Bowser

Andrew opened the source to Bowser, so I will continue to keep it open. You can either download an Intel binary or the complete source. I do not have access to a Power PC machine, so no binaries for that platform are available. You must have BeOS 4.5 to use this release.

• Bowser Intel Day 40 Build
• Bowser Source
• Bowser screen shots

If you're installing this version of Bowser as a replacement for Day 36 and lower releases, it's important that you remove your existing Bowser executable and the ~/config/settings/Bowser_Settings file. The old settings format is incompatiable with the current release, but this should be the last time the settings file needs to be wiped. For support, email me (Todd Lair) or Andrew.

I must thank Gord McLeod for all his great suggestions and testing. He really has helped me out a lot, and I have a ways to go before all his ideas are implemented.

Day 40

• Deskbar Icon
  Notification options are now called Deskbar Icon options and should be easier to understand now. The application icon itself was reverted back to the old Bowser icon (I guess I'm the artist I thought I was).

  Users can now specify under the Deskbar Icon preferences other nicks to watch for, and optionally flash those blue. They can be specified in the space delimited text field, "Other nicks". In case a user wants to watch for that special someone :) Note: the new precedence order for flash is first users nick or aka, other nicks, and finally content. New menu item "Other notification" on the client windows enables or disables this on a window basis.

  Additionally, a user can specify the number of seconds for an auto nick blue flash with the "Auto nick timeout" field in the Deskbar Icon preferences. If a user does specify a a timeout value greater than zero, mentions a nick other than his or her own, and the nick mentioned user says something within the timeout period, the user with the nick mentioned will cause a blue flash when he or she says something.

• Setup Window
  Option to hide the setup window when you connect to a server and an option to activate the setup window when you disconnect added. If the user has connect on startup enabled, user will not see the setup window until disconnected.
• Server Enums
  Server Enums added for new commands.
• Aliases
  
  • /t alias for /topic
  • /deop alias for /dop
  • /q alias for /query
  • /w alias for /whois (instead of /wi)
• Version Command
  Version command, by itself, sends a version request to the server. With a nick, it sends a ctcp version request to the nick.
• MOTD Command
  MOTD command now sends parameters directly to server.
• Operator Commands
  The following operator commands were added:
  • /oper
  • /rehash
  • /stats
  • /admin
  • /info
  • /kill
  • /trace
  • /wallops
  Also, the /op and /deop commands accept up to four nicks instead of just the previous one.
• Raw Command
  The /raw command now echos the string to the main text view.
• Voice Popup
  Voice and devoice entries added to nicklist popup menu
• AFK
  The /away and /back commands have been added along with preferences in the Command section to allow default action text. If /away is used with a parameter, the parameter will be used as the away text, otherwise the preference text will be used.
• Preferences
  Preferences are now accessable from any client window with the window/preference menu item or with Alt-P.
• Local Channels
  Added support for local channels. Joining &local doesn't try to join #&local.
• Tab Completion
  Tab completion will now first try to match the channel name, and then if unsuccessful, the nick list.
• Zooming
  Client windows are now zoomable.
• Droppings
  Users can now drop non text files on a message window input control, and Bowser will kick off a dcc send to the targeted irc user the message window is for.
• Status Bars
  Added server and current nick to the status bar for message and server windows.
• Double Ops
  Fixed bug when users were deoped or oped twice. Op count in status bar would get incremented twice.
• Server Windows
  Added navigation to next and previous server windows with the Window menu items "Next Server" and "Previous Server".
• Timestamp
  If user has timestamp preference turned on, more things will be timestamped.
• Notify
  Added /notify and /unnotify commands. Users can use these commands to add to the list of nicks to watch. Watched nicks will be displayed in the notify window as dark gray if they are not connected to the irc server and black if they are. Messages will be displayed and posted to active window when a nick has changed connection status, and event preferences have been added to control what is displayed.

Day 39b

• Icon
  Icon changed along with deskbar flashing. Yellow means content, and red still means nick.
• Connect at Launch
  In server's options window, added preference to start up server upon application's launch. Note: with this and code added, multiple and simultaneous connections work.
• Auto Input Focus
  Added code, so if main text view is current focus and user types a key, the keypress will be forwarded to input control and the input control will be made current focus.
• Crashing
  Crashing bug fixed when user switches current server to one that had the option window open.

Day 39a

• Menus
  Added Window menu and moved navigation items to it. Also added a means to get to the Server and Setup windows.
• Scrolling
  Added ability to turn off scrolling in the main window. Scrolling is now automatically turned off if a user slides the scrollbar tab up. If scrolling isn't toggled off and the user returns the scrollbar tab to the bottom, scrolling will continue.
• List Joins
  Users can now join channels from the List window by simply invoking the list item.
• Server Copy
  Added ability to copy current server from the server menu field. This will copy all states of the current server into the new one including ignores, options, and nick orders.
• Initial Messages
  If a user has preference open message window with sends, the initial message was not being placed in history. Fixed.
• Server Options
  Sizing problems with Server Options window corrected.
• DCC Send
  
  • DCC send works from the command line.
  • Bowser had a problem with sending files a little larger than most due to the fact that the sender was not reading the confirmation data from the socket (it would fill up). Fixed.
  • Changes to status bar labels now report bytes per second on both sending and receiving windows.
  • DCC file transfer windows will now close when completed.
• Window Anchoring
  Added in preferences the ability to toggle anchoring of windows with General's "Window selection follows workspace"

Day 39

• Server Nickname
  The server was not updating its copy of the current nickname, so this caused problems when trying to join new channels after you change your nick. Fixed.
• Tab Completion
  Tab completion now replaces what the user has typed with the actual nick instead of postfixing the remaining. This fixes case differences between what the user has typed and the actual nick.
• Server Options
  New server options window provided. User can gain access through the server name menu field, and allows extra settings for a particular server. Current options are as follows:
  • Ability to ignore initial motd
  • Ability to enable identd for server. Some servers do not connect to the machine Bowser is running on for an identd server. For these servers, Bowser appears to just sit there and do nothing if the user had the identd server enabled. Moving it to the server level allows users to connect to ones that attempt to connect to the local machine for identification as well as ones that don't. For the one's that don't, simply disable the the identd for that server.
  • Ability to enter commands that will be issued upon connect.
• Ignore System
  Ability to ignore other users has been added. A user can either ignore on a nickname or an address. Addresses are specified as regular expressions, are case insensitive, and must contain the character '@'. Nicks are matched exactly (excluding case). Nickname ignores will follow nickname changes, and both nickname and address ignores save.
  Address ignores often cannot be realized immediately. They will take effect when other users say something, and the user will be notified that they are ignoring them.
  Color preferences and command preferences also have been added for ignores. Users who are being ignored appear in the bottom of the names list. Command preferences add $i as a variable to view which ignore was applied.
  The following commands have been added for the ignore system:
  • /IGNORE <nick | address> Adds an ignore.
  • /UNIGNORE <nick | address> Removes an ignore.
  • /EXCLUDE <address nick> Excludes nick from address ignore.
  As well, a GUI has been added for the ignore system and can be accessed with Alt-I from any client window. The ignore window will allow additions, removals, and exclusions of ignores. Care has been taken, so commands will update GUI's content if left open.
  When unignoring, a user must specify the exact ignore he or she added. That is, if a user adds an ignore by address, they cannot remove it with a nick.
• Nickname Save
  A bug relating to initial nickname saves has been fixed.
• Input Font Preference
  Users can now set which font is used for the input control.
• Channel PING's
  When user issues command /ctcp #channel PING, correct ping times are now reported.
• Channel Name's
  When a user joins a channel, Bowser was not adding the names from additional user reports. Fixed.
• List Command
  Added ability to query current channels with the /LIST command. When executing the list command, users are shown a window and given status on channel load. Once load is complete, users have the ability to find and filter results with regular expressions. Two sort orders are provide as well: channel and user count.
• Additional Bugs
  More bugs were fixed with this release, however I forgot to jot down what they were. Some where very quick and while I was chatting with a few people on IRC. If after trying this release you still have a bug issue, please email me; I've either thought it fixed or lost the post it.

Day 38b

• DCC Chat
  Problems with Deskbar crashing when using DCC chat fixed. Also, nickname changes work in DCC chat windows. Another problem with chatting was that the initiator was sending the LAN IP address instead of the DUN supplied one if the user had a LAN setup. This is now fixed as well; I simply now use the address you connected from and to the IRC Server.
  This should make DCC chat very usuable. It's far from perfect and deserves a little more work though.
• Input Control Drop
  Request when dropping a single line to input control now places text in the control instead of sending it off directly to the connection has been implemented.

Day 38a

• DCC Chat
  This was on my list of "get to's" before release, and well... I didn't get to it. Here is a working DCC chat build. Sorry about that folks.
• Tab Completion
  No longer case sensitive
• Notification Enable
  When enabling notification from None to another state and having open channel/server/message windows, the windows will register themselves with the deskbar icon. The deskbar was crashing otherwise.
• DCC File Receive
  When receiving a file from someone else on IRC, Bowser will now prompt the user for a place to store the file and a name.
• Command Preference
  New preferences added to configure default quit and kick messages. The following supported variable is available for quits.
  • $V Current Bowser Day Count
• Ident Server Preference
  Added (General) preference to turn off the built in ident server.
• Font Preferences
  Moved allocation of controls for Font preferences from the constructor of the Font preference view to the AttachedToWindow hook; Gord has 3000 fonts, and this speeds it up for him if he doesn't have to change his fonts.

Day 38

• Preference Organization
  Restructered preferences dialog for dynamic views. Allows easy additions.
• History Control
  Added a control that provides easy access to the history of commands entered. Added a History menuitem, so keypressers have access.
• Color Preferences
  Expanded color preferences from one ColorLabel to one ColorLabel for each color preference
• Event Text
  Added the ability to configure event text displayed. and preference view Event. For each event text, all available variables are used for the event by default; all events do not use all variables. Variables have the following meaning:
  • $N Nickname
  • $n Alternate Nickname
  • $I Ident
  • $A Address
  • $R Remaining Text In Line
  • $C Channel
  • $T Topic
• Status Bar
  Status bar is now a little more pleasing to look at. Displays server, user count, op count, modes, and user's current nickname for channel windows.

Day 37

• Speed Improvements
  Network code completely rewritten to provide huge speed improvements. Used the new Network kit more to see if I liked it; I don't think I do.
  Other improvements to speed are riddled through out the new code, and I think most will find that Bowser is pretty snappy.
• Clean Up
  Major rewrite of a lot of the code and restructuring the class layout of the different types of windows. Code is much cleaner.
• Memory Leaks
  Squashed all those nasty memory leaks Bowser was very fond of. I dare you to find one!
• Lazy Resize
  Bowser's lazy resize of controls within a window now fixed. Still flickers, but snappier.
• Lazy Quit And Part
  Bowser now closes the windows with the quit and part commands. Quit terminates the server connection, while part closes the channel or message window only.
• Colored Selection
  When selecting text in the main view, Bowser would lose all of its color highlighting. Fixed.
• Font Preferences
  Added configuration of Server, Text, URL, and Name fonts. Font preferences do not change existing text in the channel, message, and server windows, but it will change new text added. (I'm working on this)
• Color Preferences
  Added configuration for most if not all colors for Bowser. I may have missed a few--if so, let me know. Like font preferences, color preferences are not imposed on existing text in the server, channel and message windows. They will eventually.
• Notification
  Bowser can now live in the deskbar! For inactive windows, the icon will flash green when there is new content and red if someone mentions the user's nickname. Clicking on the icon will display a pop up menu to show what windows are the cause of the flash. Shift-click on the icon will make the window with new content active regardless of hidden state. The newly activated window will be displayed in the current workspace. Nickname flash takes precedence, so the icon will never flash green when red, and shift clicking will display the nickname mentioned window over the new content window.
  Users have the ability to turn off notification on nickname or content level as well as the flash. They can also turn off notification for a particular window, and it will save with the window's settings. Users also have the ability to add names to enable the nickname flash with the "Also Known As" preference. These space delimited names will be treated the same as the user's nickname for purposes of notification and nickname highlight.
• Nickname Highlight
  User's nickname now correctly highlights.
• URL Highlight
  Bug's fixed in URL highlight now squashed. Lines containing multiple urls were not being displayed and highlighted correctly--they are now.
• Multiple Servers
  Bowser now supports multiple servers. Enough said.
• Central Nicknames
  Bowser now stores its nicknames apart from the server settings and supports multiple nicknames. For the server settings, only the order of the nicknames are saved, so a user can specify which order the nicknames are tried for each server. Preferences (in General) supports nicknames bound to a server. This gives the illusion that nicknames are stored on the server side, but still remain in a central repository.
  The nickname listbox can be right clicked to show a pop up menu in which the user can add or remove a nickname. If the nicknames are bound to servers, the menu also contains a load item which will add all nicknames to that particular server. The order of the nicknames can be changed by shift Up/Down arrow while a nickname is selected.
• Drag and Drop
  I'm probably going to get banned from IRC for this, but a user can now drag and drop either text or plain text files to the input control. It supports commands and or normal messages. It is great for posting code though.
• Command Line
  The following command line arguments were added:
  • -r dumps received data on stdout
  • -s dumps sent data on stdout
  • -v displays embeded and unsupported codes in hex
  • -i shows the id of the window with every channel message
  • -n displays debug code for nickname removal
  • -N shows status of adding a deskbar icon
  • -u disables attempt to odopt orphoned deskbar icon
• Tab Completion
  Nicknames will be completed with press of the tab key in the input control. I simply added code to look for the first match.