Requirements

GNU Emacs 21.3 or CVS (the code was developed with respect to CVS version of GNU Emacs though)

Screen-shots

(Click image for larger view)

Feature List

Because ElGyach is the fusion of a simple command-line Yahoo Chat! interface with Emacs, it automatically benefits from features Emacs has. If you're unfamiliar with Emacs, this feature list is written from the perspective of conventional Yahoo Chat! clients.

• Endless scroll-back (which is also user configurable to truncate after a number of lines)
• Easily search back and forward withing the chat buffer for strings or regular expressions, optionally highlighting the results.
• Save the chat buffer to disk file
• Spell checking
• Highlighting posts from specific users
• Customizable word wrap (fill) algorithms and styles
• Integrated AES block cipher encryption (send encrypted messages privately or publicly over the Yahoo Chat! network)
• Several types of word completion for user-names, command names and general text:
  • Dynamic completion based on words appearing in any Emacs buffer
  • Tab-complete with temporary pop-up buffer showing completions
  • Completion based on a words within the language dictionary of your chosen locale
  • Programatic completion which provides in-place cyclic completion based on context
• View URLs. Choice of browser is configurable (more than 10 browsers are supported by Emacs -- including browser which work within Emacs itself)
• Customizable colors and text attributes
• More than one user-name logged in simultaneously (just start another ElGyach buffer)
• Move forward and backward through your post history. You can also search forward or backward through your post history based on regexp
• Easily extensible. Creating a new ElGyach command is trivial.
• Extensible at runtime. As soon as you evaluate you new command function, it will be accessible in your already running ElGyach instance.
• Support for both console users and X11. Since Emacs works in either modes, so too does ElGyach (though more colors and image support is available in X11).
• Ignore users.
• Support for emoticons (avatars etc)
• Close integration with other Emacs code such as MUAs, mpg123el playlists etc.

Feature to be added in future

• Private messages in separate pop-up buffers (configurable)
• Implement better spam reduction techniques
• Better support for avatars and a generalized mechanism for substituting text for inline images (for example, **== would apear as a PNG of the US flag)
• Logging
• Possibly move network code to pure-Emacs Lisp
• <your suggestion here!>

CVS Installation

mkdir ~/src
cd ~/src
touch ~/.cvspass && cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/elgyach login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/elgyach co elgyach
cd elgyach
./configure 
make
sudo cp src/elgyach /usr/local/bin

Setting up Emacs

Add the following code to your ~/.emacs

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/src/elgyach/elisp")
(setq gyach-program-name "~/src/elgyach/src/elgyach")
(load-library "gyach")

If you want some fancy text filling (wrapping and indentation), you might consider adding the following code to your ~/.emacs

(add-hook 'gyach-mode-hook '(lambda ()
                             (setq fill-column 90)
                             (setq fill-prefix "   + ")))

Starting ElGyach

Once you've installed and configured ElGyach, use M-x elgyach RET (return) to start it