-fullscree n-game-when-someone-IMs-you-or-you-get-disconnecte d thing? Because this is seriously the lamest part of GAIM, especially when there seems to be no option to turn such behavior off.