Minbif

• The Libre Software Meeting is a free (as a beer and as a speech) and non commercial conference with talks, workshops and round tables about Free Software and its uses.
  A lecture about Minbif will takes place on Thursday 8th July, at 3.20pm.

• A t-shirt shop has been opened with four differents t-shirts:

A new version of Minbif is released today. As this is probably the most stable version of Minbif ever, we wanted to appear as serious as the greatest operating system Ubuntu, which is a reference to us. So we now use code names for each release, and this time it is Minxish Maëlle.

This release fixes several bugs and introduces some features, like the full status management with /topic on status channels and its smart interaction with /away.

It has also been tested and fixed to work with libpurple 2.7.0 which has been released few days ago.

ChangeLog:

• Use /topic on status channels to change your status message (#210).
• With field requests, display image fields with libcaca.
• Improvement of bans management (match wildcards, fix parsing, etc.).
• When starting to chat with a buddy in a status channel, every received messages from this buddy are displayed in the status channel (#179).
• Do not allow two IRC clients to be logged at the same time on the same account (only with the daemon fork mode) (#178).
• Display the current status of a buddy in /WHOIS when he is not away.
• Default value of 'server_alias' is now 'true'.
• Works with libpurple 2.7.0.
• Fix: crash with conversations (occured when a buddy sends a message, then disconnects/reconnects and re-send a message) (#258).
• Fix: crash when closing a request.
• Fix: compilation on FreeBSD (now using a buildbot slave on this OS) (#255).
• Fix: /svsnick collision detection.
• Fix: crash when nobody connects to DCC server.
• Fix: crash when a buddy has an icon without any path (wtf).

• Download Minbif 1.0.3.
• Show the full roadmap.

Minbif is today released. This is the last feature version of Minbif before the next major release, 1.1.

The main new feature is the support of TLS. Also, a lot of new features and several fixes are included.

ChangeLog:

• TLS support.
• New 'maxcon' parameter to limit simultaneous connections.
• /TOPIC on a status channel change your status on attached accounts.
• Can put '%XX' in remote channel names to join, to insert special characters (for example spaces).
• Auto-reconnect on accounts only when disconnection was because of a network error.
• Display account ID and more information in requests.
• Aibility to not store password on an account (it is requested at connection).
• Aibility to edit password with '/MAP edit'.
• Use imlib2 to convert received buddyicons to right encoded images.
• Send several PRIVMSG or NOTICE when there are \n in message.
• Better display of /MAP replies (with stats on accounts).
• /ADMIN voiced_buddies: enable or disable voices on status channels.
• /ADMIN accept_nobuddies_messages: if disabled, messages from unknown buddies are not displayed (prevent spam).
• /ADMIN server_aliases: enable or disable sending of aliases server-side.
• 'server_aliases' accounts parameter to enable or disable sending of aliases server-side on a specific account.
• Command '/STATS u' to display server uptime.
• Command '/STATS o' to display every available minbif administrator and their email address.
• Command '/INFO' to display copyright information.
• Irssi script to auto-rename facebook buddies.
• Fix: pam default configuration.
• Fix: chat buddy's nickname when users have a jabber resource.
• Fix: crash with '/STATS c' on a disconnected account.
• Fix: compilation on strange compilers.
• Fix: typing notices were broken.
• Fix: crash when removing an account which have an active request.
• Fix: prevent empty nicknames.
• Fix: sent buddy icons cut on the bottom.

We organize a IRC meeting named “Roadmap 2010” to talk about goals of this new year, new features you want to see in Minbif, how to innovate, but also how to gain popularity, what kind of marketing we could to do around Minbif, etc.

As Minbif lives thanks to his community, everybody can join us:

Where: #minbif-roadmap on Freenode.
When:  on Thursday 4th March 2010
From:  08 pm UTC
To:    10 pm UTC
From:  12 pm UTC
To:    02 am UTC

You'll be able to help us to make Minbif better!

You can now use the Facebook Chat from Minbif without any third-party plugin, and without all the bugs, since Facebook now provides XMPP access.

To set it up, it is very simple: get your username and password from here (click on "Pidgin"), and provide Minbif with:

/map add jabber USERNAME@chat.facebook.com PASSWORD &fb -!require_tls

The connection won't be encrypted, but if you use Facebook you already don't care much about privacy, don't you ? ;-)

A new release of Minbif is today out. Mostly fixes, but also some new good features, like the PAM authentication, the aibility to change your nickname or the mood message, etc.

ChangeLog:

• PAM authentication.
• /MAP CMD command to run a specific command on an account, which allow you to change nickname, mood messages, etc.
• Support fields requests.
• Display group name in IRC user realname.
• The /MAP REGISTER command registers account on server before adding it.
• Conf option to enable the purple conv logging.
• /CMD command to send commands in a conversation
• Display date before delayed messages if they hasn't been sent today.
• Fix: daemonize correctly.
• Fix: security issue when a global password is set on the minbif server, it creates the userdir before checking if the password is correct.
• Fix: buddy's realnames wasn't updated in realtime.
• Fix: the PONG reply wasn't RFC compliant.
• Fix: crash in NAMES and TOPIC commands when giving an invalid chan name.
• Fix: don't typing notice unless either bitlbee_send_typing or typing_notice is true.

See all tickets attached to this release.

A new minor version of libpurple is today out. It is a significant release for Minbif because it fixes a lot of bugs and crashes, one of which is a crash when you try to add a MSN buddy (see #140).

I encourage you to upgade to this latest version.

Today Minbif 1.0 is released! This final version is as stable as possible, and include the following features:

• Minbif uses a library which abstracts all IM calls, and has several plugins to support more than 15 IM protocols (IRC included!);
• Two modes: inetd and daemon fork;
• Only IRC commands are used to control Minbif;
• Certificates check;
• Buddies are IRC users;
• Each account has a status channel. You see in all connected buddies, and their status on it;
• Add and remove buddies from list with /INVITE and /KICK commands;
• Blocked users are bans on the account's status channel;
• Display when a buddy is typing a message;
• Can chat with someone who is not in your buddy list;
• You can see buddies' icons (with libcaca) or download them;
• DCC SEND an image to set your icon on IM networks;
• Display extended information about buddies with /WII command;
• Support away messages;
• Can send and receive files, which are sent or received to/from your IRC client with DCC SEND;
• Conversation channels are supported;
• Auto-rejoin conversation channels at connection;
• Display list of channels on an IM account with /LIST;
• irssi scripts to increase your user experience of minbif;
• CACAcam (webcam in ascii art).
• CoinCoin plugin for libpurple.

ChangeLog from previous rc2 release is:

• Global proxy settings with the /ADMIN command.
• Ability to set parameters when joining a conversation channel.
• /STATS c: display all available parameters of a specific account.
• Transliteration of buddies' IRC nicknames.
• Handle mIRC format chars when sending a message.
• gayattitude: new prpl-plugin.
• coincoin: improvment.
• accounts: fix auto-reconnection.
• Fix: remove a status channel when there isn't any associated account.
• Fix: fix crash when rehashing twice.
• Fix: memory leaks.

Now we're on the 1.1 road!

This minor second release candiate adds mainly new little features to the prpl-coincoin plugin.

Changelog:

• Timestamps of delayed messages are bold formatted.
• coincoin: fix bad-encoded xml files.
• coincoin: display nickname of message sender before timestamps.

About last feature, now when someone refers to a message with a timestamp, for example:

10:23:09 <blah> hey guys
10:28:43 <ho> 10:23:09 f0ck you

The last message is replaced with:

10:28:43 <ho> blah: 10:23:09 f0ck you

This increases readability.

Less than two weeks of work, and a newer release of Minbif is available!

Main change is ability to chat with channel members, and with other non-buddies guys (instead of receiving a notice). There is also a new libpurple plugin, some other minor features, and bugfixes, and code cleanup.

• Auto-rejoin channels when disconnect/reconnect to an IM account, or when restart minbif.
• Channel users status changes are propagated to IRC user.
• /TOPIC command to change the conversation channel topic.
• Aibility to chat with a channel member.
• When an unknown buddy tries to send a message, create a temporary IRC user to chat with him anyway.
• /ADMIN log_level: change the log level.
• can change ID and status channel of an account with /MAP EDIT.
• /LIST <accid>: display list of channels for an account.
• MSN protocol: use /JOIN #nickname:accid to create a group chat with a buddy.
• prpl-coincoin: plugin to connect to a DaCode board.
• Reorganization of CMakeLists.txt files.
• Fix: Use libcaca 'irc' output for buddy icons.
• Fix: Correctly send a ERR_NOSUCHCHANNEL reply when a channel can't be joined.
• Fix: TYPING: send stale state to avoid the irssi's plugin to timeout.
• Fix: crash when a notify field is NULL.

Now there is a stabilisation period before the final 1.0 release, as soon as possible, I hope :)