Category: GNOME

GNOME 2.21.1 Tarballs Due is tomorrow. I released Empathy 0.21.1, and will follow GNOME’s schedule from now on. Empathy is not yet accepted in GNOME desktop but it’s proposed for inclusion.

I’m also working on MissionControl‘s DBus API standardisation. I opened a darcs branch of telepathy-spec, with and html version. We are reviewing and improving it with nokia’s devs, see discussion on telepathy’s ML.

As always, bug reports and patches are welcome, Empathy has 84 open bugs waiting for your help 😀

The announce is here. VoIP branch get merged in HEAD and now is part of the 0.14 release! However it’s not really stable yet and is disabled by default. You can enable it at build-time with the –enable-voip=yes configure option. VoIP stuff are hidden if not build with voip enabled, that’s an important bug fixed from previous release.

This release also fixes all but one crasher bugs. Here is the last reported crash, I don’t understand the backtrace, if someone can tell me what’s happening I’ll give him a beer.

The announce is here. I opened a branch for VoIP support, it more or less work but don’t expect too much atm.

I proposed Empathy for inclusion in GNOME Desktop 2.22, you can follow the discussion here.

… with python binding (!!) and a Salut (link-local) account configured by default using information from gnome-about-me. All you need is install Empathy+telepathy-salut, enable the salut account and you can chat with people on your local network. File transfer is not yet merged, we are waiting for the telepathy spec to be reviewed and approuved before implementing it in CMs and Empathy.

Thanks to all contributors!

We still have 67 open bugs… help is appreciated !

See release notes for more details.

As you can see on the release notes this release comes with tones of bug fixed. Thanks to allof you who contributed at fixing bugs opened by Vincent Untz and other testers. Please keep helping us making the future GNOME IM client and framework.

If you are going to use libempathy(-gtk) API for you applets or other collaborative work, please keep in mind that the API is not stable yet and may change at anytime. However you can start experimenting with it.

File transfer support is on his way.

We now have telepathy-haze which is a ConnectionManager based on top of pidgin’s libpurple. That means that Empathy can connect MSN/Jabber/Yahoo/etc, all protocols supported by libpurple.

And finally MissionControl’s DBus API is being standardised, based on Nokia’s MC and Decibel. The goal is to be able to run a GNOME IM program like Empathy in a KDE environment using accounts defined by kopette, for example.

If you want to contribute there is 60 open bugs in Empathy!

With this version comes important things !

libempathy and libempathy-gtk are now installed libraries with public C API. You can see documentation (gtkdoc) with devhelp. That means other applications can now link on libempathy(-gtk) to integrate IM support. At guadec I seen IM stuff in abiword and inkscape, they both implement everything themself with a different UI. Using empathy those projects can support collaborative edition very easilly using stream/dbus tubes (not merged into gabble yet). Python bindings is underdevelopment bug #457660. You can begin to write other language bindings, but keep in mind that the API can change at any time !

Thanks to Vincent Untz reviewing the whole empathy UI, there is now 62 open bugs for Empathy ! Most should be really easy to fix, so if you have free time and want to hack on the future GNOME IM client please help me to fix bugs !

The 0.9 release announce:

Empathy 0.9 is now available for download from:
http://download.gnome.org/sources/empathy/0.9/

58ae0939f44d91f9887f235ee1bc3e52 empathy-0.9.tar.gz
74c7255a56ffa8e37147a1a0cfe40565 empathy-0.9.tar.bz2

What is it?
===========
Empathy consists of a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets. It uses Telepathy and Nokia’s Mission Control, and reuses Gossip’s UI. The main goal is to permit desktop integration by providing libempathy and libempathy-gtk libraries. libempathy-gtk is a set of powerful widgets that can be embeded into any GNOME application.

Where can I find out more?
==========================
You can visit the project web site:
http://live.gnome.org/Empathy

What’s New?
===========
– Initial room list support. It doesn’t work yet but most of the code is ready.
– Tell the user when a message can’t be sent.
– Set all contacts from salut protocol to the “Local Network” group.
– Fix NetworkManager support.
– Iconify main window to the status icon like in rhythmbox.
– Show avatars in chatrooms.
– Fix avatar not being requested when empathy starts.
– Remove unused nickname entry and use a GtkTable for room information.
– Set a window title and fix alignment of widgets for contact related dialogs
(add, edit/view info).
– Adding initial API documentation using gtk-doc.
– Auto-accept to publish presence to contacts that are in our subscribe list.
When accepting a pending contact add it to publish and subscribe list.
– Filter incoming text channels and make status icon flash when there we
receive a new message. Dispatch the channel only when we get a message and
the user click on the icon.
– Install libempathy and libempathy-gtk and make their API public. The API is
NOT STABLE AT ALL !!!

Bugs Fixed:
===========
– Fixed #451564, crash in Empathy Instant Messenger: Nothing — having open c… (Xavier Claessens)
– Fixed #454277, crash in Empathy Instant Messenger: Started empathy and was … (Xavier Claessens)
– Fixed #443162, MSN account settings need a better UI (Cosimo Cecchi)
– Fixed #444490, Gossip–>Empathy conversion (Mario Danic, Xavier Claessens)
– Fixed #452536, Provide a nice API to launch EmpathyLogManager (Xavier Claessens)
– Fixed #455240, add EMPATHY_LOGFILE env variable (Guillaume Desmottes)
– Fixed #457992, Rounded avatars (Raphael Slinckx)
– Fixed #458106, Iconify nicely to the status icon (Jaap A. Haitsma)

Translations:
=============
– Updated sv: Daniel Nylander
– Updated pl: Tomasz Dominikowski
– Updated es: Jorge Gonzalez
– Updated ja: Takeshi AIHANA

Manual Translations:
====================
None

25 July 2007
Empathy team

Senko hacked a little epiphany plugin using python binding for libempathy. It shows how empathy can be used for IM intergration into GNOME desktop.

Here is his blog post with screenshots !

I’ll merge python binding patch into empathy HEAD as soon as possible, at the moment it’s available in bugzilla.

For any question you can talk to me at Guadec until sunday morning 🙂

Empathy 0.8 is now available for download from:
http://download.gnome.org/sources/empathy/0.8/

43688633798403fda6612da8ccd200b1 empathy-0.8.tar.gz
752074c88667fc796ee0cebe58a1f726 empathy-0.8.tar.bz2

What is it?
===========
Empathy consists of a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets. It uses Telepathy and Nokia’s Mission Control, and reuses Gossip’s UI. The main goal is to permit desktop integration by providing libempathy and libempathy-gtk libraries. libempathy-gtk is a set of powerful widgets that can be embeded into any GNOME application.

Where can I find out more?
==========================
You can visit the project web site:
http://live.gnome.org/Empathy

What’s New?
===========
– Fixed contact list handling.
– Make use of NetworkManager to set presence to OFFLINE when we are disconnected
and restore presence once we are reconnected.
– UI for searching in conversation history and to view all conversations with
a given contact.
– Do not use 2 different processes (empathy and empathy-chat), merge them
into one client. This is easier for debugging and share data.
– Do not create log directory for a chat if there is no messages to put in.
– Do not set active contacts when creating the store, and when contact groups
changed.
– Fix warning when using command-line options.
– Ignore ssl errors by default. This is needed to connect jabber accounts
using ssl.
– Adding spellcheck support using aspell.
– Lots of bugs fixed.

Bugs Fixed:
===========
– Fixed #445859, Add Smooth scrolling to chat view. (Raphael Slinckx)
– Fixed #446161, Unable to generate pot file (Xavier Claessens)
– Fixed #447178, crash on Add to Favorites (Xavier Claessens)
– Fixed #447659, Salut protocol icons (Michael Monreal)

Translations:
=============
– Updated ja: Takeshi AIHANA
– Updated dz: Pema Geyleg
– Updated pl: Tomasz Dominikowski
– Updated es: Jorge Gonzalez
– Updated hu: Gabor Kelemen

21 June 2007
Empathy team

Here is my first post with the new interface in blogs.gnome.org. It’s really great ! Thanks to GNOME webmasters and to WordPress team.

Empathy is still improving every day, here is the announce of 0.7 I just released:

Empathy 0.7 is now available for download from:
http://download.gnome.org/sources/empathy/0.7/

e1582652a5fb7fb23570b0dab7d3a9bc empathy-0.7.tar.gz
c63eded14fc0ad0feb38114569191f8d empathy-0.7.tar.bz2

What is it?
===========
Empathy consists of a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets. It uses Telepathy and Nokia’s Mission Control, and reuses Gossip’s UI. The main goal is to permit desktop integration by providing libempathy and libempathy-gtk libraries. libempathy-gtk is a set of powerful widgets that can be embeded into any GNOME application.

Where can I find out more?
==========================
You can visit the project web site:
http://live.gnome.org/Empathy

What’s New?
===========
– Adding new contacts.
– Accept/Reject contacts who wants to get our presence.
– Edit/View contacts information.
– Get name and topic properties for chatrooms.
– Log chats and display 10 last messages when opening a new chat.
– Set presence to available for protocols that do not supports presence
(SIP, IRC).
– Lots of bugs fixed.

Bugs Fixed:
===========
– Fixed #439931, Segmentation faults when trying to add MSN account. (Xavier Claessens)
– Fixed #444135, crash, when maximizing window with IRC channels (Xavier Claessens)
– Fixed #444680, empathy svn122 build error — patch attached (Matej Cepl)

Translations:
=============
– Updated sv: Daniel Nylander
– Updated es: Jorge Gonzalez

09 June 2007
Empathy team