[Erc-help] erc-nicklist and erc-bbdb updates

[<Edg...@in...>]

ARRRG... must... stop... myself... ok, i can't. :)

So, ignoring all of my non-emacs-deadlines, i went to look at erc-bbdb, and
found out things weren't that hard to improve. And voil=E1!, a new patch in=
 my erc
arch mirror! for those who don't know it, it's:

ee...@es...--2005
http://www.esw.inesc-id.pt/~eemg/arch/ee...@es...
(version:  ee...@es...--2005/erc--eemg--0)

I changed erc-bbdb, also. I didn't like how it was changing the name of the
record to the (sometimes very) long MSN nick. So I created a new field. Als=
o,
when doing a /whois, it tries to find the record, but if it can't, it asks =
you
for a name to it. If you find the proper record, you may use it. if it's no=
t, it
asks you for another one (and if there's no record under that name, it simp=
ly
uses the name to create a new one). Yes, I left out the case I don't find a=
ny
record and don't want to create any. simply do a \C-g , if you want to do a
whois, you prolly want to know that person. or you may delete the record wi=
thout
saving bbdb!

After this, I modded the tooltips in my erc-nicklist - they are smaller, and
include the msn nick, if there is one. the away is smarter - only shows up =
when
effectively away! (for those who feel out-of-context, my erc-nicklist now s=
hows
images according the the BitlBee medium and the voice status (ie, away or n=
ot).

Now this has opened a lot of doors for me, related to bbdb storage and
access. But until I have some time I only have a question about nicks: some=
 of
my MSN buddies have nicks with strange hieroglyphs on it, and some of the
characters appear under a different encoding (like \200, \227, etc, etc). S=
o I
wonder what encoding should I use and how is one to change it The-Right-Way=
(TM)?
I have the same problem in Gnus, some mails appear with those character cod=
es,
but I never got the coding issue right!

Cheers!
--=20
Edgar Gon=E7alves
Software Engineering Group @ INESC-ID
Portugal