rediffbol-prpl

rediffbol-prpl is a Rediffbol plugin for libpurple, the backend that runs many well known open source messenger clients, including Pidgin, Adium etc.

The latest release of rediffbol-prpl uses the official RBol protocol, thanks to the reverse-engineering done by Binu Paul, who wrote Rtalk.

The older version (very buggy, and should not be used) uses RediffBol's HTTP interface to interact with the server, which was easy to "reverse engineer" from RediffMail's javascript files.

Download it while its hot!

The latest release we have is 0.2.5, released on 3rd June 2009. Download it now. Feel free to report bugs and/or feature requests on the project page.

So what works?

Sending and receiving chat messages, including offline messages.
Message formatting upto Italics and bold for received messages
Typing notifications.
Adding/Removing buddies and Authorizing/Denying addrequest.
Viewing and setting avatars (setting avatar is supported only through rediff's webinterface). Avatar is RediffBol's name for Buddy Icons.
Group management.
New mail count! This one feature will in itself make it useful for those who have migrated from Rediffmail, but still want to keep track of email that they receive.

What does not work [yet].

Font faces and font styles in received messages. (This was conciously not added for technical reasons).
Outgoing messages cannot be formatted.
Support for chat rooms not implemented yet.
Shock.
HTTP proxy support (I believe this is technically possible. But there's some amount of work to be done for this :( ).

Help me!

You're welcome as a developer on this project!

I especially need help with autoconf and automake. The current Makefile is not _nice_. I doubt how portably it compiles too. I need more testing on Windows also.

You can clone the git repository using git clone git://rediffbol-prpl.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/rediffbol-prpl. I'll be more than happy to give you write permissions if you want it for a good reason.

Contact

Arnold Noronha: arnold AT cmi DOT ac DOT in. You're welcome to add me as a buddy on RediffBol, my id is arn_2000 AT rediffmail DOT com. Can also spend some time visiting my personal homepage or my blog.

Other RediffBol Clients and Acknowledgements

Rtalk is a Java based RediffBol client written by Binu Paul (binu_paul AT users DOT sourceforge DOT net).

In fact, rediffbol-prpl would not have been possible if not for all the help and clarifications that Binu had given me! Also can't do without acknowledging the amazing work done by the libpurple and pidgin teams!