NAME
tkabber-plugins — the set of standard plugins for Tkabber, an XMPP
(Jabber) client
SYNOPSIS
mkdir -p ~/.tkabber/plugins
ln -s /usr/share/tkabber-plugins/PLUGIN_NAME ~/.tkabber/plugins
rm ~/.tkabber/plugins/PLUGIN_NAME
DESCRIPTION
tkabber-plugins is the full set of standard plugins for Tkabber, an
XMPP (Jabber) client. They are maintained as a part of Tkabber and
implement various kinds of useful but non-essential functionality.
This manual page explains how to install and uninstall Tkabber plugins
and briefly describes all plugins provided by this package.
MANAGING PLUGINS
Each plugin is just a directory containing necessary files. The
directories of all the plugins are located under /usr/share/tkabber-
plugins
When Tkabber starts up it looks for a special directory
~/.tkabber/plugins (i.e. the directory named .tkabber/plugins located
under the user’s home directory). If it exists, Tkabber considers all
its subdirectories as installed plugins and "loads" them. So the
installation and removal of plugins is just a matter of maintaining
proper symbolic links under ~/.tkabber/plugins to the actual
directories of plugins.
Note that the directory ~/.tkabber/plugins as well as ~/.tkabber might
well not exist at the time you will be installing plugins. This is
normal, so just go on and create the necessary directory structure if
needed.
A word of caution: Please do not install a plugin if you do not
understand what kind of functionality it is supposed to provide! This
is because some plugins may have impact on usage experience unsolicited
by the user. For instance, ctcomp plugin "hijacks" several keyboard
shortcuts from the chat input windows for its own usage, etc. So to be
on the safe side always read at least the introductory section of a
plugin’s README file if one is provided.
INSTALLING PLUGINS
To install a plugin simply copy or — much better — symlink the
directory of the chosen plugin under ~/.tkabber/plugins — a directory
Tkabber searches for plugins when it starts up.
If the ~/.tkabber/plugins directory doesn’t exist just create it:
mkdir -p ~/.tkabber/plugins
It’s better to create a symbolic link rather than copying because this
greatly simplifies the upgrade process: when a new version of tkabber-
plugins is installed, symbolic links under ~/.tkabber/plugins will
automatically start to point to the new versions of installed plugins.
Contrary to this, if you copy plugin directories rather than symlink
them, you will be required to reinstall the plugins being used.
After the plugin is installed you have to restart Tkabber for it to
find and load the plugin.
UNINSTALLING PLUGINS
To uninstall a plugin simply delete its directory from under
~/.tkabber/plugins directory.
UPGRADING PLUGINS
Provided you created symbolic links to actual directories of needed
plugins to install them, uprgading to the next version of tkabber-
plugins will be fully automatic.
Otherwise you will have to remove obsoleted versions of plugins from
under ~/.tkabber/plugins and then install their new versions back.
AVAILABLE PLUGINS
Below is the list of all provided plugins and their brief descriptions.
The proper name of each plugin is also the name of its directory
located under /usr/share/tkabber-plugins so is’s that name you use for
installing and uninstalling that particular plugin.
aniemoticons
Plugin which adds support of animated emoticons.
attline
Plugin which draws so-called attention line - a line before the
first message in a chat window where the window has lost
keyboard focus. All messages after the line are unread messages.
bc A word game. Inludes a russian file.
browser
Plugin which implements Jabber Browser (XEP-0011). This protocol
is deprecated in favor of Service Discovery (XEP-0030), but may
be useful for pre-XMPP servers/transports.
checkers
Checkers game for two players (including Straight, Russian,
Spanish, Brazilian, Pool, Italian checkers). When installed, you
can send an invitation to your contact (contextual menu on the
roster). If the other player has also Tkabber and the plugin
installed, he will recieve the invitation. If he accepts, a
window will open on both.
chess Chess game for two players. When installed, you can send an
invitation to your contact (contextual menu on the roster). If
the other player has also Tkabber and the plugin installed, he
will recieve the invitation. If he accepts, a window will open
on both.
ctcomp Plugin adds support for "text completion" in Tkabber’s chat
input windows which works like the similar features of the Vim
and Emacs text editors. The matching words are picked from the
corresponding chat log and input windows.
custom-urls
Provides regexp-based mechanism to convert strings with numbers
to URLs in chat windows.
cyrillize
Utility to translate misprinted characters to cyrillic pressing
Ctrl+’.
debug Allows to see debug messages in separate tab/window.
ejabberd
Utility to check your Ejabberd Jabber server remotely.
floatinglog
Plugin reports incoming messages, presence changes, status
changes in a separate floating window.
georoster
World map. It tries to position your contacts using the data on
vcard. You can also drag and drop your contacts from the roster
on their possitions.
gmail Plugin allows Gmail/Googlemail users to receive mail
notifications.
iconsets
Several iconsets, borrowed from other Jabber clients, now are
represented in this plugin.
jidlink
Implements Jidlink file transfer protocol. It’s undocumented and
obsolete, but may be useful for transferring files to old
Tkabber versions.
latex Displays formulas in LaTeX notation as embedded images,
generated by LaTeX and ImageMagick.
mute Experimental implementation of XEP-0058: Multi-User Text
Editing, now deferred.
openurl
Plugin which adds several items to a URL popup menu. Each item
allows to open the URL in a certain browser.
osd Displays certain events (presence and chat messages)
notification using osd_cat utility.
presencecmd
Plugin which adds several commands in a chat window. They change
user’s presence information (global or directed).
quiz Adaptation of He3hauka (a russian quiz game for IRC).
quotelastmsg
Provides a way to "quote" the message located at the very bottom
of the conversation log of a chat window -- that is, to copy
such message into the input box of the same chat window with
some decorations added (by default the ">> " string is
prepeneded to the message). By default, quoting is done using
the <Alt-q> keyboard shortcut.
receipts
Implements XEP-0184 "Message receipts": in one-to-one chat
sessions it is able to request confirmations of reception of
outgoing messages and reply to such requests coming from remote
party.
renju Gomoku and Renju (in fact, renju is not implemented yet) game
for two players. When installed, you can send an invitation to
your contact (contextual menu on the roster). If the other
player has also Tkabber and the plugin installed, he will
recieve the invitation. If he accepts, a window will open on
both.
reversi
Reversi (othello) game for two players. When installed, you can
send an invitation to your contact (contextual menu on the
roster). If the other player has also Tkabber and the plugin
installed, he will recieve the invitation. If he accepts, a
window will open on both.
singularity
Keeps the conversation with a person in just one window when
that person sends messages from different resources of his/her
JID: when the new window for a one-on-one chat is about to be
opened the plugin checks whether there are any active chat
sessions with the same bare JID (that is, without the
"/resource" part) as that of the new chat. If there are, they
are closed with their conversation log and input history
preserved, the new chat window is opened and then the saved data
is inserted into the new window. So effectively this plugin
makes Tkabber keep just one chat window per bare JID open.
socials
Adds many ’social’ commands like /dance. Includes english and
russian files.
spy Logs your contacts presence changes to a window or to a file.
Allows to setup alert window for certain contacts.
stripes
Allows to colorize backgrounds of the whole messages placed in
the conversation logs of Tkabber chat windows. Backgrounds of
even and odd messages can be configured separately from each
other (or not configured at all).
tclchat
Plugin, which makes chatting in Tclers’ chat
(tcl@tach.tclers.tk) easier. It recognises a bot, which
connects Jabber room with IRC channel, and maps IRC users to
Jabber conference participants.
tkabber-khim
Plugin that adds KHIM (an alternative input method by Kevin
Kenny) support to Tkabber. It can be used to input characters
not directly available from installed keymaps.
traffic
Approximately accounts incoming and outgoing XMPP traffic by
addressees. Traffic estimation is good only if no stream
compression or encryption is used. But even if the absolute
values are incorrect, it still allows to find which remote JID
consumes the highest traffic amount.
unixkeys
Adds support for "Unix-style" (in fact, GNU Readline and GNU
bash -style) keyboard shortcuts for text editing to all text
entry widgets in Tkabber.
whiteboard
Shared whiteboard, allows two contacts or a whole chatroom to
draw collaboratively.
EXAMPLES
To install a plugin:
1. Create the directory which Tkabber searches for plugins
installed for the user:
mkdir -p ~/.tkabber/plugins
You have to do this only once.
2. Pick the plugin you would like to install. Suppose this is the
georoster plugin providing the World map which depicts the
geographical coordinates of the contacts on your roster.
3. Install it by creating a symbolic link from the plugin’s
directory to the directory of user’s plugins. Continuing with
our georoster example, you will have to issue this command:
ln -s /usr/share/tkabber-plugins/georoster ~/.tkabber/plugins
4. Repeat for any other plugins you want to install.
5. Restart Tkabber.
To uninstall a plugin just remove its directory from the directory of
the user’s plugins. For example, to remove the installed georoster
plugin issue this command:
rm ~/.tkabber/plugins/georoster
SEE ALSO
README files for various plugins under /usr/share/doc/tkabber-plugins
tkabber(1).
Tkabber reference manual: /usr/share/doc/tkabber/tkabber.html
Tkabber WWW site: http://tkabber.jabber.ru/
Tkabber wiki pages: http://tkabber.jabe.ru/
AUTHORS
The plugins comprising the tkabber-plugins package were written by
various people. Please consult the /usr/share/doc/copyright file for
further details.
This manual page was written by Konstantin Khomoutov
<flatworm@users.sourceforge.net>, for the Debian project (but may be
used by others).
October 27, 2009