Mercurial > pidgin
view doc/FAQ @ 3329:e099cf9a9586
[gaim-migrate @ 3347]
Chip is making a commit!
This makes the FAQ basically identical to the one on the website. I'll look
through the old version in the gaim/docs dir soon and see if some things
should be salvaged and merged into the new one and the website.
committer: Tailor Script <tailor@pidgin.im>
| author | Christian Hammond <chipx86@chipx86.com> |
|---|---|
| date | Thu, 20 Jun 2002 04:00:52 +0000 |
| parents | 0cb4b01c5733 |
| children | f56b36347375 |
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Gaim: The Pimpin' Penguin IM Clone Thats Good For The Soul 1 Compiling 1.1 Is there some way I can compile just Gaim, without all of these protocols? 1.2 I'm getting an error: ./au2h.c BuddyArrive.h open: No such file or directory 1.3 I compiled Gaim, but when I restart, it did not update. 1.4 I can't compile Gaim CVS. 1.5 I have a question about GTK2. 2 Using Gaim 2.1 How do I register for a new account? 2.2 Why is gaim crashing when somebody sends me an IM? 3 Features 3.1 How do I use MSN, Yahoo, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Napster, or Zephyr? 3.2 Can Gaim send files? 3.3 When will file transfer be supported? Is it being worked on? 3.4 How come there's no Export Buddy List? 3.5 Will Gaim save my buddy list to the server? 3.6 Can Gaim import my buddy list? 3.7 Can I set a buddy icon? 4 ICQ Protocol 4.1 How do I use ICQ? 4.2 ICQ doesn't work. 5 AIM/ICQ (Oscar) Protocol 5.1 Some of my buddies are not showing up as online, why is that? 5.2 IM Image doesn't work, why? 5.3 I sent an IM Image, but only a blank line shows up, why? 6 IRC Protocol 6.1 Why am I getting disconnected when I try to connect to IRC? 7 Jabber Protocol 7.1 How do I choose which Jabber server to use? 7.2 How do I change my Jabber resource to be other than the default of "/GAIM"? 7.3 How do I register a new Jabber account? 8 Scripts and Plugins 8.1 Where can I find documentation on writing plugins and Perl scripts? 8.2 How do I compile a plugin for Gaim? 9 Development 9.1 Where should I report bugs? 9.2 Did you guys reverse engineer it? 9.3 Will Gaim be ported to Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP? 9.4 Will there be a QT dock app? 10 Misc. Questions 10.1 Does AOL's attempts at blocking Trillian affect Gaim? 10.2 Is Gaim affected by the vulnerability found in Windows AIM or Yahoo Instant Messenger clients? 10.3 Can I IM you guys? 10.4 Can I give you money/hardware/other expensive things that can be hocked for cash what with you all being students/full-time-workers and helping to produce this wonderful software instead of studying/sleeping? +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 1 Compiling +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.1 Is there some way I can compile just Gaim, without all of these protocols? Sort of, yeah. There's actually two ways to do it. 1. Use the --with-static-prpls option to ./configure along with --disable-plugins. This will let you choose which protocols are compiled in with Gaim, but you will not be able to use any other protocols or plugins. You'll need to compile any protocols that you specified in --with-static-prpls. Oscar and TOC are defaults. 2. Change to the directories for the protocols you want to compile (e.g. src/protocols/jabber), and run make from there. Then after you've compiled all of them, change back to src/ and run make gaim. 1.2 I'm getting an error: ./au2h.c BuddyArrive.h open: No such file or directory You're not using gmake, are you? You need to be using gmake 1.3 I compiled Gaim, but when I restart, it did not update. If you previously had an rpm or a Debian package installed, you need to remove that first. When you restart Gaim, it will give some errors about your plugins. This is normal. Simply go into the Plugins dialog (Tools->Plugins) and reload them. These errors will only happen once. 1.4 I can't compile Gaim CVS. Make sure you have gettext <= 0.10.40, autoconf 2.11 or 2.53, and automake 1.4px. If you are still having problems, make sure that your gettext package includes the program gettextize. If it does not, look for another package. If you have Slackware, you need to get non-slack packages for autoconf, automake, gettext, and libtool. You also have to copy the contents of /usr/local/share/aclocal to /usr/share/aclocal. This is due to bugs in Slackware and the auto* packages. 1.5 I have a question about GTK2. Don't ask untill the changelog says it works. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 2 Using Gaim +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.1 How do I register for a new account? This depends on the protocol. AIM: Go to http://aim.AOL.com/aimnew/Aim/register.adp. ICQ: Go to http://web.icq.com/register. Yahoo: Go to http://edit.yahoo.com/config/eval_register. MSN: Go to http://registernet.passport.com. Gadu-Gadu: Use the official client to create an account. Jabber: See the question "How do I register a new Jabber account?" below. 2.2 Why is gaim crashing when somebody sends me an IM? If you're using a version older than 0.55 (or Ximian or Debian's 0.54 package), you can be crashed remotely through an IM using one of two strings. The solution is to upgrade to the latest version, where both exploits are fixed. If you are using a version newer than 0.55 and gaim still crashes, please let us know. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 3 Features +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.1 How do I use MSN, Yahoo, IRC, Gadu-Gadu, Napster, or Zephyr? First load the plugin. Protocol plugins come with Gaim, so just go to the Plugins dialog (Tools->Plugins, or the Plugins button on the start screen) and then click "Load." The protocol plugins are named lib<protocol>.so, so MSN for instance is provided by libmsn.so. After you have loaded the appropriate plugin, use the Account Editor (Tools->Accounts, or the Accounts button on the start screen) to add the account. 3.2 Can Gaim send files? TOC can, in a limited way. Most protocols are capable of it, but Gaim hasn't implemented anything yet. 3.3 When will file transfer be supported? Is it being worked on? File transfer is not currently being worked on. It will be supported if someone writes a patch using a generic user interface and without adding any GTK+ to the protocol plugins. 3.4 How come there's no Export Buddy List? It would be the same as the cp command. Gaim stores your buddy list in the $HOME/.gaim directory. You can copy it out of there. 3.5 Will Gaim save my buddy list to the server? Gaim already does this in MSN, Yahoo, and TOC. As of version 0.53, this support exists for Oscar as well. Improved Jabber support is being worked on. 3.6 Can Gaim import my buddy list? This depends on the format of the buddy list. Gaim cannot import Licq contact lists. Gaim has mixed success importing Windows AIM buddy lists. If you want to try, click File->Import. This is accessible after you sign on. 3.7 Can I set a buddy icon? Yes. Go to the Account Editor (Tools->Accounts from the buddy list), and click to "Modify" the Oscar account you wish to have an icon. Type the full path to the image you wish to use in the box labeled "Buddy Icon File." The file must be below 4KB. It can have any dimensions, and can be in any format. However, if you wish Windows users to see it, it must be in a format Windows understands, such as .bmp, .gif, and .jpg. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 4 ICQ Protocol +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.1 How do I use ICQ? ICQ support is part of the OSCAR protocol, labeled AIM/ICQ in gaim (see the question "ICQ doesn't" work for why). To use it, simply put your account number in the ScreenName box and your password in the password box. Leave the server settings alone. 4.2 ICQ doesn't work. Use AIM/ICQ for ICQ. AOL stopped supporting the older versions of the ICQ protocol. The newer versions are extensions of Oscar, which is labled AIM/ICQ in gaim. Currently, Oscar supports as much of ICQ as the ICQ plugin used to. To use Oscar for ICQ, put your UIN in the Screenname box, and leave the server information alone. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 5 AIM/ICQ (Oscar) Protocol +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.1 Some of my buddies are not showing up as online, why is that? AOL has set a limit for the maximum number of people you can have in your buddy list. This number is currently 200. Gaim 0.58 gives you a warning if you are over the limit, but if you are using something prior to 0.58, make sure you are not over the limit (and upgrade to something more recent!). The other possibility is that your server-stored buddy list is corrupt. Unfortunately, Gaim 0.53 had a bug that caused it to corrupt some entries, especially group names. While this corruption doesn't show in gaim unless you remove the SCREENNAME.0.blist file from ~/.gaim, it does affect how long the server thinks your list is. The best way to fix this, is to: mv ~/.gaim/SCREENNAME.0.blist ~/ where SCREENNAME is your screenname, without spaces and in all caps. Then signon, delete all groups, signoff, and signon again to verify that your list is empty. Once it is empty, signoff, mv your SCREENNAME.0.blist file back into ~/.gaim, then sign on again. 5.2 IM Image doesn't work, why? IM Image is very sensitive, even from windows. Gaim currently only supports sending IM Images if the sender is not behind a firewall or nat device. Given that the windows version of AIM also has trouble in this situation, we are not sure this is entirely fixable. A work around that is sometimes effective is to have the reciever, not being behind a firewall, request a direct connection, then send the immage. 5.3 I sent an IM Image, but only a blank line shows up, why? You need to have gdk-pixbuf installed to send IM Images, if the reciever is also using gaim, [s]he also needs to have this installed. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 6 IRC Protocol +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.1 Why am I getting disconnected when I try to connect to IRC? You will be disconnected if the nickname you chose is already in use on that IRC server. Try again with a different nickname. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 7 Jabber Protocol +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7.1 How do I choose which Jabber server to use? The Jabber server name is part of your Jabber I.D., such as somebody@server.name. So when entering your Jabber "screen name", the server is specified as part of your JID. 7.2 How do I change my Jabber resource to be other than the default of "/GAIM"? When you create your account in Gaim, simply append the desired resource identifier to your Jabber I.D. For example: somebody@server.name/resource 7.3 How do I register a new Jabber account? As of version 0.52 and up: 1. Click "Tools->Accounts->Add" 2. Select "Jabber" for the protocol. 3. Fill in screen name and password as you normally would. 4. Check the "Register with server" check-box 5. Click "OK". A pop-up will tell you whether the registration succeeded or not. Note: You are strongly recommended to check the "Remember password" check-box as well, as Gaim presently does no password verification. So if you don't type in what you thought you did, you're hosed. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 8 Scripts and Plugins +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.1 Where can I find documentation on writing plugins and Perl scripts? If you look in the plugins/ directory in the Gaim source, you should see a HOWTO file for C plugins and a PERL-HOWTO for Perl scripts. 8.2 How do I compile a plugin for Gaim? To compile a plugin for Gaim, you must have Gaim's source code. There are two ways to get this: Tarballs, and CVS. To work with a tarball, follow the instructions below. To use CVS, follow the instructions on the CVS page. Please note that normally, CVS is much more stable than the tarballs! To work with a tarball, download the latest source code from http://gaim.sf.net/ and untar it with the command: tar zxvf filename where filename is the file you downloaded. After you have a Gaim source code tree, either through tarballs or CVS: 1. Change to the resulting directory and run the command: ./configure This will create the necessary make files. 2. Move the plugin you wish to compile into the plugins/ directory in the Gaim source code tree. 3. Change to the plugins/ directory. 4. Type: make name.so where the name of the file you wish to compile is name.c. Note well the difference in the extensions. If you type make name.c nstead of name.so, it won't work. 5. After make finishes, you can move the plugin to a place that is more convenient. $prefix/lib/gaim is suggested. If you installed Gaim by compiling it yourself, $prefix is /usr/local by default. Otherwise, $prefix is /usr. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 9 Development +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9.1 Where should I report bugs? http://gaim.sf.net/bug.php 9.2 Did you guys reverse engineer it? TOC, Jabber, MSN, Napster, and IRC are published protocols, so we didn't have to reverse engineer those. Oscar, ICQ, and Yahoo are not published, and were reverse engineered by other people. 9.3 Will Gaim be ported to Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP? When GTK+ 2.0 comes out and compiles well against Cygwin, and Gaim has been ported to it, Gaim should work. It will not happen before GTK+ 2.0 is ported to Windows, though. 9.4 Will there be a QT dock app? Right now Gaim, is done entirely in C and GTK+, so a QT dock app is not in planned. You can either write a patch to do this yourself, or wait until the core and UI of Gaim are split. A QT UI will probably be considered at that time. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | 10 Misc. Questions +-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10.1 Does AOL's attempts at blocking Trillian affect Gaim? No. 10.2 Is Gaim affected by the vulnerability found in Windows AIM or Yahoo Instant Messenger clients? No. 10.3 Can I IM you guys? Sure! Look at the Contact Information (http://gaim.sf.net/contactinfo.php) page! 10.4 Can I give you money/hardware/other expensive things that can be hocked for cash what with you all being students/full-time-workers and helping to produce this wonderful software instead of studying/sleeping? No. We're completely fool-hardy and won't accept any gratuities with no strings attached for just being good guys. That and we'd have to share with everyone who has submitted patches. ;-)