| 1 | Frequently Asked Questions about BitlBee |
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| 2 | ======================================== |
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| 3 | |
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| 4 | Well, maybe not exactly "Frequently", but definitely "Asked" ... mostly by |
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| 5 | the developers :-) |
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| 6 | |
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| 7 | Q: WTH were you guys on when you thought of that _weird_ name? |
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| 8 | A: Though we live in The Netherlands and one of us even lives in Amsterdam, |
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| 9 | we're not on drugs ... most of the time. |
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| 10 | |
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| 11 | Q: Okay, so the cops are so evil there, you can't even admit the truth, but |
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| 12 | WTH does BitlBee mean then? |
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| 13 | A: There are a few explanations. But the most symbolical goes like: the two |
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| 14 | colors of the bee symbolize the two worlds betwee which the Bee flies. On |
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| 15 | the one hand there's the IM-networks, on the other is IRC. |
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| 16 | |
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| 17 | Truth be told, it's absolute nonsense. The biggest nutcase in the |
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| 18 | development team just played around with words for half an hour or so. |
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| 19 | BitlBee was the result. We liked it, we kept it. We lovingly shorten it |
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| 20 | to "the Bee" or even "het Bijtje" (Dutch for "the little Bee") sometimes. |
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| 21 | |
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| 22 | Q: What is 'root' doing in my control channel? I didn't start the Bee as |
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| 23 | root. |
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| 24 | A: 'root' is just the name for the most powerful user in BitlBee. Just like |
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| 25 | in the system, it is root who is the ... eh ... root of the |
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| 26 | functionality. Luckily, in BitlBee, root follows your orders (mostly), so |
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| 27 | no BOFHs there. |
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| 28 | |
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| 29 | We get some complaints from time to time that 'root' is a confusing name. |
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| 30 | Because of that name, some package maintainers have renamed root to, for |
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| 31 | example, BitlBee. We recognize that some people see that need. If the |
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| 32 | package maintainer hasn't renamed root, you can do this yourself with the |
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| 33 | 'rename' command. |
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| 34 | |
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| 35 | The name root is not likely to change in the 'official' releases, though. |
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| 36 | We find the metaphor of root correct and feel that there is no important |
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| 37 | (security threatening) reason to change this non-creative piece of |
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| 38 | artistic creativity. |
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| 39 | |
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| 40 | Q: When is $random_feature going to be implemented? |
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| 41 | A: It depends on the feature. We keep a list of all wishlist "bugs" in our |
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| 42 | Bug Tracking system at http://bugs.bitlbee.org/ |
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| 43 | |
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| 44 | Q: The messages I send and/or receive look weird. I see weird characters and |
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| 45 | annoying HTML codes. Or, BitlBee does evil things when I send messages with |
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| 46 | non-ASCII characters! |
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| 47 | A: You probably have to change some settings. To get rid of HTML in messages, |
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| 48 | see "help set strip_html". If you seem to have problems with your charset, |
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| 49 | see "help set charset". |
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| 50 | |
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| 51 | Although actually most of these problems should be gone by now. So if you |
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| 52 | can't get things to work well, you might have found a bug. |
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| 53 | |
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| 54 | Q: Is BitlBee forked from Gaim? |
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| 55 | A: BitlBee 0.7 was, sort-of. It contained a lot of code from Gaim 0.58 |
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| 56 | (mainly the IM-code), although heavily modified, to make it work better |
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| 57 | with BitlBee. We were planning to keep BitlBee up-to-date with later Gaim |
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| 58 | versions, but this turned out to be very time-consuming because the API |
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| 59 | changed a lot, and we don't have the time to keep up with those changes |
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| 60 | all the time. |
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| 61 | |
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| 62 | These days, we replaced the Yahoo! code with libyahoo2 (which is a |
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| 63 | separate Yahoo! module. It's derived from Gaim, but separately |
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| 64 | maintained) and wrote our own MSN, Jabber and Twitter modules from |
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| 65 | scratch. Most of the API has also been changed, so by now the only traces |
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| 66 | of Gaim left are in the "nogaim" filename. |
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| 67 | |
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| 68 | There is good news for Gaim (or now Pidgin, of course) fans though: |
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| 69 | BitlBee can now be compiled to use libpurple for all IM interactions. |
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| 70 | This makes BitlBee a bit more resource-hungry, but adds support for many |
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| 71 | IM protocols/networks that couldn't be used from BitlBee so far. |
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