Rendezvous Protocol for Miranda
Thursday, April 14, 2005
This plugin for the Miranda Instant Messenger allows simple serverless chat on a LAN.
Because it uses the same protocol as Apple's iChat, you can now talk easily with all your smug Mac friends, and hang out with the cool kids at conferences.
Requirements:
- Miranda 0.4 or greater.
- Apple Rendezvous / Bonjour
Alternatively, if you're happy with your current IM setup and just want a simple Rendezvous chat client, you can download this stand alone version.
This is simply a stripped down installation of Miranda with all the other protocols removed. It still requires you to install Rendezvous.
The iChat plugin is free software licensed under the GPL. The sourcecode is freely available.
53 Comments:
Do you think you will post source code of your ichat plugin?
Miranda site report an open-source/gpl status for your code. If not it will be wonderful to let user share their clipboard (like http://www.lagercrantz.ath.cx/software/clipboardsharing/ or http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/spike/) or simply sharing a folder.
However GOOD WORK! I like it very much! Bye!
It's me again....excuse me for my english... :(
I definitely applaud the fact that someone did this. I'm surprised there's not a whole glut of little iChat-compatible clients for Windows/linux/etc. I thought I might have to write it myself, although I wouldn't have had any idea where to begin, since pretty much all I've programmed in for the last 10 years is perl.
In testing this though, I couldn't get file transfers to work, which would be the most useful feature on my office LAN. Us Mac users use iChat/Rendezvous for this, but the PC users are left out. Was it just the machine that I was testing on? I did have to download two DLLs that I got error messages about, maybe there were other updates that the machine was missing. Or, does the file transfer not yet work in your plug-in? Or even in Miranda at all?
Miranda does do file transfer, but I haven't had time to get it working with iChat yet.
It's on my todo list.
Hello! thanks for doing this. :-)
I've noticed a small issue. When you change your Contact display to "First Name" in the second position, it displays "Gareth" as the sender on the local client. In future versions, is there any chance of the remote client displaying the username@computername? - would be wonderful...
thanks for all the hard work!
Justin
Hi,
ok, maybe I'm just too stupid to make it work, but I tihnk I've done pretty much everything in your instructions: installed Miranda 0.4, RendezVous, the dll in the plugins directory, etc. However, I am still unable to get the ichat up and running. it just doesn't see mto appear in my miranda interface. Besides, I get an error now when I launch it saying the msvcp71.dll can't be found. and have a copy of the dll righ on my miranda folder... any ideas to elp me out ? pretty please ? ;)
Great little program that I love to use on my home network between machines. Have you considered submitting it to apple and version tracker? Get some credit where credit is due!!!!
Consider submitting this to apple to have it featured in their downloads!!
Submit it at: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/submit/
What Le Chninkel said. I am having the exact same problem!
Seems like a neat app tho'. File transfer hasn't been working for me forever so I wouldn't expect that.
I think I have worked out that dll problem.
I'll release a version as soon as I can.
That's great! I'll be looking forward to that and make sure to keep checking back!
is the dll problem fixed yet?
Wouldn't it be easyer to make a real stand alone client than to use miranda for that so then you'd only have what you need?
Great little app, Gareth. Downloaded the stand-alone version and tried it out with someone at work who has a PowerBook with Panther on it, and it worked like a charm. As mentioned already by someone else, it doesn't support file transfers it seems, but it still works quite well.
One thing I did notice, however. The guy I tested with had sent me a message while I was away from my desk, and he'd left for the day by the time I got back. But even though he was no longer on the network, the buddy list still showed him. More interesting, though, was what happened when I tried to send him a reply. There was a long delay, and then I saw my message posted, with the following in front of it:
"Gareth Simpson: "
So...what? When someone's no longer available, the ghost of the author speaks on my behalf? :-) Just figured you'd like to know. Took me awhile to realize, though. At first, I was like, "Who is Garreth Simpson?" Duh on my part.
Anyway, thanks for a great little app. Keep at it!
Hi, nice pluggin you got there. I have been thinking of creating a similar pluggin for kopete messenger (Linux, KDE), so I wanted to ask you if you have any specification about how the protocol works. I have checkedout your source and I see that you have basicaly just forged the jabber code that existed in miranda. Well, I would like to know if there are any differences between normal jabber and iChat's jabber protocol and what are those differences.
Best regards
Brcha
great app!
is there a way to choose your screen name, the 'View/Change My details' button seems to be broken. If not, where does the app get this info from (so i can just change it there, i'm coming up as a previous user of this computer)
It picks up your name from the logged in windows user.
Overriding that is on my todo list.
Excellent Plugin. Thanks. Any chance on getting it to behave for multiple users on one machine. In my case we have all of our users logged onto a single windows terminal server. I can make the miranda client itself work nicely with multiple instances, but rendezvous doesnt deal with multiple instances from the same machine.
Gareth:
When do you think that you'll get to changing it so people can set their own nick name? I see that it's on your TODO, but do you have a timeline for this?
Thanks much!
Any update on the .dll issue?
Many thanks for your time!
so is this compliant with ichat? does ichat have its own protocol or does it use jabber as the core protocol? how hard would it be to port this over to java? maybe even use JNI?
let me know, i apperiate it.
-sammie.
It's compliant with iChat.
Locally iChat uses it's own version of the Jabber protocol.
It would be trivial to get working in java.
You would basically just need a java Zeroconf library and a jabber library that you can modify.
Check this post out for more details.
I just have followed all the instructions and I can get a "iChat=online" status in Miranda but I can not chat with iChat users. I've gotten some AIM nicks from the dotmac.info's iChat users list in order to make some friends and a month latter nobody appears "online" even when their personal page on this site says that they do.
What can I do?
I'll apprecite your help
MacDream
I've got a question for you. I'm on a corporate network, and looking for something easy to IM my counterparts in other parts of the country. If I'm on a 10.3.0.* network, and my counterparts are on a 10.1.0.* network, will this work for us?
I really couldn't say I'm afraid. I suggest you just suck it and see :)
It seems that my contact list does not refresh very well for bonjour. It looks like it adds users as they come online pretty well, but does not update the list when they go offline.
Example: In my office, if I log the mac across the room into iChat it immediately appears in my Miranda list as an online user. However, when I take the mac offline it still remains in my Miranda list as an online user. It remains this way until I take Miranda offline and then back on, at which point you get the correct current list again.
Since I'm on a network with around 60-70 macs, you can imagine that if I left it online all day, at the end of the day the list would likely be pretty inaccurate.
I read others also talking about similar quirks with the status updates.
Apart from that, I absolutely love the plug-in. Makes my life so much easier. Thanks for spending your time developing it!
Any update on the .dll issue? This program would be of HUGE use in my studio.
Keep up the great work, much appreciated!
I am happily using this plugin.
On small bug is that when using the Updater plugin I constantly get prompted to update from 0.0.1.1 to 0.0.1.5 but the Updater will never actually update the file.
Only a small prblem and I'm not sure where the problem lies.
This rocks! Thank you for taking time to build it!
WOW!!!...I am the developer at a Design firm, and the only one on a blasted PeeCee, so until about 5 minutes ago, I was sadly left out of the loop, with the designers being able to ichat away through rendezvous... THANK YOU for letting me join in!!!
Unfortunately we have no Apple on our LAN. Fortunately I have many friends with Apples on the internet. Unfortunately I have no idea if this plugin will allow me to chat with them. Will it?
the bonjour download has about 14 MB, what about an ichat-plugin version which works without bonjour? would JmDNS for example be possible?
Very nice plugin. The only issue is the one that the above user stated, about the lack of removal of users when they sign off. iChat sees Miranda as a usual client, and accuratly handles sign-offs. Miranda does not update for other Miranda Bonjour/Rendezvous users. That seems to be the only issue. Great idea, but can you mature it a bit more? Thanks!
hello, i have the exact problem refreshing the contact list of rendezvous users, the list dont refresh when users turn off miranda.
can you help me?
email: paulorelogio@gmail.com
by the way...excelente work :D
Paulo
from Portugal
Hello.
some people ask for a capability of change the username visible on ichat.
i would like to propose not to do that. because in a corporate environment its essential to assure that the user is the loged-on user. and not someone else.
i would sugest that the personalized text would be under the name. or next to the name.
in a internal network its really important to log in with the computer log in user.
thanks in advance.
if im misunderstud i can explain better.
Paulo
from Portugal
Though the file downloaded shows a version of 0.0.1.5, the plug-ins list in Miranda shows 0.0.1.1 for it and Updater prompts to update it on every launch.
Hmm When I activate it the whole Ichat system disconnected for all the other users on the network...
Hmm When I activate it the whole Ichat system disconnected for all the other users on the network...
If anyone is still having problems with that msvcp71.dll file, I had the same problem and solved it.
I just Googled "msvcp71.dll". A bunch of sites came up to download it. I downloaded, unzipped, and put the DLL into Windows/System32. I then tried opening again, and it told me I was missing another DLL (almost the same name, but one letter different). So I did the same for that one, and it worked!
Here's a blog I found that seems to address and answer this exact problem, which sort of helped guide me. Maybe you'll have better luck reading it. I think its Hindi or something. http://ryosaeba.wordpress.com/2006/04/05/miranda-plus-plugin-ichat/
By the way, I'm not a Windows IT guy, so I don't know for sure if what I did is safe or not, but it worked for me. :)
Thanks for this plugin! But as i try to get the sourcecode your server refuse me.
I want to develop the plugin and want to put more features into it. Could you contact me?
Not that I expect it to be fixed as you haven't updated in a while, but miranda crashes if I have ichat online and then start the rendezvous plugin on trillian pro. Or if it is already running on trillian pro and ichat tries to "connect". It should just disconnect or otherwise just not crash miranda in such situations.
The only thing I would immediately add is removing my own login from the list of iChat available clients.
The source code is no longer available as provided by the link on the page, is there another way I could get the source code for this plugin?
Thank you so much for providing this. I've been searching for an easy way to have our users able to show if they are at their desk or not, and this seems to be the ticket. We're on a hybrid Mac/Win network.
One question: is there some mailing list or something to jump on to get updates from you?
Thanks again. You're a star!
hi, very nice plugin... unfortunately, i dont't here any sounds (i use the "stripped down" version you provide), although sounds are activated in the options menu... have other users experienced the same problem? however, thanks for the plugin... i like it
Could you update the link to sources:
They can be found here
Cheers,
Updated.
One thing I don't like: All iChat icons are in a group named "Rendezvous users", if I drag them out of there they will go back on next status change. Everytime I go offline Miranda prompts me "Are you sure you want to delete this group?" (I assume this is related). I'd prefer to be able to group my contacts according to my own preferences.
grab icons for iChat from this iconset: OSX Icons http://addons.miranda-im.org/details.php?action=viewfile&id=129
Hi, I'm waiting for the next release. When do you think it's ready?
Could you please:
- remove bugs in file transfer between iChat and miranda
- allow personal profile editing
- remove bugs on groups management
Thank you!
Good work!
Somehow I can not connect to Trillian Rendezvous users on the local network. I see their machines,but can't talk to them. Any Ideas why?
This has been a great plug-in for us. We are trying to get rid of AOL for our teachers and this allows us still to im inside our network. We are mostly mac with ichat but need a way for our windows users to communicate. One issue I found and I wonder if anyone has noticed this - but when a ichat user sends a message to a miranda user and it has an apostophe in it then the key mapping (i think that is what shows up) is displayed instead of the apostrophe. Any thoughts on that - if you need a transcript or something feel free to e-mail me at ka_stober@kalida.k12.oh.us
Thanks
I know it's been more than 2 years since you originally posted this, so you may have abandoned the project altogether. However, I'll give it a shot... have you come up with a way to manually change the display name that is broadcast to the network when using the standalone version?
Hello. I'm experiencing pretty interesting problem. I see in Options > Visibility all of the Bonjour clients properly but in the contact list itself I can't see anyone. See the sreenshot. http://img49.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sshot1zf5.png Any hints? Thanks.
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