I'm pleased to announce a new beta release of Tkabber (0.10.0-beta).

The goals of this release:

• Testing Tkabber before making final 0.10.0 available
• Freezing messages for interface translators

Some new features are:

• New artwork by Artem Bannikov
• Mediated SOCKS5 connection support for file transfer (XEP-0065)
• Translatable outgoing error messages support (based on recipient's xml:lang)
• Remote controlling clients support (XEP-0146)
• Extended stanza addressing support (XEP-0033)
• Roster item icons are chosen based on Disco queries to item server
• Search in Disco, Browser, Headlines, RawXML, and Customize windows
• New plugins (latex, tkabber-khim, traffic, renju)
• Emoticons theme now can be loaded using GUI
• Most Tkabber's tabs can now be stored on exit and restored on start
• Many fixes and enhancements

Downloads are available at the download page.

There is a Subversion repository for Tkabber's development source code on http://svn.xmpp.ru/repos/tkabber/. Tkabber development code was initially hosted on JabberStudio's CVS. On 16th August, 2006, it migrated to XMPP.ru's SVN.

This command downloads Tkabber to a directory called tkabber-svn:

svn co http://svn.xmpp.ru/repos/tkabber/trunk/tkabber tkabber-svn

Additionally, you can download tkabber-plugins to the directory tkabber-plugins-svn with this command:

Tkabber 0.9.9 has been released, ten months after the previous version.

Release highlights:

• Improved privacy lists interface
• Support for stream compression (JEP-0138)
• Support for SRV DNS-records
• Support for TXT DNS-records (JEP-0156)
• Support for ad-hoc commands (JEP-0050)
• Improved headlines support
• Chat state notification support (JEP-0085)
• Many fixes and enhancements

Dark Radar is a new Tkabber theme developed by Bobus. It includes a xrdb file and an iconset.
The author is open to suggestions or comments, so feel free to add a comment here, in english or russian.

Download: darkradar-theme.tar.gz

Screenshot: tkshot002.png

Tkabber 0.9.8 has been released, almost a year after the previous version.

Release highlights:

• Support for STARTTLS (required for XMPP/1.0 compliancy)
• Reorganized menu
• Support for searching in chat window
• Support for annotations about roster items (JEP-0145)
• Support for conference rooms bookmarks (JEP-0048)
• Added multilogin support for GPGME
• Better support for xml:lang
• Support for service discovery extensions (JEP-0128)
• Support for NTLM authentication
• Many fixes and enhancements

As mentioned on Jabber Journal #20, Alexey Schchepin won an Honorable Mention for Tkabber on ASPN Coolest Tk Screenshot Contest 2004.

The Grand Prize was won by another Jabber developer: Mats Bengtsson with Coccinella.

Have you ever asked how many contacts will you have on your roster in the future? Propietary instant messaging services limit your buddy list to 150 or so. Is there any limit in a Jabber roster? Of course, public servers should put a limit to prevent buggy clients from compromising the server. But how high is the technical limit? Maybe 500? 1000? And what happens when you have so many contacts in your roster?

As far as I know, XMPP does not impose any limit, and there is no recomendation. So servers and clients will tell what's the technical limit.

Tkabber Starpack is a binary file that contains Tkabber, Tcl/Tk, and all other required packages to run Tkabber. So, with this Starpack you do not need to install anything on your computer to use Tkabber. It's also really lightweight, less than 5 megs of download.