SILC Gaim

Hello,

For the past two weeks I have been working a Gaim plugin of SILC Protocol.
That plugin is now about ready.  I have also been working with the Gaim
developers to get it incorporated into the official Gaim distribution.  It
has not been yet, as I have just minutes ago submitted it to the Gaim
developers, but it is naturally my hope and I'm sure everyone elses hope
as well that it gets incorporated.

So, what does this SILC Gaim plugin do?  Well, almost everything.  Due to
time limitations and due to limitations in some Gaim interfaces I had to
leave out some features, but they will be delivered later.  Currently
features that are not supported are:  invite lists, ban lists,
verification of signatures of messages, multimedia (MIME) messages and
some other minor details.

Other than those, everything else are there.  It supports private
messages, private messages with key agreement, private messages with
static key, file transfers, session detaching, fetching user information,
fetching channel informatino, all channel modes, all channel user modes,
inviting (excluded invite list), channel authentication with passphrases
and digital signatures (channel public keys), setting topic etc.

It also supports channel private keys by implementing them as a private
groups inside a channel.  Sort of channel-inside-channel.  You can have
multiple private groups in one channel and each group has their own chat
window (or chat tab in the conversation window).  It is also possible now
(using SILC Toolkit 0.9.12) to use channel private keys even without the
private key mode.  This way it's possible to talk normally on channel with
other people, but still have sort of "table in the corner" with group of
other users utilizing channel private keys.

It also fully supports buddy list.  Buddys are permanent and their online
notifications are delivered and updated real-time.  This is accomplished
by associating a public key to the buddy and WATCHing and WHOISing those
buddies using that public key.  For example, when a buddy you have added
signon, signoff of changes mode it will be indicated real-time on your
buddy list.  It is also naturally possible to view your buddy details,
including user online attributes and status information, and your buddy's
public key details.  Almost all user online attributes are supported and
you can set them to yourself as well.  It is also naturally possible to
reject watching and the use of user online attributes in the Gaim account
settings.  Note that if you reject watching others won't be able to see
your online changes in their buddy lists.

And, the thing you've been waiting for - screenshots!  Yeah, below are
some, but not all by a long shot:

        http://silcnet.org/img/silc-gaim/silc-gaim.png
        http://silcnet.org/img/silc-gaim/account.png
        http://silcnet.org/img/silc-gaim/pk.png
        http://silcnet.org/img/silc-gaim/bmenu.png
        http://silcnet.org/img/silc-gaim/pkaccept.png
        http://silcnet.org/img/silc-gaim/chauth.png
        http://silcnet.org/img/silc-gaim/blist.png
        http://silcnet.org/img/silc-gaim/chinfo.png

Since the plugin is not yet in the Gaim it's not yet available as an
easily installable package.  The code however is available, and is GPL
licensed BTW, from:

	http://silcnet.org/priikone/gaim.diff
	http://silcnet.org/priikone/silcgaim.tar.gz

The CVS version of Gaim is required.  Also the gaim.diff is required
before untarring the silcgaim.tar.gz.  After applying it must be untarred
in src/protocols/ subdirectory in Gaim.  After that the Gaim CVS tree must
be configured, and it should compile and work.  Naturally SILC Toolkit
0.9.12 or newer (with shared libraries) is required for it to work.  Read
the src/protocols/silc/README how to compile the Toolkit and the SILC Gaim
plugin.

It is my hope that other people who will start using SILC Gaim plugin will
contribute to the development when they find that it is lacking a feature
or has a bug.  In fact, I welcome all kinds of patches to the plugin that
adds features, improves usability and fixes bugs.  If and when the code is
in Gaim, you don't need to send the patches to me but to deliver them
directly to the Gaim patch system.  We have to naturally work out the
details with Gaim developers but more about that later.  Translations are
also a place where contributors can help.

It will, at some point next week or so, set up a web page on the
http://silcnet.org/ site for the plugin to promote the knowledge of a
great GUI client that has or may have later a SILC protocol support.

But for now, enjoy the screenshots and lets hope that some kind of
workable binaries surface soon.  I have one, but it's for AMD64 so it
doesn't help most people. :)

	Pekka
________________________________________________________________________
 Pekka Riikonen                                 priikone at silcnet.org
 Secure Internet Live Conferencing (SILC)       http://silcnet.org/
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