annotate plugins/HOWTO @ 12645:fc28451f5d96

[gaim-migrate @ 14983] SF Patch #1314512 from Sadrul (who has a patch for everything) "This patch introduces a flag for protocol plugins that support offline messages (like Y!M and ICQ). This was encouraged by the following conversation: <sadrul> should offline buddies be listed/enabled in the send-to menu? <rekkanoryo> i would think only for protocols that support offline messaging, if it's indicated that the buddy is offline -- <snip> -- <Bleeter> sadrul: personally, I'd like to see a 'supports offline' flag of some description <Bleeter> one could then redirect (via plugins) through email or alternative methods <Bleeter> just a thought <Paco-Paco> yeah, that sounds like a reasonble thing to have This patch uses this flag to disable the buddies in the send-to menu who are offline and the protocol doesn't support offline messages." I made this make the label insensitive instead of the whole menuitem. This should address SimGuy's concerns about inconsistency (i.e. you could create a conversation with someone via the buddy list that you couldn't create via the Send To menu). I also hacked up some voodoo to show the label as sensitive when moused-over, as that looks better (given the label-insensitive thing is itself a hack). I think this works quite well. BUG NOTE: This makes more obvious an existing bug. The Send To menu isn't updated when buddies sign on or off or change status (at least under some circumstances). We need to fix that anyway, so I'm not going to let it hold up this commit. Switching tabs will clear it up. I'm thinking we just might want to build the contents of that menu when it is selected. That would save us a mess of inefficient signal callbacks that update the Send To menus in open windows all the time. AIM NOTE: This assumes that AIM can't offline message. That's not strictly true. You can message invisible users on AIM. However, by design, we can't tell when a user is invisible without resorting to dirty hackery. In practice, this isn't a problem, as you can still select the AIM user from the menu. And really, how often will you be choosing the Invisible contact, rather than the user going Invisible in the middle of a conversation or IMing you while they're Invisible? JABBER NOTE: This assumes that Jabber can always offline message. This isn't strictly true. Sadrul said: I have updated Jabber according to this link which seems to talk about how to determine the existence offline-message support in a server: http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0013.html#discover However, jabber.org doesn't seem to send the required info. So I am not sure about it. He later said: I talked to Nathan and he said offline message support is mostly assumed for most jabber servers. GTalk doesn't yet support it, but they are working on it. So I have made jabber to always return TRUE. If there is truly no way to detect offline messaging capability, then this is an acceptable solution. We could special case Google Talk because of its popularity, and remove that later. It's probably not worth it though. MSN NOTE: This assumes that MSN can never offline message. That's effectively true, but to be technically correct, MSN can offline message if there's already a switchboard conversation open with a user. We could write an offline_message function in the MSN prpl to detect that, but it'd be of limited usefulness, especially given that under most circumstances (where this might matter), the switchboard connection will be closed almost immediately. CVS NOTE: I'm writing to share a tragic little story. I have a PC that I use for Gaim development. One day, I was writing a commit message on it, when all of a suddent it went berserk. The screen started flashing, and the whole commit message just disappeared. All of it. And it was a good commit message! I had to cram and rewrite it really quickly. Needless to say, my rushed commit message wasn't nearly as good, and I blame the PC for that. Seriously, though, what kind of version control system loses your commit message on a broken connection to the server? Stupid! committer: Tailor Script <[e-mail]>

Everything in this file should be considered old and potentially out of
date.  For more reliable information, install doxygen and graphiz dot, 
then run 
make docs
in the gaim source tree. This will produce html docs in gaim/docs/html 
that will provide an api reference and in the related pages section, 
information on perl and c plugins. 


Ok, this howto is going to be really short and sweet and to the point.

First off, before you do anything else, in all of the files for your plugin,
put the lines

#define GAIM_PLUGINS
#include "gaim.h"

I mean this. Without this, all kinds of things will not work correctly. If you
really want to know exactly what this does, read ../src/gaim.h and learn. But
if you don't want to do that, just know that it's important.

Now that you've put that there, make sure gaim.h is in your include path.

Ok, now you're ready to write the plugin.

The only function that is required is gaim_plugin_init(GModule *). This gets
called as soon as it gets loaded (sort of - man dlopen for more details). If
your function never returns, it will crash gaim! If your plugin uses up all
the memory in the system, it will crash gaim! Once your plugin gets loaded,
it effectively becomes a part of gaim, and anything that goes wrong will look
like it is a problem with gaim itself. I write bugfree code! :) Therefore, it
is your problem, not mine. (I'm usually nice and willing to help you with your
problems though.)

The GModule* that gets passed to gaim_plugin_init is the handle for the plugin.
DO NOT CHANGE THIS POINTER! Bad things will happen. You've been warned. It's
needed for connecting to signals and things. It's a good idea to remember it
somehow.

gaim_plugin_init should return a char*. If the char* returned is not NULL, it
is interpreted as an error, and used as an error message. See the ChangeLog
file in this directory for more details.

You can basically do anything you want in the plugin. You can make function
calls, change public widgets, display new widgets, things like that. But the
really neat thing is you can do things at events. For example, when one of
your buddies signs on, you can instantly send them a message. You can modify
the incoming and outgoing text. You can do all kinds of crazy things. Whatever
you want. Check out SIGNALS for more information.

Plugins can share globals with gaim, but will not share with other plugins.
This is so if you have a global variable GtkWidget *window in your plugin and
J. Random Hacker also has the same name on a global variable, you won't be
constantly overwriting each others' variables. Unfortunately, this also means
that plugins will have difficulty working together. But then again, that's
what shared memory is for.

Plugins can be configured. This makes it so they don't have to be recompiled
in order to change things internal to them, and it's also just a cool feature
to have :). It's optional; to allow your plugin to be configured, add a
function called gaim_plugin_config(). The advised course of action is to have
it pop up a dialog window; but it's your plugin.

When your plugin gets unloaded, gaim will try to call gaim_plugin_remove(). It
doesn't have to be there, but it's nice if, say, you create a window, and when
the plugin gets unloaded, it removes the window. Also, all the callbacks you
have attached to gaim signals will be removed.

Plugins can also unload themselves. To do this, call gaim_plugin_unload(GModule *)
(the GModule* is the handle passed to gaim_plugin_init). When your plugin gets
unloaded, gaim will remove all of your callbacks. It will not call your
gaim_plugin_remove function, however, since it will assume you have already
done the necessary cleanup.

Compilation of the plugins is fairly straight-forward; there is a Makefile in
this directory that has a rule for making the .so file from a .c file. No
modification of the Makefile should be necessary, unless if you simply want
to type 'make' to have it made; otherwise, 'make filename.so' will take
filename.c and make the .so plugin from it. If you need to link in with extra
libraries, you can set the environment variable PLUGIN_LIBS to be the libraries
you want to link with.

There are a few examples in this directory. Enjoy.