Minbif

Minbif aims to use the libpurple library from the Pidgin project to provide an IRC-friendly instant messaging client.

By leveraging libpurple (which is already behind many popular clients), Minbif is guaranteed to alway provide an up-to-date support of a large number of IM networks (and it supports plugins!). Minbif also maps everything to pure IRC commands, giving it an intuitive, natural feeling. Joining a conversation is a simple /join, banning an user is a real IRC ban, sending files by a simple DCC, etc.

It is very easy to setup, as it does not require any non-standard authentication and just uses the server password feature of IRC clients, nor the configuration of an inetd.

Current version: minbif-1.0.5 (Sunday 04 December 2011)
Development version: minbif-1.1

Features

Minbif is an IRC gateway to IM networks which provides the following features:

  • Minbif uses a library which abstracts all IM calls, and has several plugins to support more than 15 IM protocols (IRC included!);
  • Two modes: inetd and daemon fork;
  • Only IRC commands are used to control Minbif;
  • IM Certificates check;
  • Buddies are IRC users;
  • Each account is associated to a status channel, where all connected buddies are;
  • Add and remove buddies from list with /INVITE and /KICK commands;
  • Blocked users are bans on the account's status channel;
  • Display when a buddy is typing a message;
  • Can chat with someone who is not in your buddy list;
  • You can see buddies' icons (with libcaca) or download them;
  • DCC SEND an image to set your icon on IM networks;
  • Display extended information about buddies with /WII command;
  • Status management;
  • Can send and receive files, which are sent or received to/from your IRC client with DCC SEND;
  • Conversation channels are supported;
  • Auto-rejoin conversation channels at connection;
  • Display list of channels on an IM account with /LIST;
  • irssi and weechat scripts to increase your user experience of minbif;
  • CACAcam (webcam in ascii art).
  • CoinCoin plugin for libpurple.
  • PAM support
  • TLS support with certificate auth
  • Bidirectional color and formatting translation. Works with figlet, and with toilet too!

Documentation

Support

Email

You can send an email to .

Mailing list

You can also subscribe to the mailing list and see all of the several posts in archives.

IRC

Join #minbif on the Freenode IRC network.

Bibliography

Also available in: HTML TXT