It’s release candidate time.
Psi-0.11-RC2 is out there to be tested, please grab your copies from

Source: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/psi/psi-0.11-RC2.tar.bz2
Mac: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/psi/Psi-0.11-RC2.dmg”
Windows: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/psi/psi-0.11-RC2-win32.zip”

We also have a new Linux build, available from
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/psi/psi-0.11-RC2-linux-x86-bundle.tar.bz2
If untarred in / it’ll go into /opt/psi-0.11-RC2, but it’s of course recommended to untar somewhere safe, and move it yourself. It can then be executed with /opt/psi-0.11-RC2/psi. This is still slightly experimental, so please report any issues.

Please test this to destruction. If no show-stopping bugs are revealed in the next few weeks, we’ll go gold. The changelog is as follows:

* Reworked account registration process (including proper support for XEP-0077 (In-band registration))
* Finished support for XEP-0004 (Data Forms) by supporting forms in messages. (thanks to Roelof Naude)
* Added support for JEP-0070 (Verifying HTTP Requests via XMPP).
* Customizable shortcuts (thanks to Ephraim)
* Added spell checking (thanks to Ephraim). Currently only aspell is supported on non-Macs.
* Added option to automatically set the resource (using the hostname)
* Added new default Stellar3 iconset
* Added support for JEP-138 (Stream Compression)
* Added support for using JEP-33 (Extended Stanza Addressing) to multicast messages to multiple users. Use option.enable-multicasting to enable it.
* Added ‘Show status message’ toggle. There is a hidden option to put status messages under the nickname (at the cost of 2 extra pixels when no status message is shown)
* Support for Bookmark Storage (JEP-0048), where bookmarked conferences are auto-joined. No UI is provided for creating bookmarks (yet).
* Better error messages, including error condition mappings (JEP-0086)
* Support dynamically changing priority
* Improved PGP error messages
* Hiding the deprecated protocol selector for service discovery by default. Use option.ui.show-deprecated.service-discovery.protocol-selector to re-enable it.
* New options system (see options.xml)
* Receiving support for vCard-Based Avatars (JEP-0153)
* Support for Multi-User-Chat (JEP-0045)
* Preliminary support for User Nickname (JEP-0172)
* Preliminary support for Roster Item Exchange (JEP-0144)
* Psi now uses the Qt4(>=4.2.3) and QCA2 libraries, replacing the Qt3 and QCA1 requirements.
* “Privacy List” support in the account dialog.
* Support for JEP-0050 (Ad-hoc commands)
* Preliminary support for JEP-0163 (Personal Eventing Protocol)
* Preliminary support for JEP-0146 (Remote Controlling Clients)
* Large parts of the codebase have been restructured.
* Fixed a chat room bug where subject/topic changes were not shown.
* Mac OS X builds are now universal binaries, supporting the new Intel based Macs.
* Support for JEP-85 (Chat State Notifications).
* Support for JEP-0115 (Entity Capabilities).
* There is now a config.xml option to make some windows use the brushed metal theme on Mac OS X.
* Window opacity support is now present for all three supported platforms.
* Fixed Unicode URL opening bug #510
* Auto-reconnect accounts on wakeup
* Copy-pasting with emoticons now works
* Fixed issue #263 where emoticons would disappear in a reply or quote
* History index is rebuilt faster
* Configure toolbars merged into main preferences dialog
* Moving tooltips
* MingW32 compiler support (Coupled with the open source Qt4 Windows library this now allows completely free building of Psi on Windows)

Categories: Jabber, Psi
16 Comments »

Some people may know that I was once loosely involved in a personality script for IRC bots called ‘bMotion‘, which makes Eggdrop bots a bit more interesting. Although it’s been some years, I still like to keep them around because I think they’re fun; because of this, I’ve been trying for some time to keep ‘Iono’, in the Psi MUC (psi@conference.psi-im.org). Iono was a sellotape and string effort to have bMotion in the MUC. There was an Eggdrop bot running the bMotion script connected to an IRC server, in the same channel as a bridge bot, written in perl, which tried (and frequently failed) to relay the comments of the bot to the Psi MUC, and provide input in the reverse direction. This never worked very well, and I’ve been looking for a better solution, which has now presented itself. The solution takes the form of the SleekBot, which is an early version of a bot, written by Nathan Fritz, based on his SleekXMPP Python library. Read his recent blog post on the subject for more information, and a nice example of Ad-Hoc command usage.

SleekXMPP already has a very nice plugin-based system, with XEPs each being a seperate plugin (it was easy enough for me to write an XMPP Ping plugin, and my Python is famously bad). I tweaked SleekBot a little, and now it also has a similar plugin system (although Fritzy will no doubt fix this up when he finds my bad code), wrote some helper scripts for the Psi MUC (like fact scripts, XEP lookup, Flyspray (our bug tracker) lookups etc.) and set to work on the main bulk of the interest.

The reason for my interest in SleekBot, apart from being a fun piece of kit, is that I’m writing an implementation of the Eggdrop script API as a plugin. What this means is that it’ll be possible to load, with no modification, all the TCL Eggdrop scripts which you love or hate on IRC directly into a bot in an XMPP MUC. This turns out to be a far more major undertaking than I’d originally thought, due to the scale of the eggdrop API, but I’m getting there.

At the weekend, I reached my first milestone. I’ve implemented enough of the API that very simple scripts, such as the Discworld Quotes script will work. Below is a quote of a genuine transaction between the previously mentioned Eggdrop script running directly in SleekBot:

[17:42:43] <kev> !disc
[17:42:43] <iono (Sleek)> "It wasn't blood in general he couldn't stand the sight of, it was just his blood in particular that was so upsetting. -- (Terry Pratchett, Sourcery)"

So, things are looking good, Eggdrop scripts running natively on XMPP bots. It’s not easy, at least in part because TCL’s not my favourite language, and I’m not too skilled in Python, but it’s progress, and I’m finding it pretty interesting. The next aim before full API support is bMotion running, and once that’s done iono will be in the Psi MUC being as irritating and pseudo-random as ever

Categories: Jabber, Psi
Comments Off

It’s release candidate time.
Psi-0.11-RC1 is out there to be tested, please grab your copies from

Source: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/psi/psi-0.11-RC1.tar.bz2
Mac: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/psi/Psi-0.11-RC1.dmg
Windows: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/psi/Psi-0.11-RC1-win32.zip

Please test this to destruction. If no show-stopping bugs are
revealed in the next few weeks, we’ll go gold. The changelog is as
follows:

* Reworked account registration process (including proper support for XEP-0077 (In-band registration))
* Finished support for XEP-0004 (Data Forms) by supporting forms in messages. (thanks to Roelof Naude)
* Added support for JEP-0070 (Verifying HTTP Requests via XMPP).
* Customizable shortcuts (thanks to Ephraim)
* Added spell checking (thanks to Ephraim). Currently only aspell is supported on non-Macs.
* Added option to automatically set the resource (using the hostname)
* Added new default Stellar3 iconset
* Added support for JEP-138 (Stream Compression)
* Added support for using JEP-33 (Extended Stanza Addressing) to multicast messages to multiple users. Use option.enable-multicasting to enable it.
* Added ‘Show status message’ toggle. There is a hidden option to put status messages under the nickname (at the cost of 2 extra pixels when no status message is shown)
* Support for Bookmark Storage (JEP-0048), where bookmarked conferences are auto-joined. No UI is provided for creating bookmarks (yet).
* Better error messages, including error condition mappings (JEP-0086)
* Support dynamically changing priority
* Improved PGP error messages
* Hiding the deprecated protocol selector for service discovery by default. Use option.ui.show-deprecated.service-discovery.protocol-selector to re-enable it.
* New options system (see options.xml)
* Receiving support for vCard-Based Avatars (JEP-0153)
* Support for Multi-User-Chat (JEP-0045)
* Preliminary support for User Nickname (JEP-0172)
* Preliminary support for Roster Item Exchange (JEP-0144)
* Psi now uses the Qt4(>=4.2.3) and QCA2 libraries, replacing the Qt3 and QCA1 requirements.
* “Privacy List” support in the account dialog.
* Support for JEP-0050 (Ad-hoc commands)
* Preliminary support for JEP-0163 (Personal Eventing Protocol)
* Preliminary support for JEP-0146 (Remote Controlling Clients)
* Large parts of the codebase have been restructured.
* Fixed a chat room bug where subject/topic changes were not shown.
* Mac OS X builds are now universal binaries, supporting the new Intel based Macs.
* Support for JEP-85 (Chat State Notifications).
* Support for JEP-0115 (Entity Capabilities).
* There is now a config.xml option to make some windows use the brushed metal theme on Mac OS X.
* Window opacity support is now present for all three supported platforms.
* Fixed Unicode URL opening bug #510
* Auto-reconnect accounts on wakeup
* Copy-pasting with emoticons now works
* Fixed issue #263 where emoticons would disappear in a reply or quote
* History index is rebuilt faster
* Configure toolbars merged into main preferences dialog
* Moving tooltips
* MingW32 compiler support (Coupled with the open source Qt4 Windows library this now allows completely free building of Psi on Windows)

This is also an announcement of a string freeze and a build system freeze (both short of finding errors in the text or the build system) so translators are encouraged to start translating now, and packagers to test their build systems ready for release.

In the development of 0.11 we’re also pleased to have onboard two new developers, Machekku and Textshell, who’ve both already proved themselves invaluable. Welcome to both.

So, go enjoy yourselves.

Categories: Jabber, Psi
12 Comments »

Just a short announcement post.
Fritzy has kindly set up a server for the psi-im.org domain for us, so we’ve now moved our MUC room away from conference.jabber.ru to conference.psi-im.org. While this probably doesn’t confer any material advantage, it has a fairly high cool-factor, and that’s important.

The new muc, at psi@conference.psi-im.org, will cover all the same ground as the old one. This means that discussion is predominantly about Psi, be it support, development, bugs, or whatever. Jabber in general is frequently discussed, and other topics are fair game as long as they don’t interfere with the primary uses. Anyone is welcome (as long as they’ll chat in English) and we won’t discriminate against you even if you’re one of the poor misguided souls who doesn’t use Psi

Come and join us.

Categories: Psi
2 Comments »

Assorted improvements have been sent to mainline since 0.11-beta4, so it’s time for beta5. Included in this release are a better user experience when registering accounts, overhauled SSL/TLS settings, support for global (system-wide) shortcuts, international domain name support, in-band registration (XEP-77) compliancy, various compliancy fixes, support for providing custom authentication details, a merged top/centre toolbar in the chat dialog and misc. other fixes.

I’d also like to take this moment to welcome Machekku, a long time contributor to the project, to the core development team. Welcome.

The files are available at:

Mac OS X universal binary:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta5/Psi-0.11-beta5.dmg
Win32 build:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta5/psi-0.11-beta5-win32.zip
Source tarball:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta5/psi-0.11-beta5.tar.bz2

Show me more… »

Categories: Psi
12 Comments »

Several issues have been addressed since beta3, including fixing a great many of the connection problems. Also added since beta3 are customisable shortcuts and spell checking support, as well as automatically setting the account resources to the hostname of the system. As such, we’re releasing beta4 into the wild, as always, please go forth and test (and report).
Links first, then an extract from the release notes:

Mac OS X universal binary:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta4/Psi-0.11-beta4.dmg
Win32 build:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta4/psi-win32-0.11-beta4.zip
Source tarball:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta4/psi-0.11-beta4.tar.bz2

Known Issues
This is a beta (preview) version of Psi and is not intended to be release
quality or used in production environments. Particularly, the following
issues are known (those issues which are believed to have originated in
external libraries are marked with a *):
– GnuPG is temporarily not supported. *
– Mouse actions on tabbed chat windows may cause ASSERT errors in some versions of Qt. *
– Proxy support is broken in some, if not all, circumstances.
– On Mac, the menubar is only populated when the roster is the current selected window. *
– Roster tooltips are a little ugly currently, more whitespace will be added again later.
– When receiving multiline messages in a chat, sometimes some lines will not be visible until another message is received or sent. *
– Clicking on Psi popups sometimes causes a crash.

Notes

– This beta release includes a patched version of QCA2. Although it is
possible to link against another self-patched QCA2, it is strongly
recommended to use the provided tree, which is now default when
using ./configure on unices, or by default on Windows.

New in 0.11
– Customizable shortcuts (thanks to Ephraim)
– Added spell checking (thanks to Ephraim), currently only aspell is supported.
– Added option to automatically set the resource (using the hostname)
– Added new default Stellar3 iconset (thanks to Jason Kim)
– Added support for JEP-138 (Stream Compression)
– Added support for using JEP-33 (Extended Stanza Addressing) to multicast messages to multiple users. Use option.enable-multicasting to enable it.
– Added ‘Show status message’ toggle. There is a hidden option to put status messages under the nickname (at the cost of 2 extra pixels when no status message is shown)
– Support for Bookmark Storage (JEP-0048), where bookmarked conferences are auto-joined. No UI is provided for creating bookmarks (yet).
– Better error messages, including error condition mappings (JEP-0086)
– Support dynamically changing priority
– Improved PGP error messages
– Hiding the deprecated protocol selector for service discovery by default. Use option.ui.show-deprecated.service-discovery.protocol-selector to re-enable it.
– New options system (see options.xml)
– Receiving support for vCard-Based Avatars (JEP-0153)
– Support for Multi-User-Chat (JEP-0045)
– Preliminary support for User Nickname (JEP-0172)
– Preliminary support for Roster Item Exchange (JEP-0144)
– Psi now uses the Qt4(>=4.2) and QCA2 libraries, replacing the Qt3 and QCA1 requirements.
– “Privacy List” support in the account dialog.
– Support for JEP-0050 (Ad-hoc commands)
– Preliminary support for JEP-0163 (Personal Eventing Protocol)
– Preliminary support for JEP-0146 (Remote Controlling Clients)
– Large parts of the codebase have been restructured.
– Fixed a chat room bug where subject/topic changes were not shown.
– Mac OS X builds are now universal binaries, supporting the new Intel based Macs.
– Support for JEP-85 (Chat State Notifications).
– Support for JEP-0115 (Entity Capabilities).
– There is now a config.xml option to make some windows use the brushed metal theme on Mac OS X.
– Window opacity support is now present for all three supported platforms.
– Fixed Unicode URL opening bug #510
– Auto-reconnect accounts on wakeup
– Copy-pasting with emoticons now works
– Fixed issue #263 where emoticons would disappear in a reply or quote
– History index is rebuilt faster
– Configure toolbars merged into main preferences dialog
– Moving tooltips
– MingW32 compiler support (Coupled with the open source Qt4 Windows library this now allows completely free building of Psi on Windows)

Categories: Jabber, Psi
14 Comments »

As we’re still sitting with our hands tied waiting for some of the libraries we depend upon to advance a little before we can really address 0.11 release candidates, we’ve tidied up a few issues and made a new beta release to (approximately) coincide with the release of Qt 4.2, which is now required for Psi builds.
Links first, then an extract from the release notes:

Mac OS X universal binary:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta3/Psi-0.11-beta3.dmg
Win32 build:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta3/psi-0.11-beta3-win32.zip
Source tarball:
http://psi-im.org/files/beta/0.11/beta3/psi-0.11-beta3.tar.bz2

Known Issues
This is a beta (preview) version of Psi and is not intended to be release
quality or used in production environments. Particularly, the following
issues are known (those issues which are believed to have originated in
external libraries are marked with a *):
– GnuPG is temporarily not supported. *
– Mouse actions on tabbed chat windows have been temporarily disabled.
– Proxy support is broken in some, if not all, circumstances.
– On Mac, the menubar is only populated when the roster is the current
selected window. *
– Roster tooltips are a little ugly currently, more whitespace will be
added again later.
– When receiving multiline messages in a chat, sometimes some lines will
not be visible until another message is received or sent. *
– Clicking on Psi popups sometimes causes a crash.

Notes

– This beta release includes a patched version of QCA2. Although it is
possible to link against another self-patched QCA2, it is strongly
recommended to use the provided tree, which is now default when
using ./configure on unices, or by default on Windows.

New in 0.11

– Added new default Stellar3 iconset
– Added support for JEP-138 (Stream Compression)
– Added support for using JEP-33 (Extended Stanza Addressing) to multicast messages to multiple users. Use option.enable-multicasting to enable it.
– Added ‘Show status message’ toggle. There is a hidden option to put status messages under the nickname (at the cost of 2 extra pixels when no status message is shown)
– Support for Bookmark Storage (JEP-0048), where bookmarked conferences are auto-joined. No UI is provided for creating bookmarks (yet).
– Better error messages, including error condition mappings (JEP-0086)
– Support dynamically changing priority
– Improved PGP error messages
– Hiding the deprecated protocol selector for service discovery by default.
Use option.ui.show-deprecated.service-discovery.protocol-selector to re-enable it.
– New options system (see options.xml)
– Receiving support for vCard-Based Avatars (JEP-0153)
– Support for Multi-User-Chat (JEP-0045)
– Preliminary support for User Nickname (JEP-0172)
– Preliminary support for Roster Item Exchange (JEP-0144)
– Psi now uses the Qt4(>=4.2) and QCA2 libraries, replacing the Qt3 and QCA1 requirements.
– “Privacy List” support in the account dialog.
– Support for JEP-0050 (Ad-hoc commands)
– Preliminary support for JEP-0163 (Personal Eventing Protocol)
– Preliminary support for JEP-0146 (Remote Controlling Clients)
– Large parts of the codebase have been restructured.
– Fixed a chat room bug where subject/topic changes were not shown.
– Mac OS X builds are now universal binaries, supporting the new Intel based Macs.
– Support for JEP-85 (Chat State Notifications).
– Support for JEP-0115 (Entity Capabilities).
– There is now a config.xml option to make some windows use the brushed metal theme on Mac OS X.
– Window opacity support is now present for all three supported platforms.
– Fixed Unicode URL opening bug #510
– Auto-reconnect accounts on wakeup
– Copy-pasting with emoticons now works
– Fixed issue #263 where emoticons would disappear in a reply or quote
– History index is rebuilt faster
– Configure toolbars merged into main preferences dialog
– Moving tooltips
– MingW32 compiler support (Coupled with the open source Qt4 Windows library this now allows completely free building of Psi on Windows)

Categories: Jabber, Psi
7 Comments »

I don’t know if anyone here has ever tried cross compiling Qt4 apps for Windows on OSX for PPC but my attempts at persuading Google to divulge the vital information failed, so I suspect not. I recently announced that there were now official nightly builds of Psi for OSX available at http://kismith.co.uk/files/psi/mac/nightlies. As these were due to a donation from a user of some RAM to fix up my mini, I felt compelled to try and maximise the return on investment and try to get win32 builds going. It turns out that running a virtual host for Windows and compiling them natively wasn’t going to happen so I had a go at cross compiling them; I had something of a fight with my Mac Mini on the issue but, eventually, the mini lost the will to resist and we now have nightly builds of the Psi mainline for win32 available at http://kismith.co.uk/files/psi/windows/nightlies. Of course, as with all builds of mainline there’s no guarantees and it’s likely (certain at the moment) that there are an assortment of crashes just waiting to happen but there seems to be a lot of demand for crashes so we’re happy to oblige .

As for the progress of my SoC project, I’m pleased to say that I’ve been making progress, albeit slowly, on the Python scripting plugin and the general infrastructure of plugins. Fritzy’s even been able to write a short script which parses incoming messages to extract the elements. It’s been suggested that it’d be ‘cool’ to have Psi flash the keyboard toggle/status lights when there’s an incoming message – if anyone can post how to do this in Python, I’ll even throw up a quick script for Psi to do this and commit it to mainline. I’m very near the stage now where ‘all’ that’s left is the biggest task; the plugin API and the associated glue. My next step is some sort of outgoing event hooks and probably writing an ‘echo’ plugin to test them. At that stage it’s possible to write some (pretty basic) useful plugins and I hope filling in the rest of the (large) blanks will result in an SoC project everyone can consider a success.

Oh, and my thesis? The deadlines are getting tight, very tight indeed.

Categories: Jabber, Psi, Research
4 Comments »

It seems I’ve been neglectful again and haven’t reported the outcomes of either the live Dev Chat we held, nor the result of the new RAM I was bought.

Well, first up, the dev chat was a great success, with a very full MUC and well over an hour of questions (there were many we didn’t have time to answer. The abridged transcript is available at http://www.kismith.co.uk/psi/devchat-210606.html and we’re hoping to hold another chat event towards the Autumn, when we’ll have the results of the six Summer of Code projects producing code for Psi (Yes, Machekku couldn’t keep away and has patched Psi as part of his project).

Secondly, the new RAM went in fine and my Mac Mini now lives again. Nightly (universal) Psi builds of the main development branch for OSX are now available from http://www.kismith.co.uk/files/psi/mac/nightlies/. Windows nightlies are somewhat more work to set up on a Mac but I do intend trying to set these up at some point; until then I’ll be uploading builds when I feel like it at http://www.kismith.co.uk/files/psi/windows/.

Categories: Psi
4 Comments »

Much to my suprise, a shadowy anonymous figure in the Psi MUC (who didn’t want to be publically acknowledged) yesterday asked when the Mac nightly builds would be back, as Remko can’t make them anymore, and when I replied that I needed replacement RAM for my mac mini before I could do that bought me some. The generosity was much appreciated and the RAM arrived at work today, so I’ll be attempting to get the nightlies back up (undoubtedly with Remko’s assistance) in the very near future (the box needs a reformat, since the old corrupt RAM wrecked things somewhat).

Hoorah for harware donations to support OSS! (Following this news, Remko’s told me that he wouldn’t say no to an intel mac mini to test universal support on (come to think of it, I wouldn’t say no to an iMac for the same reason ) ). Somewhat more seriously, this was a very helpful donation that’ll improve the state of Psi by bringing back nightly mac builds and that’s a good thing.

Thank you shadowy anonymous user

Categories: Psi
1 Comment »