#3 Buddy username registration process.

[Ilan]

Registration of buddies is done via the same mechanism that
you used to register your own user account on the
IRSIM. So far I have not
created an "ADD buddy" capability, so all accounts are in
the same database table.
The process of creating a buddy is not straight forward
because
the "ADD buddy" code doesn't exist in the IRSIM. So,
for now
the way it's done is described below:

The buddy "nickname" field can accept anything you pick
for that
buddy (just like it was any nickname that you created for
yourself.)

The actual username is dependent on which JABBER SERVER
you choose to use, as well as which Transport Service
Instant Messenger your buddy is using.
For example, if you use a free server by the name of
"zim.net.au"
as your Jabber Server while your buddy is using ICQ,
and your buddy's
icq number is 1234567 then that buddy's email address is:
1234567@icq.jabber.zim.net.au . You need to enter that
strange
looking address into the username field of the IRSIM
new user
registration window.
Since I have not yet written the code to register that
buddy
into "zim.net.au", the only way you have of registering
that
buddy with that free server is to use an existing
Jabber client
program (there are many free clients out there), like
"exodus",
to register user "1234567" as an ICQ user with that
"zim" server.

In summary:
(1) you'll need to use an existing server client,
other than the IRSIM, to create such buddy user on some
Jabber
server out there (Once I write the IRSIM code this
particular
way of registering buddies would be done directly from
the IRSIM).
(2)You will still have to enter the full buddy
username (1234567@icq.jaber.zim.net.au), that you
registerd with the "zim.net.au"
server (via the "exodus" program), into the IRSIM "new
user"
registration window.
(3) You'll have repeat the whole registration process
for each
buddy that you wish to add. (At the moment, I have no
software that will read a list of buddies and enter
them into the IRSIM user table. If I did have such code
it would still not change the issue of
needing to register each of the buddies with some Jabber
server (which I also need to write code for, as
describe in step 1.)

With instant messengers other than ICQ, the buddy
usernames are
translated into even stranger looking beasts. For example:
An MSN IM user does not have something like an ICQ
number, so the
Jabber transport mechanism creates an address like this:
buddy%hotmail.com@msn.jabber.zim.net.au
A Yahoo IM user might have a username like this:
buddy%yahoo.com@yahoo.jabber.zim.net.au
A Jabber IM user has a simple looking name like this:
buddy@jabber.zim.net.au

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Logged In: NO

How about integrating the buddy system with CS_Buddies... in
a way, you would be using the same friends to chat and to
have at hand... also it would mean that you should hack
CS_Buddies.

It does mean that you would have to hack user registration
so it asks for a IM identity and then register from there
the user to the server, save that info in the database and
now that the info is in there it would be handled via a
CS_Buddies hack that would add the other user as a buddy for
CS_Buddies and IRSIM...

whiskey