Are you infatuated with instant messaging? Would you like to learn how to create your own messaging application? This book shows readers how by dissecting Gaim, the open source instant messaging application.

Are you enamored with instant messaging? Would you like to learn how to create your own messaging application? This book shows you how, by dissecting Gaim--the world's most popular open source instant messaging application. Authored by the Gaim maintainer, Sean Egan, you are presented a thorough overview of Gaim architecture and Application Programming Interface. You'll learn how to make the most of the popular GTK+ graphical user interface toolkit. Egan guides you through the creation and installation of plug-ins, and discusses strategies involved in supporting messaging protocols like MSN Messenger, AIM and IRC. He also covers topics such as multi-platform support and internationalization.

Open Source Messaging Application Development: Building and Extending Gaim SEAN EGAN Open Source Messaging Application Development: Building and Extending Gaim Copyright (c) 2005 by Sean Egan All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN (pbk): 1-59059-467-3 Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Lead Editor: Jason Gilmore Technical Reviewer: Nathan Walp Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Dan Appleman, Ewan Buckingham, Gary Cornell, Tony Davis, Jason Gilmore, Jonathan Hassell, Chris Mills, Dominic Shakeshaft, Jim Sumser Associate Publisher: Grace Wong Project Manager: Beth Christmas Copy Edit Manager: Nicole LeClerc Copy Editor: Candace English Production Manager: Kari Brooks-Copony Production Editor: Kelly Winquist Compositor: Susan Glinert and Wordstop Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Chennai Proofreader: Linda Seifert Indexer: Broccoli Information Services Artist: Kinetic Publishing Services, LLC Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Manager: Tom Debolski Distributed to the book trade in the United States by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013, and outside the United States by Springer-Verlag GmbH &
Co. KG, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69112 Heidelberg, Germany. In the United States: phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax 201-348-4505, e-mail orders@springer-ny.com, or visit http://www.springer-ny.com. Outside the United States: fax +49 6221 345229, e-mail orders@spriger.de, or visit http://springer.de. For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 219, Berkeley, CA 94710. Phone 510-549-5930, fax 510-549-5939, e-mail info@apress.com, or visit http://www.apress.com. The information in this book is distributed on an
as is
basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work. The source code for this book is available to readers at http://www.apress.com in the Downloads section. v Contents at a Glance About the Author ... xv About the Technical Reviewer... xvii Acknowledgments... xix Introduction ... xxi CHAPTER 1 Getting Started ... 1 CHAPTER 2 The Open Source Development Process ... 23 CHAPTER 3 Development Tools ... 37 CHAPTER 4 Programming Gaim... 85 CHAPTER 5 GTK+ Basics ... 113 CHAPTER 6 Advanced GTK+ ... 197 CHAPTER 7 Sockets ... 237 CHAPTER 8 Protocol Plug-Ins ... 267 CHAPTER 9 Internationalization... 299 CHAPTER 10 Portability... 319 INDEX... 337