Queue messages when remote is offline

[frank]

oscar painfully lacks the ability to queue messages that are sent to buddies who are offline right now.

it would be nice if bitlbee could collect such messages and send them when the buddy comes back online.

sometimes you just want to "drop a line" (like an URL) to someone, without paying attention to whether he'll get it now or later.

with bitlbee (as it is now) you must be careful or you will actually lose messages if you miss the "Error: Your message to xxx did not get sent: Not logged in"...

[wilmer]

Actually, OSCAR does support offline messages, but only for ICQ. But that's just a detail.

Many people asked for this already, but I don't feel too tempted to implement it since it's by no means reliable (not that ICQ offline messages are ;-). BitlBee can't (yet) save the messages when it restarts, maybe the messages aren't important anymore by the time the person logs in, and most of all, when a network doesn't support offline msgs, the users expect you to be there when they get a message from you.

But patches for this are welcome, and if they look good I can apply them. Just the part that remembers msgs accross BitlBee sessions will be tricky, it's probably better to wait with that part until there's a better file format for user data.

[eydaimon - nefar@…]

I'm coming from centericq which has this feature, and I love it.

centericq stores the unreceived outgoing message in a flat file which it then sends later.

I can totally see somthing like.

unsent list

as a command to see which messages have not been sent due to offline-ness.

also it would be possible to delete unsent messages if you change your mind or something.

unsent rm 9

unsent list <protocol>

unsent list <username>

and so fourth.

"and most of all, when a network doesn't support offline msgs, the users expect you to be there when they get a message from you."

I usually tell people that my client handles this, and it hasn't really been a problem for people to get around the concept.

[tobyS]

I still see a great enhancement in this feature. Almost any ICQ client supports this now, by sending messages through the server. Any chance it'll be implemented?

[wilmer]

AFAIK all IM networks support offline messages now. BitlBee doesn't do them for MSN yet, but possibly it once will. There should be no need for this anymore.