The IM Kit is a modular framework developed to make it easy to access various IM networks (ICQ, AIM, etc) and is designed in a way it is fully integrated with BeOS’s attributed journaled 64-bit file system. It makes use of BFS’ attributes, indexes and “live queries” to make it as flexible as possible. With the IM Kit you can, for instance, search for all members of your family that are online and that by using the standard “Find” utility that you use to search files on your disk. You can also manage all the contacts using Tracker (the BeOS file manager and desktop). You can also see in the screenshot that the IM Kit even changes the icon color according to the user status and that change is, as expected, live.
IM With File System Support: Putting the BFS Attributes in Good Use
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I thought that this was long since dead.
I’ve always liked the idea when I saw it on SF though.
looks like the pace of news is increasing
Gein
Hi – I’ve never used BeOS, so please don’t kill me.
What is so great about this compared to something like gaim? I’ve looked at the webpage, but i don’t get what makes this special. Is it integrated into the file system (like a gnomevfs type thing, plus all of the beos extras)?
I dig that wallpaper
The idea is that you dont need to use a seperate IM application, all contacts are represented as file icons in the Tracker (the BeOS file manager). BeOS has a system database for contacts (called People) which uses the filesystem database capabilities to store attributes, which you can query using a reduced SQL language. Now all of your contacts are treated by the OS as files, so you can rearrange them into folders (family, friends etc). When a contact is online, the icon changes (live). The IM application has no contact address book as such, it uses the native OS filesystem viewer called Tracker.
This is how emails are stored in BeOS, hence they’re available to every single application which wishes to access them. And if the file system manager (Tracker) supports a special way to navigate/sort/view files, your email app gains the same functionality and keyboard shortcuts. This is now possible with IM.
Since this is a system wide kit, every application now gains the ability to use IM contacts for whatever purpose you want. Have a support request for WhizBangApp? Just click a button, and it will try to IM the author, for instant help (if they’re online). Need to send someone a contact address – just email them the People file. To talk to the person, just select the addon you want (email, IM etc).
In the end, no application controls user data – the file system does. Hence, your data (contacts, emails) can be moved to other boxes easily.
I sure do miss BeOS… ;( Something like this looks very interesting, though. I always liked how BeOS stored it’s mail, and this seems very similar.
Oh… now that I read above, I see that SmallStepForMan already said that. :p Okay then…
This is a really neat idea. I am really in favor of tight integration of this nature. It is amazing what one can do with the tools available.
Here’s hoping that BeOS can make a bit of a comeback through Zeta or one of the OSS versions!
Glad to see this is still in the works. The more data that can be unified and made accessible to all applications the better. This is the philosophy behind BeOS that, besides the wonderful scheduler, helped give the OS such a wonderful ‘feel’.
I knew if I had a codec installed any app that used the media kit could play that kind of file, that I could change my email app without losing or bothering to convert my data, that if I dropped a new JPEG translator into the Translators directory all my applications would benefit. Now people files can be used to convey online status, just amazing. Takes a load of development time off of any IM project and allows any IM software on BeOS to communicate with any of the networks the im_kit supports.
Every OS should have this kind of thing.
using the tracker as an IM-client just isn’t very efficient at least not with the current tracker. however, an IM Kit is a great idea and it will make writing IM-clients a whole lot easier in BeOS. I just have a few questions.
Wouldn’t it be better to use a seperate mime-tag for IM-contacts? Using peoplefiles won’t really give any advantages from what I can see since having duplicated contacts and unusable contacts just adds clutter. Also, which format does it use to store messages on disk? hopefully it’s not e-mail files.
Will it support text-filter addons? I had an idea back in 1999 about making automatic language translations over icq, so that you could write to a german speaking person in english and it would turn up in german for him, and the other way around. But I never bothered modifying a client to do so, but text filters would make it easy.
Also, how will file transfers be handled? And when will it be added? That’s a feature I’ve been missing a lot on BeOS since they ditched the old ICQ protocol.
perhaps it’s because i am not familiar at all with BeOS, but is this type of integration *that* nescessary? isn’t that adding a lot of extra complication for IMing?
that adds a points of failures and extra cycles just to see if someone is online, when a simple box with a list would suffice. it seems like adding something like this into the kernel layer is dangerous and adds to system instability, when integration via the userland layer would be such safer, and much more logical.
of course, i could be missing a totally obvious point that makes all this make sense… it wouldn’t be the first time..
Well, perhaps this is overkill and not needed, and yes, to a very limited degree, it does add a central point of failure: at least, for any software that uses the IM Kit.
What is important to be aware of is that all Kits are user space entities, for the most part. The IM Kit as described doesn’t run in kernel space at all, but rather utilizes the filesystem (which IS kernel space) just as much as any user space application uses it, so it won’t affect the stability of the system beyond what any other user space application can do.
That is not to say, however, that a bug in the IM Kit or software that utilizes it couldn’t cause problems with your files. However, since the most important system files are protected, at least you should be able to sleep sufficiently well knowing that the kernel is not affected. I’m not sure personally that I’d want this running on my system, and the beauty of the system is that I don’t need to allow it to run. This is a purely optional kit, unless everyone starts creating applications that require it…. if this WERE actually running as a kernel space application beyond what I just explained, there’s absolutely NO WAY I’d allow it on my system!
Well, we plan to have im_server stable enough so you don’t need to worry about any “central point of failure”
The key here is that you shouldn’t have to be an expert on network communications to write a good GUI for instant messaging, and furthermore, this is all in time–modularized systems are they way of the future–and as the IM code is broken out of the application, adding support fore more protocols is an easier task, and hopefully it’ll enable one to write more stable and secure code.
For some more screenshots, please see: http://dundermusen.mine.nu/dump/shots/imkit
The idea is very exciting and I’m quite puzzled no-one got this idea much earlier in the BeOS world.
Enough of the rambling, I’m going to have my breakfast now.
A single point of failure in this case is also preferrable to MANY points of the same failure or many different failures. More attention brought to the same code will produce, we hope, more reliable, well behaving code.
As my infinite-source-of-quotes Edward Tufte often says: “Dont get it original. Get it right.”
This is off-topic, but both screenshots show what looks like QueryWatcher, except that the queries that match seem to show the number of matches inside the little green squares. Is this a new (unreleased?) version of QueryWatcher?
Koki
This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen for any OS.
However, using a Tracker add-on to send a message seems cumbersome… I hope a double click is enough (and that dropping a file on the icon sends that file to the user).
How does the message history work? Is every message a separate file as well?
Also, does incoming messages always automatically pop up a window? If so, I hope this can be turned off and only use a deskbar icon for notification…
>Wouldn’t it be better to use a seperate mime-tag for IM-contacts?
>Using peoplefiles won’t really give any advantages
>from what I can see since having duplicated contacts and unusable
>contacts just adds clutter.
Using a seperate MIME type would add duplication. Using People files prevents that – provided you take some care. The IM Kit only works on People with the attribute IM:connections. If a People file doesn’t have that attribute, the IM kit will ignore it (It uses queries internally). If you get an IM from someone you don’t have an IM:connection for it’ll create a Person file for you. This is where duplication can occur, but then, how is it supposed to know that sort of thing for you?
>Also, which format does it use to store messages on disk? hopefully it’s not e-mail files.
The im_server isn’t responsible for logging. There is a module which does log. It logs as plain text files, one for each day (Logs/{User ID}/{YYYY.MM.DD}.txt).
>However, using a Tracker add-on to send a message seems
>cumbersome… I hope a double click is enough (and that
>dropping a file on the icon sends that file to the user).
I never use the People app, so I’ve made the Tracker addon the default app for People. So messaging is a double click away. If you do actually use the People app assign a shortcut key to the Tracker Addon.
>Also, does incoming messages always automatically pop up a window? >If so, I hope this can be turned off and only use a
>deskbar icon for notification
Completely new messages (Ones which you don’t have a window for) popup, but they avoid focus. So it’s pretty obvious you have them, but they won’t steal what you are typing. There’s also the deskbar notification. Messages for windows you do have open stay as they were and notify you in the Deskbar.
Let me describe what I experience as some of my biggest problems today with my computer.
I have a outlook adress book (business mail)
I have 2 Mozilla adress books (Private home+office)
I have ICQ adress book
My webmail has one adressbook
My mobile phone has one adressbook
My palm has one adressbook
My MSN has one adressbook
so I got 8 different adressbooks? Is that efficient? yah sure, my palm connects to outlook seamlessly to get everything which is about the only integration here which works flawlessly. My Siemens S55 has software problems with synchronizing. Mozilla haven’t even heard the word synchronize and the rest is just software which looks everything in and is pointless to work with.
In BeOS all this can and, hopefully, will change.
I got one adressbook (People files) which seamlessly can work with ICQ/MSN/Mail(all of them)/Palm + whatever other devices where BeOS see the light of drivers.
If something could save me time and pain and problems I guess this is what is it…
The IMKit is the dream I’ve been waiting for and once again shows how simplicity can be so great.
One more great thing about a modular system like this is that arranging people etc is one thing, protocols are modular so they can be handled separately and coded separately to the IMKits API. Also skinning or specific GUIs can be built on top…. how could something get better than this?
Wouldn’t it be interesting if it could be made for different filesharing protocols aswell. You do let’s say a search for “U2”, using a query which offers you a select box with internal or external. If you choose internal it would list all U2 related files if you choose external it would pass the query to the Filesharing daemon which sends it out to the plugged in filesharing protocols and returns the requests in Tracker! The downloading part of files would have to be done by the filesharing daemon.
Instead of using serveral filesharing tools floating around tracker would be enough. For endusers there would be only one way of querying to be learned, one way to work with files IMHO this is more userfriendly. Since you are working with files internal or external once in this case, it makes even more sense than IM approach since you would use Tracker as a filemanager for which it was designed!
The downloading part of files would have to be done by the filesharing daemon.
Or maybe the universal download app of net_kit?
http://iscomputeron.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22
> I thought that this was long since dead.
>
> I’ve always liked the idea when I saw it on SF though.
The Project was originally startd by Linus Almostron (Procton) and the concept was his idea. Unfortunatelly he did not have much time to work on it (and that’s why it looked to be stalled). Mikael Eiman took over the project and is now maintaining it together with 3 other active developers. It is progresing pretty fast and I can assre you it will kep that way.
-Bruno
Forgot to mention. It is not hosted on SourceForge anymore. The project is now hosted at BeClan (http://www.beclan.org).
-Bruno
> I dig that wallpaper
What? You mean I leaked the new OpenBeOS name by mistake again?
Anyway, I cn send you that wallpaper if you want. Just let me know.
-Bruno
> using the tracker as an IM-client just isn’t very
> efficient at least not with the current tracker. however,
> an IM Kit is a great idea and it will make writing IM-
> clients a whole lot easier in BeOS. I just have a few
> questions.
I guess I tried to explain this to you once. Tracker is just used to manage the contacts themselves, not to handle the inner workings of the IM stuff. I can tell you that using the Tracker to do the stuff I do is pretty powerfull. Also, using files as we do does not only allow Tracker to work with IM related stuff, italso allow any pograms that can read/write to files and receive/send BMessages to become a full fledged IM client.
Anyway, we will create a standard IM client (like the ones you’re used to) that will make use of all this stuff we created with the IM Kit. You won’t be able to see the difference and will be abe to keep doing all other cool stuff you can do now with it.
> Wouldn’t it be better to use a seperate mime-tag for
> IM-contacts? Using peoplefiles won’t really give any
> advantages from what I can see since having duplicated
> contacts and unusable contacts just adds clutter.
Actually creating another mimetype would be duplicaion. You would have one Contact (the standard Person file) and another one that would represent exactly the same contact (probably with duplicate information). Duplication can occur as at first there is no wa for the IM server to know if a contact you have on disk is the same as one contact you get from the ICQ server (for instance). Due to that we have a tool to merge Contacts and it works pretty well. I have no duplicate contacts.
Contacts that do not have a IM Connection are simply ignored by the IM Server.
> Also, which format does it use to store messages on disk? > hopefully it’s not e-mail files.
There is a tool to do the logging (the im_logger) and it writes messages to disk as plain text.
Will it support text-filter addons? I had an idea back in 1999 about making automatic language translations over icq, so that you could write to a german speaking person in english and it would turn up in german for him, and the other way around. But I never bothered modifying a client to do so, but text filters would make it easy.
> Also, how will file transfers be handled? And when will
> it be added?
Well, it will be added when one of us take the time to do that. How it willbe handled is not defined yet but it should be straight forward. I see it wrking like this:
1 – Receiving files. No secret here. A pop-up will appear saying someone wants to send you a file and you will be able to accept/reject it and, in case you accept it, select where you want to save it.
2 – Sending files. Probably a Tracker add-on to do that. You select the file, open it with the add-on. You will select which contact to send the file to and send it (there are other considerations, but it is basically it). You could reverse it and make an add-on for the Contact itself where you would select the contact, start the add-on, select the file to send and send it.
> That’s a feature I’ve been missing a lot on BeOS since
> they ditched the old ICQ protocol.
We will have that.
-Bruno
…being ahead of the beast this time. According to MS almost exact the same thing is one of the major features of Longhorn..
Yeah. We already beat Microsoft with BFS (and OpenBFS).
We are just keeping the pace. 
-Bruno
Is it/will it be possible with several IM-accounts in one Person-file?
i am very happy about the idea to use filetransfert as if it was just the same as the tracker own transfert way. I could even say that we can make it even better by not having IM file transfert at all!
let me explain.
The same way the tracker is mainly used as a common GUI for IM, the same way we can code it to itself use another part of the OS already there (ha lazyness, wonderfull invention).
That would also unify IM messaging and p2p network (both are the same essentially anyway). Let say we integrate beshare in this. We could search for our file with the BeOS find (across many server maped as “volume”). So we would have an “internet filesystem add-on” for each protocol. That mean that if i want BGA_sing_the_blues.mp3 i can search for it like any other thing and get something like (if i select search on all volume):
Name Path
————————-
BGA_sing… /boot/home/bad_singer
BGA_sing… /beshare network/BGA@work/shared/
Back on the IM kit, does the system sound notification is implemented yet? I guess it would require a change to the current one to be hierachical as we might want different sound for each one in the list (that can clutter thing real fast in current sound setting pannel).
“Is it/will it be possible with several IM-accounts in one Person-file?”
Yes, this is already possible. All we need is more protocol add-ons so we can actually use the feature
– Mikael
What? You mean I leaked the new OpenBeOS name by mistake again?
Anyway, I cn send you that wallpaper if you want. Just let me know.
If we decide to wait some time, won’t that be in the standard download of “you know what OS”???
> Yeah. We already beat Microsoft with BFS (and OpenBFS).
Thats rigth. (Open)BFS is excellent. The only problem is: The special filesystem need special tools and a completly support of this filesystem.
For example the GNU-Tools.
If you input
ls -alF
you see (like on all Unixes) the all files of the directory, with filesize and all.
Problem: You can’t see how much size the attribute take.
For example the people-files. All have the size of zero. And the complete information is stored in the attributes.
And if you want to know, how much space one of this files takes, you can’t see it, because you see only the sitze of the file, not the size what the attribute takes.
So, it would be nice, if it is possible, that this is shown, too. That you see the file-size and aside of that the size of the attributes.
Steve
[Ignored reference of me being a bad singer]
> Back on the IM kit, does the system sound notification is
> implemented yet? I guess it would require a change to the
> current one to be hierachical as we might want different
> sound for each one in the list (that can clutter thing
> real fast in current sound setting pannel).
There is sound notification for new Windows created (i.e. the first time you receive a messge from a contact you’re not yet talking to). We will eventually add more events.
-Bruno
> Thats rigth. (Open)BFS is excellent. The only problem is:
> The special filesystem need special tools and a completly
> support of this filesystem.
Yes. In my apinion the correct approachwould be to add BFS specific features to the standard GNU tools (using extra flags or something).
> Problem: You can’t see how much size the attribute take.
> For example the people-files. All have the size of zero.
> And the complete information is stored in the attributes.
The reasoning behind this was that attributes are metadata. Much like the filename is metadata. the problem comes from the fact that BFS (ad OpenBFS) allows an unlimitd number of extended attributes (Tip: Never try to create more than 3 million attributes in a file and then erase the file) with unlimited size each (of course there is the constraint of available disk space). When you do a “ls” you get back the size of the file *CONTENTS*, not metadata. Adding an extra flag that would list the size used by metadata could be cool but would be a bit complicated. Some of this metadata will reside in the file inode itself in a area called small_data section, the attributes in this area are not using any extra space! While attributes outside it do use extra disk space. AFAIK, there is no way for userland apps to know if an attribute is in the small_data section or not.
You probably know that The free disk space returned to you by ls or any other app does consider the space used by the attributes, so it is not really that bad.
-Bruno
I like that idea of mounting a filesharing network as I would a HD partition and then use the usual tools for searching in BeOS. But how would that translate visually? An icon on desktop indicating the new network looks like an understandable solution. But what if you try to browse it in tracker?
Or did I get this all wrong?
Gein
I know it’s *slightly* off-topic, but hey.
Talking about BeFS end OBFS, does anyone know what’s going on with filesystems for OS X. I mean, it’s not very fun to be a switcher from BeOS to OS X, when it means going from BFS to HFS. Ah, the pain, the agony!
Aaanyway, wasn’t the creator(s) of BFS hired at Apple? Did anything ever amount?
It depends on which P2P network we are talking about. Networks such as beshare and directconnect would be easy. As for directconnect you just mount a hub and when you click the volume icon a list of the connected users appear as folders, you can then open a userfolder and browse his shared files. The advantage of directconnect in this case was that it was designed with folderbrowsing in mind while beshare was not, even though it’s possible in both, it’s easier with directconnect. The disadvantage of directconnect would be that the user needs to have an open slot for you to download his filelist and downloading the filelist will vary with the bandwidth of the user so this could sometimes take several minutes. This makes browsing shares very unresponsive compared to browsing the local FS. You would need some kind of visual representation of what’s going on. If there’s no slot available for you then it’s likely that you will click that folder over and over again wondering why it’s not responding, and it could take hours before there’s an open slot. An option would be to only make users with open slots visible, but then you wouldn’t be able to cue their files for download. With beshare it’s easier since the filelist is stored on a central server. The response would be a lot quicker with beshare even though it sometimes takes a while there as well.
With networks like kazaa, soulseek etc. it’s better to just have an empty volume with a textfile or something that explains why it’s empty
those networks are too large for that kind of browsing.
There would have to be some kind of cache as well I suppose since you would have to download the entire file to be able to launch it by doubleclicking.
Fact is, that event though it’s a cool idea to be able to mount P2P networks like that, I’m not sure if it really gives you any advantages. A standard interface with network modules would be a better approach IMO.
@BGA
I guess I tried to explain this to you once. Tracker is just used to manage the contacts themselves, not to handle
the inner workings of the IM stuff.
I don’t think that we have ever talked about this, but I could be wrong. However, I know that the Tracker doesn’t know anything about IM, but it’s currently used as an interface right? Even though it’s is very cool and flexible it’s not as easy as using a traditional IM interface, I can’t for instance drag some files to a contact and have them sent to him/her, I can’t switch between only showing online contacts and all contact with a simple click. And it’s not possible afaik to see who is sending you a message without opening it, and sometimes you just want to ignore someone for a while if youre working on something, while other people may have more important things to say.
However, since you are planning a traditional interface, I won’t bitch any more about it
Contacts that do not have a IM Connection are simply ignored by the IM Server.
well, that’s my problem. you are only considering it from the IM Kit point of view. I’ve been looking at my ICQ contact list and only 10% of the people has entered any information about themselves other than their nickname, and most of the other ones only has their first name and some their email-adress.
Now if I open a People-based PIM I will see a lot of contacts there with nothing but nicknames. How would a regular user react to something like this? I’d say that they consider it garbage and deletes it. which means that half their IM contact list will go away. And even if they don’t delete it it will look rather unorganized and make it harder to scan through the contacts with the eye. There is no way for the PIM to know that it’s not supposed to view those files.
An advantage though, is that IM would be easier to intergrate into a PIM.
If the IM is going to continue using people-files it needs to check for duplicates instantly when a contact is added. Using a merging tool afterwards isn’t a good option. But even then I think it’s a rather bad option.
Ideally it’s good, but I’m not sure if it is that good in practice.
I got one adressbook (People files) which seamlessly can work with ICQ/MSN/Mail(all of them)/Palm + whatever
other devices where BeOS see the light of drivers.
But mozilla still doesn’t use it. However, mozilla has support for SyncML now I think so it would be fairly simple to sync it with other addressbooks.
I remember though that PersonalAssistant (a great PIM for BeOS) doesn’t use people-files for its adressbook. This choice was made because they realised that they needed a real database instead(can’t find the e-mail about it so I can’t give you specific info). So chances are that we will see fragmentation there anyway.
My idea was not to interface with the networks through the tracker, but by simple search, the same way you search your local files. I only mentioned the tracker because I didn’t understand the role of the mounted networks icon on the desktop.
Mounting the networks was just a nice interface to Connect to: whatever.
All that was needed afterwork was a system wide downloader that controled your ed2k links, torrents, kazaa files, etc.
I like the concept.
Gein
Rain you make quite valid comment, but as you may already notice probably doing a find for .mp3 on your system, just right to the “XXX items” at the bottom a little barbershop pole is apearing while searching, so that kinda cover the lagging part. And network item should be displayed at last to not slow local item found.
As for the common downloading panel, i agree that for some existing and upcomming p2p protocole the current “find” panel might not be enough. That said, nothing prevent us to expand that panel or like i usually more like to put it, generalise it.
For exemple we would still need a download queu manager, but that can be made from the already made GUI of the tracker copy/move UI.
The biggest problem would be that updating tracker version would screw your current download
. That would need to be resolved not only for tracker but any part of the OS that start to become really central.
One thing i forgot to specify it that the volume would mount only if the user is online to avoid clutter. So someone that would log would be just like when you insert a CD. P2P would be like HD partition, you can have them mount on boot or simply individually.
I’ve been thinking also about a besharefs sometime ago.
Should be quite doable with uspacefs and a userland daemon, including using queries to find files on the network.
Stay in touch
good job to BGA tic & slaad.
sad to report that there’s a bug in my version of the imkit though; there’s noone using icq to add
(
(sorry. too much caffeine tonight)
Hmm, isn’t queries done on all disks that support queries normally? It would be very annoying when you query for your local email on all the mounted filesharing-fs.
Then again, problems are meant to be solved.
yeah, but we need to invent the problems to be able to solve them. and that’s what we try to do
yeah, by default it looks on all disks.
as I said earlier, I don’t think this is such a good idea. It’s a cool idea, but it’s better to use a modular client IMO.
Heya Rain,
The interface you’re talking about just happened to be that way because it was the easiest way of currently doing it. There’s nothing _inherent_ to the IM Kit that needs Tracker or some such to do it. The actual message stuff isn’t handled by Tracker, but by im_client, which can be told to initiate message send/receive by a Tracker add-on, which isn’t really the same.
So – write your own client (really easy, and there’s obviously sample code for it
, that does more what you like. There’s absolutely nothing that stops you from writing a web client, an IRC-style interface, or something that looks like an ordinary ICQ client.
a year ago there had been nothing to stop me from developing my own client, but I recently made the decision to practially stop developing and focus on art, poetry and music, so I’ve ditched all my projects. If I ever spend time developing (other than webstuff to make some money) I will try to finish off the framework for my studioapp, cause that one has been on my mind since 1997 and it would be cool to actually see and use it after all this time of thinking about it.
I’m sure someone else will make a client though, and I’m sure I will bitch about it for a while as well
I don’t think that we have ever talked about this, but I could be wrong.
I think BGA got confused, there’s a couple of people with the same misconception as you, that we’ve tried to explain it too.
However, I know that the Tracker doesn’t know anything about IM, but it’s currently used as an interface right?[i]
Have a look at;
http://www.bug-br.org.br/BeOS-IMKit-In-Action.png
Tracker is no more the interface for the IM Kit than it is for MP3s. We don’t use Tracker to send the messages, or record the messages, or anything like that. All we do is use People files, with special attributes, to tell who we need to care about. We also right an attribute to say what status they are (Oh, and we re-write the Large and Mini icons depending on their status).
If you look at the screen shot you’ll see 3 windows. 2 are queries (One for all contacts and one for online contacts). That’s no different to querying for all your MP3s made in the year 2003, or whatever. You’ll see another window title “Mathias Reitinger (BePage) – Available”. That’s the im_client. It’s responsible for displaying recieved messages and allowing you to send them out. There’s another component, im_logger, which runs in the background and writes messages (One file / day) to disk for later perusal.
[i] Even though it’s is very cool and flexible it’s not as easy
as using a traditional IM interface, I can’t for instance drag some files to a contact and have them sent to him/her, I can’t
I don’t like calling Tracker the interface, per se. But anyhow, you *can* do that. It’s a simple matter of writing a Tracker addon that handles dropped refs.
switch between only showing online contacts and all contact with a simple click.
Well, depends. If you have an Online query and an Offline query open, it is
[i]And it’s not possible afaik to see who is sending you a message without opening it, and sometimes you just want to ignore someone for a while if youre working[i]
Yes it is. Look at the screen shot. It’s pretty hard to mistake who the message is from, when it tells you in the title bar. If you want to ignore someone while working, just let them message you. The first window will pop up (But avoid focus). Simply minimise it, and it won’t popup and annoy you again. Sounds amazingly like a normal IM there
. It’d be a simple matter for us to set it so that when set as Away, messages autmatically get hidden.
Ack! Stacked my quoting. From “Have a look at” to “.. for later perusal” is my reply. “Even though it’s is very cool” to “sent to him/her, I can’t” is a reply to rain. Next paragraph is my reply. One after that is rain again. And continues alternating.
Sorry, can’t seem to edit my post once made.
“This is cool, thanks for developing it… it’s what I think of when I think of ‘The Be Way’…”
🙂
I totally dig that wallpaper too