Gaim Releases Version 1.0.0

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Friday September 17, 2004 @08:04PM from the unpossible dept.

bfree writes "Congratulations to all in the gaim team as they release for download version 1.0.0 (changelog). For those who don't know what gaim is, you could read the full answer on their site but for the lazy: 'Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.' Gaim is also the 2nd most active project on Sourceforge and the 4th most popular on Freshmeat and seemingly all round #1 Free IM client!"

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gaim by twenty-exty-six · 2004-09-17 20:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

Gaim is easily one of the best open-source apps for non-tech savvy users. Without gaim (and Firefox) I wouldn't have been able to convince some of my friends to try linux.

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1. Re:gaim by BladeMelbourne · 2004-09-17 22:02 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  as far as windows is concerned is gaim better than miranda?
  Yes and no. IMHO it's up to the end user to decide what their IM needs are, and choose based on that.
  Miranda is a fantastic program - really small with plenty of plugins. The interface is much more responsive than Gaim - it's a very lean program.
  That said, one thing GAIM can do is provide the ability to chat in Yahoo rooms. Miranda sadly can't do that (to the best of my knowledge).
  I have both installed - they are both quality open source programs with very active communities.
why 1.0? by MoOsEb0y · 2004-09-17 20:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

There isn't a lot of difference between 0.82.1 and 1.0. Why have they decided that this should be version 1.0?
1. Re:why 1.0? by Surye · 2004-09-17 20:14 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Long discussion on name change. To sum it up, just because.
2. Re:why 1.0? by Surye · 2004-09-17 20:20 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  No, they made it quite clear in the IRC, and in the lists that it has nothing to do with core goals met. Simply wanted a new, more flexible naming scheme then "number of releases" which was broken anyways during 0.59.x
3. Re:why 1.0? by SLOviper · 2004-09-17 20:21 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I'm not exactly sure why they went to 1.0 either - although it has been much more stable than ever before (since 0.7). I guess they figured that it was good enough to "officially" release.
  
  For those interested, here is the changelog from the sourceforge site:
  
  version 1.0.0 (09/17/2004):
  New Features:
  * Drag-and-drop buddy support for the Invite dialog (Stu Tomlinson)
  * Drag-and-drop buddy support for the Pounce dialog (Stu Tomlinson)
  * View Chat log available from the interface (Daniel Atallah)
  * Ability to receive offline messages in character encodings
  other than ASCII (thanks to Nick Sukharev)
  * File transfer status messages printed to conversation
  windows (Dave West)
  * Display file transfer messages when someone sends you a file
  over AIM (Dave West)
  * Handle MSN buddy lists more sanely (Felipe Contreras)
  * Zephyr can use tzc to run from behind a firewall (Arun A Tharuvai)
  
  Bug Fixes:
  * Work around window manager stupidity with new dialog windows (Dave West)
  * Compile with gtk 2.5.x (Gary Kramlich)
  * Escape invalid characters in log names (Daniel Atallah)
  * Fix for clicking add in an msn chat with 2 or more people in your buddy
  list (Daniel Atallah)
  
  --
  In theory, theory always works in practice. In practice, theory rarely works. <><
4. Re:why 1.0? by SimGuy · 2004-09-17 21:24 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  People have (and we knew this way ahead of the actual release) this horrible misconception that 1.0.0 is Gaim's first major stable release, but for those too lazy to read the discussion on the mailing list, Gaim's versioning is very simple, and 1.0.0 is completely insignificant. We could have started at 12.8.17, but 1.0.0 is a nice place to start numbering from and not break package managers version comparison logic or seeming too completely random....
  
  Example versioning:
  
  1.0.0: First release with this numbering system
  1.0.1: No changes to Gaim's API; New features, bugfixes
  1.1.0: New Gaim API added; none removed or changed
  1.2.0: Same as above
  2.0.0: Gaim API changed or removed breaking plugins or anyone using libgaim.
  2.0.1: No changes to API; New features & bugfixes
  2.0.2: et cetera
  
  As I placed in the topic of #Gaim:
  
  1.0.0! Not special in any way, other than that you should be using it.
  
  --
  I don't care, but don't let that stop you from trying to tell me anyway.
Definition of irony by Toasty16 · 2004-09-17 20:09 · Score: 5, Funny

I just used Trillian to tell my buddies on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC about gaim 1.0.0
They don't care.
Too heavy.. by thewalled · 2004-09-17 20:12 · Score: 5, Interesting

gaim lost out to miranda (http://miranda-im.org) for one of my customers.. his problem gaim is too heavy / resource intensive for their workstations (here in india most workstations at still stuck at celeron ~700 or so + 64 MB ram and run 98SE).

miranda on the other hand works quite nicely, btw we use jabber only (no msn/yahoo/icq/oscar support).
1. Re:Too heavy.. by netsharc · 2004-09-18 01:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Actually, if you turn off "Show Buddy Icons" (somewhere in the Preferences), Gaim shows only the 16x16 protocol icons, which makes for a buddy list which is a lot more compact, therefore smaller as well, especially without the ads.
  
  The problem of directory sizes, is that Gaim installs all possible languages -- you can set LANG=?? as an environment variable and get Gaim in that language. I suppose you can delete the unnecessary language files to save space. And from the looks of it, you're using ICQlite. Whatever happened to the full-blown ICQ, which installed a light web-server so people can visit your "homepage" and even chat to you through a Java-Applet of sorts.
  
  --
  What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
no mac binary by Leers · 2004-09-17 20:13 · Score: 5, Interesting

from those of us who don't regularly compile our own software, I don't think gaim qualifies as mac compatible till someone bothers putting a mac binary on their site.
Re:on the mac... by oboylet · 2004-09-17 20:17 · Score: 5, Informative

A better question might be: why should I prefer it to adiumx [adiumx.com]? Adium is essentially a mac-friendly gaim.
Adiumx has a really straight forward user interface, and feels very mac-like. It supports a laundry list of protocols, but keeps things simple yet powerful in terms of UI.
True, you won't find all the gee-gaws from iChat AV a la video/teleconfrencing, but it's a well written program that does IM extremely well (much better than iChat ... *cough* tabs, easily set up for multiple users of the same computer, etc *cough*).
And it's not resource intensive.
Re:Video/audio sound support? by Surye · 2004-09-17 20:18 · Score: 5, Informative

gaim-vv
Re:The most active by TunaPhish · 2004-09-17 20:18 · Score: 5, Informative

No, Gaim is almost always on top. They're pretty good about having a two-week release schedule.

You can check out #gaim on freenode and actually see how active it really is. Most of the developers are there on a daily basis working on stuff.
1.0 and no gaim-vv merge? by Mmm+coffee · 2004-09-17 20:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

While I'm glad to see gaim moving on to a "stable" number, wouldn't it be smart to wait until the boys at gaim-vv got video and voice chat working? Gaim rocks for an instant messaging client, but can't do the major stupid little things that the "official" clients can do. This may turn off users who see 1.0 and expect it to do that...

Then again, I might be paranoid and need to have my morning coffee.
1.0.0 is just a version number scheme change... by atallah · 2004-09-17 20:20 · Score: 5, Informative

Not to burst anyone's bubble... but i've been waiting for this story to hit the front page just so i could!

This isn't a 1.0 release it is a 1.0.0 release: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?threa d_id=5592699&forum_id=33079

All it means is that future releases will be in X.Y.Z format. X will mean a change to the API breaking old plugins, Y is any other change, and Z is pretty much meaningless.
Re:No bugs anymore? by seringen · 2004-09-17 20:55 · Score: 5, Funny

But a version 1 implies no more bugs, wil there be no bugs in GAIM??

yes, there will NEVER be any bugs in GAIM, EVER!! Even when Yahoo purposely breaks their protocol again, the super hyper gaim fairies will magically fix connectivity for you. We are blessed!
That's cool and all, but... by Parnic · 2004-09-17 21:01 · Score: 5, Funny

I won't be happy until 1.0.0.0 comes out...hopefully that will fix the nasty "version number isn't obfuscated enough" bug.
Another Protocol... by elFarto+the+2nd · 2004-09-17 22:49 · Score: 5, Informative

For those of you who are sick of using the Sametime client, Meanwhile is a plugin for Gaim to let you use Sametime.
It's availible from http://meanwhile.sourceforge.net/
Regards
elFarto
GAIM has opened a lot of doors by Erik+Hollensbe · 2004-09-17 23:57 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm not a big fan of GAIM the client.

However, I'm a huge fan of libgaim.

Does anyone remember mICQ? They were the first people to reverse engineer the ICQ protocol. Until then, you were forced to use the seriously crappy Java ICQ client if you wanted to use it on anything but windows.

micq however, IMO of course, was a crappy text-based program that had a horrific interface. Really, I would much rather use my IRC client for ICQ than stick with this thing.

And now I can. See, the micq guys caught on and released libicq or libmicq, I can't remember at this point. I imagine a good portion of this code is still in libgaim.

The point is though, that others took libicq and applied their UI design skills and made very useful programs out of it.

And this is what I get in libgaim.

I'm not a fan of how you have to contort gaim or work on a specific system with specific plugins to keep windows from popping up on you while you're typing. (I will admit it's been a while since I used gaim, so this climate may have changed)

However, if you wanted the best support for the various networks out there, GAIM is the way to go.

libgaim allows me to get rid of the (IMO again) clunky interface and replace it with something else. On the mac, my workstation, I use AdiumX, but before I used Fire (no link, sorry). Both are libgaim-based which means that the advances in this library (especially recently as YIM and MSN seem to change their protocols hourly) are almost instantly integrated into the front-end of my choice. The 'hive mind' mentality here is very effective.

I *really* wish that more people working on protocols would do this - right now, several HTTP libraries are available but developers refuse to settle on one - I hope apr solves this once and for all. I don't want to worry as a developer about the idiosyncracies of apr, libwww, and others when developing a web app.

Object brokers are another example. If I install GNOME, KDE, and any other app that uses an ORB, chances are I have many ORBs on my system - for what reason? Those "extra" features that the developer can't live without. I know GNOME and KDE are finally working on making it cross-platform (in the GUI sense), but this provides another good example.

Do what you like at the GUI or application level - but normalize the libraries (and make MORE of them that meet specific, unique needs so they can be chained together). This gives the developer a reasonable notion of stability at the library and API layer, and the user a reasonable notion of functionality. Also portability, security, and enhancements come quicker and cheaper because more eyes are looking at the same code. Fix a buffer overflow? Well, you've fixed it in 20 programs instead of one. Doesn't that make everyone happy?

Sorry for the rant. I just feel the need to talk about important topics on my mind that no one will listen to or care about because they're buried at the bottom of a slashdot forum. :)