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Hacking Pidgin to only flash the tray icon when your nick is mentioned in a chat

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Phillip Pearson

Posts: 1083
Nickname: myelin
Registered: Aug, 2003

Phillip Pearson is a Python hacker from New Zealand

Hacking Pidgin to only flash the tray icon when your nick is mentioned in a chat

Posted: Jun 3, 2008 7:09 PM

This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz by Phillip Pearson.
Original Post: Hacking Pidgin to only flash the tray icon when your nick is mentioned in a chat Feed Title: Second p0st Feed URL: http://www.myelin.co.nz/post/rss.xml Feed Description: Tech notes and web hackery from the guy that brought you bzero, Python Community Server, the Blogging Ecosystem and the Internet Topic Exchange	Latest Python Buzz Posts Latest Python Buzz Posts by Phillip Pearson Latest Posts From Second p0st

Pidgin is awesome - it's a cross-platform IM client (I'm running it on Windows) for pretty much every IM network except Skype. One thing I've wanted to change for a while is the 'blink window on received message' function; many of my coworkers are using Adium or iChat or some other OS X app that only tries to grab your attention if (a) you receive a personal IM, or (b) your username is mentioned in a chat.

Here are some notes about the process, to refresh my memory if I come back to this in a few months' time, or maybe to help others get into the Pidgin code, if anyone is working in a similar area...

It's surprisingly easy (for a project with so many dependencies) to get up and running with a build environment on Windows. Once you've got Cygwin installed, there's a script that will fetch all the build deps and the latest source for you, then you're ready to go with make -f Makefile.mingw install.

There are two hooks that result in the window being flashed; the prefs (see prefs.xml in your .purple directory) are called /pidgin/win32/blink_im (which, if set, blinks the window when you get a private message) and /plugins/gtk/purplerc/win32/winprefs/chat_blink (which, if set, blinks the window when you get a message in a chat). Not sure why one is a main Pidgin setting and one is inside the gtk plugin, but there you go.

The Tools | Preferences | Conversations | Flash window when IMs are received option is set in pidgin/gtkprefs.c.

The Tools | Plugins | Windows Pidgin Options | Flash window when chat messages are received option is set in pidgin/plugins/win32/winprefs/winprefs.c. I wonder if this could be moved into the Conversations config pane?

Another interesting option is Tools | Preferences | Sounds | Someone says your username in chat (set in finch/gntsound.c and pidgin/gtksound.c), which plays a sound when someone says your name. I normally work with sounds turned off, though.

Here's my patch to add an option to the Windows plugin to flash the window when your username is mentioned. I also get it to flash the window if someone says phil, myelin or pearsonp; you'll probably want to remove that bit from the patch.

diff -r pidgin-2.4.2/pidgin/plugins/win32/winprefs/winprefs.c ../pidgin-2.4.2/pidgin/plugins/win32/winprefs/winprefs.c

58a59

> static const char *PREF_CHAT_BLINK_NAME = "/plugins/gtk/win32/winprefs/chat_blink_name";

236c237,249

< 	if(purple_prefs_get_bool(PREF_CHAT_BLINK))

---

> 	if(purple_prefs_get_bool(PREF_CHAT_BLINK_NAME)) {

> 		PurpleConvChat *chat = purple_conversation_get_chat_data(conv);

> 		purple_debug_info("winprefs", "Received a message from %s (I am %s, nick %s): %s\n", who, account->username, chat->nick, *message);

>

> 		if((account->username != NULL && purple_utf8_has_word(*message, account->username))

> 			|| (chat != NULL && chat->nick != NULL && purple_utf8_has_word(*message, chat->nick))

> 			|| purple_utf8_has_word(*message, "phil")

> 			|| purple_utf8_has_word(*message, "myelin")

> 			|| purple_utf8_has_word(*message, "pearsonp")) {

> 			purple_debug_info("winprefs", "Chat message contains a string we're looking for: blinking window.\n");

> 			winpidgin_conv_blink(conv, flags);

> 		}

> 	} else if(purple_prefs_get_bool(PREF_CHAT_BLINK))

342a356,357

> 	pidgin_prefs_checkbox(_("_Flash window when your username is mentioned in a chat message"),

> 							PREF_CHAT_BLINK_NAME, vbox);

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