Pidgin chat plugin request

StDoodle

StDoodle

Minion
I'm not much of a codemonkey myself, so I'm afraid I can't begin to estimate how difficult it would be to create a chat plugin for Pidgin/KoL chat (probably utilizing the current KoLmafia chat code).

My main reason is that I'd like to be able to participate in chat at work; no really, I'd still get work done.

If anyone might be interested in pulling off such a project, please let me know what a reasonable estimate of the work would be; I'd be happy to arrange either in-game payment (I'm setting aside my Radio Free Foil for this purpose) or alternatives.

Full requirements include: multiple channels as per KoLmafia; prevention of multiple-login problems; compatible with latest versions of Pidgin.

Apologies if this isn't the best place to put this, but I honestly couldn't figure out what a more appropriate place would be.
 
So you want something for pidgin that will log you into kol so you can chat, yes? Why not just use kolmafia and just only load the chat interface?
 
The two main reasons are:

1) IM programs are tolerated at work, but games aren't. Granted, the situation at hand is kind of an arbitrary distinction, but it's what it is.

2) I can't really get around this by the "minimize to tray" option, as it doesn't play well with Windows, and in particular seems to dislike AutoCAD, which I use continuously.

3) Unfortunately, my computer at work is far from state-of-the-art, and I'd like to keep the number of constantly-running programs to a minimum.

Granted, none of these are huge, and I completely see how this request is completely unnecessary for 99.99% of KoL'ers, but still, it would be of value to me.

If no one thinks it can be done for an amount which would be agreeable, I completely understand. Just wanted to ask.
 
[quote author=StDoodle link=topic=1491.msg6943#msg6943 date=1201905398]
The two main reasons are:

1) IM programs are tolerated at work, but games aren't. Granted, the situation at hand is kind of an arbitrary distinction, but it's what it is.

2) I can't really get around this by the "minimize to tray" option, as it doesn't play well with Windows, and in particular seems to dislike AutoCAD, which I use continuously.

3) Unfortunately, my computer at work is far from state-of-the-art, and I'd like to keep the number of constantly-running programs to a minimum.

Granted, none of these are huge, and I completely see how this request is completely unnecessary for 99.99% of KoL'ers, but still, it would be of value to me.

If no one thinks it can be done for an amount which would be agreeable, I completely understand. Just wanted to ask.[/quote]Fair enough response, I was just curious why the current chat interface was not a reasonable approach. The only people I envision being able to do this for you would be hola or veracity, so you'll have to see if they have anything to say on the matter. Good luck either way though!
 
I remember there was a stand-alone program that basically logged you in and only did KoL chat, but I don't know that I ever downloaded it, it was quite a long time ago and would likely need to be reworked even if it was still available anywhere. Was it an ohayou (Johan Sundström) app or just something left on The Sewer, anyone else remember this? A cursory search of google didn't gain anything remarkable and The Sewer appears lost to the ages.

Another thought you could use mafia and set the preferences so that the only thing opening is chat. **No, gave it a shot and it just threw a debug log, pity that, it seems like a perfectly good use of Mafia.

Well, looks like I'm full of useless advice, perhaps as usual.
 
[quote author=dangerpin link=topic=1491.msg6947#msg6947 date=1201921521]Another thought you could use mafia and set the preferences so that the only thing opening is chat. **No, gave it a shot and it just threw a debug log, pity that, it seems like a perfectly good use of Mafia.[/quote]
It does seem like a perfectly good use of KoLmafia.

If I made it work, would that satisfy the needs of the OP?
 
[quote author=Veracity link=topic=1491.msg6948#msg6948 date=1201922109]

It does seem like a perfectly good use of KoLmafia.

If I made it work, would that satisfy the needs of the OP?
[/quote]

Well...I'm a bit reticent on this now. It's really only worthwhile to me if it completely avoids problems at work. For "not making it obvious that I'm not devoting myself 100% to work" related reasons, a minimal (i.e. chat-only) mafia configuration would still be relatively lacking if it continued to bounce the window around after minimizing to tray and re-maximizing. (Hope that can be followed...) You see, my boss looks at the taskbar...if it shows up there, I'm using it "too often," but if it's in the system tray it's ok. I know, I know, don't tell me.*

You see, I really hate to divert the attention of a major contributor to KoLmafia, as I love the program and probably wouldn't be enjoying KoL enough to continue playing without it (which I hope Asymetric knows, as I've become a fairly regular donator). The problem is, I'd need something that completely meets my needs in order to be satisfied (otherwise, I wouldn't feel "safe" using it at work).

I guess if you could A) fix the maximizing KoLmafia after minimizing to tray in Windows moves the window to a different location bug and B) let me know how to set up mafia to load just chat I'd probably feel safe enough to consider it a success. Really, though, having no extra programs "obviously" running would be my best bet.

Basically, it comes down to a "nevermind," unless any of these issues are either so minimal in effort that's it's simply "no big deal" to take care of them, or the original request can be met.

Either way, I'm a bit curious as to how Veracity and Hola would prefer to be compensated for time (aside from, and in addition to, my present request). While I have your attention, would you guys prefer Mr. A's or some other form of compensation? (This isn't a bribe; I just want to show how much I appreciate the program. I've gotten caught up as to where I feel my KoL donations "should" be, and I'd like to extend my appreciation to the mafia dev.'s.)

*Sigh* It all comes down to, as I said earlier, a very specific request that most people would find superfluous, but I, in a very specific situation, would appreciate. Of course, if I could convince my boss to let me work from home, it would all be moot. But for reasons beyond logic, that isn't going to happen.

P.S. I apologize for the rambling. It's late (for me) on Friday, and I've been relaxing with Mr. Sam Adams. But since at least Veracity seems to be reading this, I should throw out one more "thanks for all the hard work."


*Amusing side note, the other day I went to check my email in Thunderbird, and for some reason my computer got confused and maximized Firefox instead (both have the "minimize to tray" plugin, which is probably the culprit, despite my inability to reproduce the bug). Couldn't get Thunderbird to open until I closed Firefox, which was set to Gameplay-Discusssion in some thread or another. That was fun.

Edit: (only seconds later, see the "P.S." above) Plus, c'mon, wouldn't a Pidgin plugin for KoL chat just be cool?
 
[quote author=StDoodle link=topic=1491.msg6950#msg6950 date=1201928298]I guess if you could A) fix the maximizing KoLmafia after minimizing to tray in Windows moves the window to a different location bug[/quote]Just out of curiosity have you reported this bug besides now? It's difficult to fix a bug they don't know about ;).
 
Around the same time I noticed this bug, Marci Roni reported a different "minimize to tray" related bug on the GD thread. In fact, I was going to report this issue but was checking to make sure it hadn't been previously reported/dealt with. But then I read this:

[quote author=Vercacity]
I don't use Windows. I don't have a System Tray. I have no way to investigate this. Sorry.
[/quote]

I figured at that point is was a waste of time to report my variant of the minimize-to-tray bug.
 
It's true.

I can make KoLmafia start up with only a chat window. (At least, I assume I can; I experimented a bit and found a few problems. I'm sure it's a simple matter of debugging. :))

But I don't even know what a "task bar" or "system tray" is and therefore am out of my depth.

I'll probably fix the first problem, just for fun - and I expect holatuwol will get around to fixing system tray issues someday, since people - MarcyRoni, MagiNinja, and now you - keep reporting bugs and issues.

I'll admit that my heart lit up with mercenary greed when I first read your note, but I don't REALLY expect compensation for submitting changes into the general KoLmafia codebase, unless it was a major drain of my time - and I doubt that making a functional standalone chat window will be that. Don't worry about it. But don't expect instant response, either. ;)
 
[quote author=Veracity link=topic=1491.msg6968#msg6968 date=1201978704]
I'll admit that my heart lit up with mercenary greed when I first read your note, but I don't REALLY expect compensation for submitting changes into the general KoLmafia codebase, unless it was a major drain of my time...
[/quote]

Ah, but you and Hola have put how much time into mafia already?

Thing is, I have an item worth a good deal in game that I came through by luck (Amp's final day of Crimbo '06) and I'm willing to put it towards a specific request. If no one wants to take that up, I completely understand, and will instead sell it and spend the meat elsewhere. Which will include tokens of appreciation for the mafia developers.

Which reminds me, was it you (Veracity) who collects donkey flipbooks?
 
[quote author=StDoodle link=topic=1491.msg6978#msg6978 date=1202002055]
Which reminds me, was it you (Veracity) who collects donkey flipbooks?
[/quote]
Nope. I make a serious effort to collect rubber emo roes (funny), rubber WWtNSD? bracelets (my role model), strings of {blue, green, red} beads (rewards for grrls), and, most recently, Tuesday's rubies (clever and a reference to a song from my youth).

(I also have a substantial number of valuable trinkets that I picked up and saved as a side effect of my pre-NS11 Shore-leveling (since there was no better use of my turns, pre-Ascension), but I don't really "collect" those; I've never actually BOUGHT one.)

I know that donkeylover (surprise!) collects the flipbooks, but I don't know anybody else who does, off the top of my head.
 
Rats, I thought I fixed all the system tray bugs. *shakes fist*

That said, Java is a resource hog, so KoLmafia isn't a good solution for your current situation. Pidgin's libpurple documentation is pretty bad, but since Java and C are pretty closely related, it might be feasible to convert part of KoLmafia's chat engine into something that Adium/Pidgin can recognize, if I buckle down and read through all the source code for all the different protocols.

However, it is likely to be pretty time consuming, and I've got a lot on my plate at the moment. So, probability that I'd do it is near zero, but it does sound interesting, even if I'd have to license any code I write under GPL.
 
I have been working on a stand alone chat interface in pascal, one reason being that java is a resource hog, and the second being I want to log chat. One of the problems that I hit was the implementation of MD5 into the login pages. For some reason pascals md5 and the one in use by web browsers do not seem to match.

For a long time I was able to use kolmafia's session data, and kill mafia, but that has even went by the waste side as I keep getting redirected to login.php I posted about this here: http://kolmafia.us/index.php/topic,1430.0.html and even added one of my smaller easier to understand applications (it just displays html source for a typed url bypassing kolmafia so settings need not be changed). It used to work using this method.

I would be glad to share the chat application if it still had some functionality, but presently it's only working function is detecting that the session data is in fact invalid for some reason.
 
[quote author=holatuwol link=topic=1491.msg7013#msg7013 date=1202115467]
Rats, I thought I fixed all the system tray bugs. *shakes fist*
[/quote]

Oddly enough, it seems to be working better in 12.1 on my laptop (restoring from minimized remembers location, but resets size). I need to make sure I've checked the latest version at work though, as that's the only place I've noticed the bouncing-around problem (restoring from minimized places the KoLmafia window in a location that is, as far as I can tell, completely random).

I admit, though, I'm not currently sure if this is still an issue, but I'll try and test it out tomorrow. However, the "obviousness factor" and the system resources usage are, unfortunately. Again, if I could only work from home :(

[quote author=(same post, later)]
Pidgin's libpurple documentation is pretty bad...
[/quote]

I had no idea about that (as I mentioned earlier, I'm not much of a codemonkey...I can follow along slowly, but anything long is beyond me). Makes that MySpace summer-of-code plugin even more impressive, I guess :) (Sadly, too many of my friends communicate exclusively through MySpace).

I was kind of hoping the Pidgin side would be the easy part, or I probably wouldn't have put the request out there in the first place. But it makes me wonder, why didn't Jick just program KoL to connect to an IRC channel in the first place? Perhaps (and probably) there's something I'm missing, but it seems like that may have been easier...save the "screening" of certain rooms (but maybe even then). Ah well, I guess I have to stick with being really paranoid when trying to win Amplitude's big package.
 
[quote author=StDoodle link=topic=1491.msg7024#msg7024 date=1202183149]
But it makes me wonder, why didn't Jick just program KoL to connect to an IRC channel in the first place? Perhaps (and probably) there's something I'm missing, but it seems like that may have been easier...save the "screening" of certain rooms (but maybe even then). Ah well, I guess I have to stick with being really paranoid when trying to win Amplitude's big package.

[/quote]

I might know the reason why. He may have had the same reason I have in the game I am working on. Using frames, I want the chat frame to "fit in" with the rest of the frames. By fit in, I mean I want chat to have a similar appearance to the rest of the game. I also don't like the additional over-head of IRC on the client side.
 
As a follow up to my earlier post regarding minimizing to tray & restoring:

At work, the behavior is (mostly) the same; restoring works but resets KoLmafia to the default size. Location is preserved. However, when I first minimized, my browser was automatically launched with at least 5 tabs opening to the relay browser. Of course, this was when my boss walked in to ask me a question, so I didn't get an exact count. :)

At the same time, all other windows I had open & maximized were un-maximized. However, this may be AutoCAD's fault, as it happens a good deal on that computer. (But usually on lunch, which usually means mafia is open, so it's hard for me to say.)
 
I realize I'm bumping a year old thread, but did anything ever come of this?

I'd certainly use a KoL plugin for Pidgin.
 
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