tkabber-plugins — the set of standard plugins for Tkabber,
an XMPP (Jabber) client
mkdir -p ~/.tkabber/plugins
ln -s /usr/share/tkabber-plugins/PLUGIN_NAME
~/.tkabber/plugins
rm ~/.tkabber/plugins/PLUGIN_NAME
tkabber-plugins is the full set of standard plugins for
Tkabber, an XMPP (Jabber) client. They are maintained as a part of Tkabber
and implement various kinds of useful but non-essential functionality.
This manual page explains how to install and uninstall Tkabber
plugins and briefly describes all plugins provided by this package.
Each plugin is just a directory containing necessary files.
The directories of all the plugins are located under
/usr/share/tkabber-plugins
When Tkabber starts up it looks for a special directory
~/.tkabber/plugins (i.e. the directory named .tkabber/plugins
located under the user's home directory). If it exists, Tkabber considers
all its subdirectories as installed plugins and "loads" them. So
the installation and removal of plugins is just a matter of maintaining
proper symbolic links under ~/.tkabber/plugins to the actual
directories of plugins.
Note that the directory ~/.tkabber/plugins as well as
~/.tkabber might well not exist at the time you will be installing
plugins. This is normal, so just go on and create the necessary directory
structure if needed.
A word of caution: Please do not install a plugin if
you do not understand what kind of functionality it is supposed to provide!
This is because some plugins may have impact on usage experience unsolicited
by the user. For instance, ctcomp plugin "hijacks" several
keyboard shortcuts from the chat input windows for its own usage, etc. So to
be on the safe side always read at least the introductory section of a
plugin's README file if one is provided.
To install a plugin simply copy or — much better —
symlink the directory of the chosen plugin under ~/.tkabber/plugins
— a directory Tkabber searches for plugins when it starts up.
If the ~/.tkabber/plugins directory doesn't exist just
create it:
mkdir -p ~/.tkabber/plugins
It's better to create a symbolic link rather than copying because
this greatly simplifies the upgrade process: when a new version of
tkabber-plugins is installed, symbolic links under
~/.tkabber/plugins will automatically start to point to the new
versions of installed plugins. Contrary to this, if you copy plugin
directories rather than symlink them, you will be required to reinstall the
plugins being used.
After the plugin is installed you have to restart Tkabber for it
to find and load the plugin.
To uninstall a plugin simply delete its directory from under
~/.tkabber/plugins directory.
Provided you created symbolic links to actual directories of
needed plugins to install them, uprgading to the next version of
tkabber-plugins will be fully automatic.
Otherwise you will have to remove obsoleted versions of plugins
from under ~/.tkabber/plugins and then install their new versions
back.
Below is the list of all provided plugins and their brief
descriptions.
The proper name of each plugin is also the name of its directory
located under /usr/share/tkabber-plugins so is's that name you use
for installing and uninstalling that particular plugin.
- aniemoticons
- Plugin which adds support of animated emoticons.
- attline
- Plugin which draws so-called attention line - a line before the first
message in a chat window where the window has lost keyboard focus. All
messages after the line are unread messages.
- battleship
- Implements the "Battleship" game (also known as
"Battleships" and "Sea Battle"): a guessing game for
two players where each player positions several "battle ships"
on a square field of a fixed size and then both players in turn try to
guess cells of their opponent's field where a ship is positioned. When all
the cells occupied by a player's ship are guessed by their opponent, that
ship is declared "sunk". The player who first manages to
"sink" all the ships of their opponent wins, and the game ends.
- bc
- A word game. Inludes a russian file.
- browser
- Plugin which implements Jabber Browser (XEP-0011). This protocol is
deprecated in favor of Service Discovery (XEP-0030), but may be useful for
pre-XMPP servers/transports.
- checkers
- Checkers game for two players (including Straight, Russian, Spanish,
Brazilian, Pool, Italian checkers). When installed, you can send an
invitation to your contact (contextual menu on the roster). If the other
player has also Tkabber and the plugin installed, he will recieve the
invitation. If he accepts, a window will open on both.
- chess
- Chess game for two players. When installed, you can send an invitation to
your contact (contextual menu on the roster). If the other player has also
Tkabber and the plugin installed, he will recieve the invitation. If he
accepts, a window will open on both.
- ctcomp
- Plugin adds support for "text completion" in Tkabber's chat
input windows which works like the similar features of the Vim and Emacs
text editors. The matching words are picked from the corresponding chat
log and input windows.
- custom-urls
- Provides regexp-based mechanism to convert strings with numbers to URLs in
chat windows.
- cyrillize
- Utility to translate misprinted characters to cyrillic pressing Ctrl+'.
- debug
- Allows to see debug messages in separate tab/window.
- ejabberd
- Utility to check your Ejabberd Jabber server remotely.
- floatingcontact
- Allows certain roster items to float in separate small windows.
- floatinglog
- Plugin reports incoming messages, presence changes, status changes in a
separate floating window.
- georoster
- World map. It tries to position your contacts using the data on vcard. You
can also drag and drop your contacts from the roster on their possitions.
- gmail
- Plugin allows Gmail/Googlemail users to receive mail notifications.
- iconsets
- Several iconsets, borrowed from other Jabber clients, now are represented
in this plugin.
- jidlink
- Implements Jidlink file transfer protocol. It's undocumented and obsolete,
but may be useful for transferring files to old Tkabber versions.
- latex
- Displays formulas in LaTeX notation as embedded images, generated by LaTeX
and ImageMagick.
- mute
- Experimental implementation of XEP-0058: Multi-User Text Editing, now
deferred.
- openurl
- Plugin which adds several items to a URL popup menu. Each item allows to
open the URL in a certain browser.
- osd
- Displays certain events (presence and chat messages) notification using
osd_cat utility.
- otr
- Implements the Off-The-Record (OTR) messaging. OTR provides: encryption,
authentication, deniability and perfect forward secrecy.
- poker
- Implements a variant of the game of Poker known as "Texas
Hold'em" for two players.
- presencecmd
- Plugin which adds several commands in a chat window. They change user's
presence information (global or directed).
- quotelastmsg
- Allows to "quote" the last message in any active chat session in
its input window. The message is prepended with a fixed string
(configurable). This can be used to put one's replies in context when the
chat touches upon several parallel issues.
- quiz
- Adaptation of He3hauka (a russian quiz game for IRC).
- quotelastmsg
- Provides a way to "quote" the message located at the very bottom
of the conversation log of a chat window -- that is, to copy such message
into the input box of the same chat window with some decorations added (by
default the ">> " string is prepeneded to the message). By
default, quoting is done using the <Alt-q> keyboard shortcut.
- receipts
- Implements XEP-0184 "Message receipts": in one-to-one chat
sessions it is able to request confirmations of reception of outgoing
messages and reply to such requests coming from remote party.
- renju
- Gomoku and Renju (in fact, renju is not implemented yet) game for two
players. When installed, you can send an invitation to your contact
(contextual menu on the roster). If the other player has also Tkabber and
the plugin installed, he will recieve the invitation. If he accepts, a
window will open on both.
- reversi
- Reversi (othello) game for two players. When installed, you can send an
invitation to your contact (contextual menu on the roster). If the other
player has also Tkabber and the plugin installed, he will recieve the
invitation. If he accepts, a window will open on both.
- singularity
- Keeps the conversation with a person in just one window when that person
sends messages from different resources of his/her JID: when the new
window for a one-on-one chat is about to be opened the plugin checks
whether there are any active chat sessions with the same bare JID (that
is, without the "/resource" part) as that of the new chat. If
there are, they are closed with their conversation log and input history
preserved, the new chat window is opened and then the saved data is
inserted into the new window. So effectively this plugin makes Tkabber
keep just one chat window per bare JID open.
- socials
- Adds many 'social' commands like /dance. Includes english and russian
files.
- spy
- Logs your contacts presence changes to a window or to a file. Allows to
setup alert window for certain contacts.
- stripes
- Allows to colorize backgrounds of the whole messages placed in the
conversation logs of Tkabber chat windows. Backgrounds of even and odd
messages can be configured separately from each other (or not configured
at all).
- tclchat
- Plugin, which makes chatting in Tclers' chat (tcl@tach.tclers.tk) easier.
It recognises a bot, which connects Jabber room with IRC channel, and maps
IRC users to Jabber conference participants.
- tkabber-khim
- Plugin that adds KHIM (an alternative input method by Kevin Kenny) support
to Tkabber. It can be used to input characters not directly available from
installed keymaps.
- traffic
- Approximately accounts incoming and outgoing XMPP traffic by addressees.
Traffic estimation is good only if no stream compression or encryption is
used. But even if the absolute values are incorrect, it still allows to
find which remote JID consumes the highest traffic amount.
- unixkeys
- Adds support for "Unix-style" (in fact, GNU Readline and GNU
bash -style) keyboard shortcuts for text editing to all text entry widgets
in Tkabber.
- whiteboard
- Shared whiteboard, allows two contacts or a whole chatroom to draw
collaboratively.
To install a plugin:
- 1.
- Create the directory which Tkabber searches for plugins installed for the
user:
mkdir -p ~/.tkabber/plugins
You have to do this only once.
- 2.
- Pick the plugin you would like to install. Suppose this is the
georoster plugin providing the World map which depicts the
geographical coordinates of the contacts on your roster.
- 3.
- Install it by creating a symbolic link from the plugin's directory to the
directory of user's plugins. Continuing with our georoster example,
you will have to issue this command:
ln -s /usr/share/tkabber-plugins/georoster ~/.tkabber/plugins
- 4.
- Repeat for any other plugins you want to install.
- 5.
- Restart Tkabber.
To uninstall a plugin just remove its directory from the directory
of the user's plugins. For example, to remove the installed georoster
plugin issue this command:
rm ~/.tkabber/plugins/georoster
README files for various plugins under
/usr/share/doc/tkabber-plugins
tkabber(1).
Tkabber reference manual:
/usr/share/doc/tkabber/tkabber.html
Tkabber WWW site: http://tkabber.jabber.ru/
Tkabber wiki pages: http://tkabber.jabe.ru/
The plugins comprising the tkabber-plugins package were
written by various people. Please consult the
/usr/share/doc/copyright file for further details.
This manual page was written by Konstantin Khomoutov
<flatworm@users.sourceforge.net>, for the Debian project (but may be
used by others).