| 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: Please do consult doc/TODO (preferably in a development snapshot, which |
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| 42 | is more up-to-date than a TODO in a release version) before asking. |
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| 43 | Please also check the documentation. You'd not be the first one to request |
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| 44 | a feature which already exists! |
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| 45 | |
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| 46 | If your fabulous feature seems not to be requested before, just join |
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| 47 | #bitlbee on irc.oftc.net and tell us the news. |
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| 48 | |
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| 49 | If your feature request is already in the TODO list, of course you can |
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| 50 | still request it again/make us know that you'd like to see the feature as |
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| 51 | well. But when the feature is in the "post-1.0" list, it's probably not |
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| 52 | going to help. Most of the features in this list are low-priority because |
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| 53 | we (the developers) don't need (or even want) them. (File transfers are a |
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| 54 | good example here.) |
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| 55 | Hence, they'll only be implemented when we really got too much spare |
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| 56 | time. Obviously, if you're willing to help (i.e. submit a patch), you're |
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| 57 | always welcome. |
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| 58 | |
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| 59 | Q: The messages I send and/or receive look weird. I see weird characters and |
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| 60 | annoying HTML codes. Or, BitlBee does evil things when I send messages with |
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| 61 | non-ASCII characters! |
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| 62 | A: You probably have to change some settings. To get rid of HTML in messages, |
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| 63 | see "help set html". If you seem to have problems with your charset, see |
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| 64 | "help set charset". |
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| 65 | |
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| 66 | Q: Is BitlBee forked from Gaim? |
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| 67 | A: BitlBee 0.7 was, sort-of. It contained a lot of code from Gaim 0.58 |
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| 68 | (mainly the IM-code), although heavily modified, to make it work better |
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| 69 | with BitlBee. We were planning to keep BitlBee up-to-date with later Gaim |
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| 70 | versions, but this turned out to be very time-consuming because the API |
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| 71 | changed a lot, and we don't have the time to keep up with those changes |
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| 72 | all the time. |
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| 73 | |
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| 74 | These days, we replaced the Yahoo! code with libyahoo2 (which is a |
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| 75 | separate Yahoo! module. It's derived from Gaim, but separately |
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| 76 | maintained) and wrote our own MSN module. More modules are probably going |
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| 77 | to be changed, so in the near future, the API might be the only thing |
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| 78 | left from Gaim. |
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| 79 | |
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| 80 | Q: What's that Gaim doing in BitlBee error messages and my Jabber resource? |
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| 81 | A: Ah, well, as you probably know we use some of Gaim's IM-modules, and we |
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| 82 | don't think it's worth our time to do a search-and-replace over the whole |
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| 83 | source to get rid of every reference to Gaim. In fact, we don't want to, |
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| 84 | since we don't want to pretend we wrote all that code. |
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| 85 | |
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| 86 | About Jabber: If you want a different resource string, you can set it |
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| 87 | when logging in by appending it to your Jabber ID, like: |
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| 88 | lintux@jabber.com/BitlBee |
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