Hi Randy On Wed, 21 Nov 2001, randy turner wrote: > > > hi chuck, > i went to the site but i am not sure what file to download. > can you give me a step by step because i am new to the program. > do i need to compile imcom? > it seems like i might need a library > for imcom to work, is this assumsion correct? > thanks for all of the help I recommend you go to the guy's development page and get his "latest nightly" package. Imcom is written in Python and requires an XML parser library called "expat" which usually does not come with Linux. I had to get that library from a link on the Imcom page, then get the Python source archive so that it could be compiled with the expat library. Although the imcom package is a source package, it does not have to be compiled, because Python is an interpretor and executes the source code as it is interpreted. You si;mply run the "make" command with the "install" option in the imcom directory. This whole process is very messy and I am beginning to think it might not be worth it. Imcom is highly accessible, that is the good news, but it is very limited in its features, and I am having a tough time getting it to perform consistently. The author was very helpful for the first 24-48 hours, and fixed one nasty problem promptly, but problems still remain which I cannot identify as imcom problems or jabber problems. I guess that is life on the frontier. Text console client programs for jabber are scarce. I only see two on the website carrying a collection of clients: imcom is one and the other is a Perl script that _ONLY_ does group chat sessions. What the world needs is a quality text console client for jabber. All the protocol details are public domain, all the server documentation is online, the need is clear and pressing. Any programmers out there looking for an interesting and not overly ambitious project? I am sorely tempted. Right now what imcom does reliably is to create an account on a jabber server of your choosing, and perform roster management and message exchanges with other jabber users. The ICQ transports that tie jabber to the ICQ world either do not work or else imcom does not know how to interface with them. The Yahoo transport works on one jabber server but not on another, and I have in fact used it successfully to chat with Yahoo people, but imcom sometimes composes the "to=" field incorrectly producing error messages instead of conversations. But just sometimes! My current assessment is that imcom is currently the best there is for jabber, but it is not good enough to give us the breakthrough in instant messaging that it first appeared to provide. I hope I have not discouraged you from proceeding. It would be nice to begin a small set of jabber folks to perhaps push the envelope a little. Regards - Chuck Visit me at http://www.mhonline.net/~chuckh The Moon is Waxing Crescent (40% of Full)
