ChangeLog: Pidgin and Finch - The Pimpin' Penguin IM Clients That're Good For The Soul!

version 2.6.2 (09/05/2009)

​View all closed tickets for this release.

• libpurple
  • Fix --disable-avahi to actually disable it in configure, as opposed to just making the warning non-fatal.
  • Fix using GNOME proxy settings properly. (Erik van Pienbroek)

• IRC
  • Fix parsing of invalid TOPIC messages. (CVE-2009-2703)

• MSN
  • Sending custom smileys in chats is now supported.
  • Ink messages are now saved when using the HTML logger.
  • Fix a crash when receiving some handwritten messages.
  • Fix a crash when receiving certain SLP invite messages.
  • Chats with multiple people should no longer spontaneously disconnect.

• XMPP
  • Prompt the user before cancelling a presence subscription.
  • Escape status messages that have HTML entities in the Get Info dialog.
  • Fix connecting to XMPP domains with no SRV records from Pidgin on Windows.
  • Fix typing notifications with Pidgin 2.5.9 or earlier.
  • Fix connecting using BOSH and legacy authentication (XEP-0078).
  • Adding buddies of the form "romeo@…/Resource" are handled properly. In addition, it is no longer possible to add buddies of the form "room@…/User", where room@… is a MUC.
  • Don't crash when receiving "smileyfied" XHTML-IM from clients that don't support bits of binary (ie. when getting an empty <data/> in return)
  • Fix bug where SSL/TLS was not required even though the "require SSL/TLS" preference checked when connecting to servers that use the older iq-based authentication. (CVE-2009-3026)

• Yahoo!/Yahoo! JAPAN
  • Accounts now have "Use account proxy for SSL connections" option. This option force-overrides the account specific proxy settings for SSL connections only and instead uses the global proxy configuration.

• Finch
  • Properly detect libpanel on OpenBSD. (Brad Smith)
  • Remove IO watches in gnt_quit. (Tomasz Mon)

• Pidgin
  • Fix the auto-personize functionality in the Buddy List.
  • Set the window icon for the media window to an icon corresponding to the type of call (headphone or webcam).
  • Customized sound files are no longer reset whenever opening the Preferences dialog.
  • The buddy list should now immediately refresh upon changing the icon theme.

version 2.6.1 (08/18/2009)

​View all closed tickets for this release.

• Fix a crash when some users send you a link in a Yahoo IM
• Fix compilation with GTK+ < 2.6.0
• Fix compilation on Windows

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version 2.6.0 (08/18/2009)

​View all closed tickets for this release.

• libpurple
  • Theme support in libpurple thanks to Justin Rodriguez's summer of code project, with some minor additions and cleanups from Paul Aurich.
  • Voice & Video framework in libpurple, thanks to Mike Ruprecht's summer of code project in 2008.
  • It should no longer be possible to end up with duplicates of buddies in a group on the buddy list.
  • Removed the unmaintained and unneeded toc protocol plugin.
  • Fixed NTLM authentication on big-endian systems.
  • Various memory cleanups when unloading libpurple. (Nick Hebner and Stefan Becker)
  • Report idle time 'From last message sent' should work properly.
  • Better handling of corrupt certificates in the TLS Peers cache.
  • More efficient buddy list and conversation search functions. (Jan Kaluza and Aman Gupta)
  • Install scalable versions of the main Pidgin icon, the protocol icons, the dialog icons, and the Buddy List emblems.
  • Build properly on Hurd. (Marc Dequènes)
  • Various memory leaks fixed as reported by Josh Mueller.
  • Properly handle an IRC buddy appearing in multiple groups.
  • Escape HTML entities in usernames when written with the HTML logger.
  • Do not display MySpace status changes as incoming IMs. (Mark Doliner and Justin Williams)

• DNS
  • DNS servers are re-read when DNS queries fail in case the system has moved to a new network and the old servers are not accessible.
  • DNS SRV records with equal priority are sorted with respect to their weight as specified in RFC 2782. (Vijay Raghunathan)
  • Don't do IPv6 address lookups if the computer does not have an IPv6 address configured.
  • Fix a leak when the UI provides its own DNS resolving UI op. (Aman Gupta)
  • Don't fork a DNS resolver process to resolve IP addresses. (Aman Gupta)
  • Internationalized Domain Names are supported when libpurple is compiled against the GNU IDN library.

• Environment Variables
  • GnuTLS logging (disabled by default) can be controlled through the PURPLE_GNUTLS_DEBUG environment variable, which is an integer between 0 and 9 (higher is more verbose). Higher values may reveal sensitive information.
  • PURPLE_VERBOSE_DEBUG environment variable. Currently, this is an "on" or "off" variable. Set it to any value to turn it on and unset it to turn it off. This will optionally be used to only show less useful debug information on an as-needed basis.
  • PURPLE_LEAKCHECK_HELP environment variable. Currently, this is an "on" or "off" variable. Set it to any value to turn it on and unset it to turn it off. This will be used to perform various actions that are useful when running libpurple inside of Valgrind or similar programs. Currently, it keeps plugins in memory, allowing Valgrind to perform symbol resolution of leak traces at shutdown.

• AIM and ICQ
  • Preliminary support for a new authentication scheme called "clientLogin."
  • Fixed a bug where your away message sometimes would not get set when you first sign on.
  • Make sure links in your away messages show up as links to other people.
  • For ICQ, Never change the privacy setting specified by the user.

• Gadu-Gadu
  • Accounts can specify a server to which to connect. (Krzysztof "kreez" Tobola)
  • Correctly show tooltip status for contacts with status messages. (Krzysztof "kkszysiu" Klinikowski)
  • Support for fetching buddy icons. (Krzysztof "kkszysiu" Klinikowski)
  • Support connection progress steps in Gadu-Gadu. (Krzysztof "kkszysiu" Klinikowski)

• MSN
  • Add support for receiving handwritten (ink) messages on MSN. (Chris Stafford, Gal Topper, and Elliott Sales de Andrade)
  • Add support for receiving audio clips on MSN. (Chris Stafford, Gal Topper, and Elliott Sales de Andrade)
  • Show the invite message for buddies that requested authorization from you on MSN.
  • Support sending an invite message to buddies when requesting authorization from them on MSN.
  • Timeout switchboard connections aggressively (60 seconds).

• XMPP
  • Voice & Video support with Jingle (XEP-0166, 0167, 0176, & 0177), voice support with GTalk and voice and video support with the GMail web client. (Mike "Maiku" Ruprecht)
  • Added a Service Discovery Browser plugin for Pidgin. (Andrei Mozzhuhin)
  • Support for in-band bytestreams for file transfers (XEP-0047). (Marcus Lundblad)
  • Support for sending and receiving attentions (equivalent to "buzz" and "nudge") using the command /buzz. (XEP-0224)
  • Support for connecting using BOSH. (Tobias Markmann)
  • A buddy's local time is displayed in the Get Info dialog if the remote client supports it.
  • The set_chat_topic function can unset the chat topic.
  • The Ad-Hoc commands associated with our server are now always shown at login.
  • Support showing and reporting idle times in the buddy list. (XEP-0256)
  • Support most recent version of User Avatar. (XEP-0084 v1.1)
  • Updated Entity Capabilities support. (Tobias Markmann)
  • Better support for receiving remote users' nicknames.
  • /affiliate and /role will now list the room members with the specified affiliation/role if possible. (Andrei Mozzhuhin)
  • Put section breaks between resources in "Get Info" to improve readability.
  • Silently remove invalid XML 1.0 entities (e.g. ASCII control characters) from sent messages.
  • XHTML markup is only included in outgoing messages when the message contains formatting.
  • Show when the user was last logged in when doing "Get Info" on an offline buddy, provided the server supports it.
  • Support custom smileys in MUCs (only when all participants support the "Bits of Binary" extension, and a maximum of 10 participants are in the chat to avoid getting too many fetch requests).
  • Fix an issue with Jabber (pre-XMPP) servers and the user's preference to require SSL not being respected.
  • Fix an issue where Cyrus SASL DIGEST MD5 authentication might fail if the username, password, or realm (the JID domain) contain non-ASCII characters.
  • Show emblem for mobile, handheld, and web clients and bots (if the other client supports it).
  • Google Talk mail notifications should now work for people for whom they inexplicably did not. (Thanks to yukam for determining the reason)
  • New XMPP and Google Talk accounts require SSL by default.
  • Display kicks (and the reasons given) in chat rooms when an occupant is kicked.
  • Fix issues with case-sensitivity of XMPP roster and case-insensitive Purple groups.
  • For contacts who advertise Entity Capabilities, only send rich text markup if they support it.
  • Removed support for obsoleted XEP-0022 (Message Events) and XEP-0091 (Legacy Entity Time).
  • When the GNU IDN library (libidn) is available, it is used for normalization of Jabber IDs. When unavailable, internal routines are used (as in previous versions).
  • Topics that contain '<' followed by a non-whitespace character can now be set properly.

• Yahoo!/Yahoo! JAPAN
  • P2P file transfers. (Sulabh Mahajan)
  • Sending text messages (address to +<countrycode><phone number>). (Sulabh Mahajan)
  • Addition of MSN buddies to Yahoo accounts by adding them as 'msn/buddy@somedomain.com' is now supported. (Sulabh Mahajan)
  • Further fixes for buddy pictures, aliases, etc.
  • Yahoo! and Yahoo! JAPAN are now two separate protocol plugins that share common protocol code. You can now have the same account on both networks. Accounts should be seamlessly migrated to the new arrangement.
  • Ability to set personal details for an account and for buddies in the buddylist.

• Pidgin
  • Added -f command line option to tell Pidgin to ignore NetworkManager and assume it has a valid network connection.
  • Allow plugins to specify custom link types to the GtkIMHtml widget.
  • The status message input box at the bottom of the buddy list expands correctly when starting a new line of text.
  • Pressing the Enter key in the message entry box of the New Status dialog and various other dialogs now causes the cursor to move to the next line.
  • Created a unified Buddy Pounce notification window for all pounces where "Pop up a notification" is selected, which avoids having a new dialog box every time a pounce is triggered. (Jorge Villaseñor)
  • The New Account dialog is now broken into three tabs. Proxy configuration has been moved from the Advanced tab to the new tab.
  • Dragging a buddy onto a chat pops up a chat-invitation dialog. (Carlos Bederian)
  • The nicks of the persons who leave the chatroom are italicized in the chat's conversation history. The nicks are un-italicized when they rejoin.
  • Always set unseen-count and unseen-state on conversations. (Joshua Stein)
  • Fix a bug in 'Conversation Colors' plugin for RTL messages.
  • Pressing the Left and Right arrow keys in the buddy list will expand and collapse buddy groups or contacts. (Peter Ruibal)
  • Support saving animated custom smileys as animated images or animated custom smileys. (Andrea Piccinelli)
  • Support for keyboard navigation on the status icon. (Li Yuan)
  • IMG tags without 'id' attributes are turned into links to the image URL. (Dmitry Petroff)
  • Draw the user's buddy icon at the bottom of the Buddy List with rounded corners for visual consistency with the actual icons in the Buddy List. (Kosta Arvanitis)
  • When file transfers are complete, the received file name written to the conversation window is now linked to the file.
  • Fix a crash when closing a conversation tab that has unread messages when the Message Notification plugin is loaded.
  • Fix a crash when closing the New Mail dialog if an account with new mail was previously disconnected while the dialog was open.
  • Fix incorrect unread message counts for the new mail notifications.
  • Do not lose unread messages with a hidden conversation window when new IM conversations are hidden and "Close IMs immediately when the tab is closed" is unset.

• Finch
  • The hardware cursor is updated correctly. This will be useful especially for users of braille terminals, screen readers etc.
  • Added a TinyURL plugin, which aids copying longer URLs.
  • Fixed UTF-8 compatibility problems which could cause exits or other unrequested behaviour.

• Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control Plugin
  • Removed mouse cursor color preferences.
  • Added "Typing Notification Color" preference.
  • Added "Disable Typing Notification Text" preference.
  • Preferences have been reorganized into three tabs for Colors, Fonts, and Miscellaneous categories.

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version 2.5.9 (08/18/2009)

​View all closed tickets for this release.

• Fix a crash via a specially crafted MSN message (CVE-2009-2694).
• Fix a crash in Bonjour, MSN, and XMPP when trying to transfer files with NULL names.

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Version 2.5.8 (06/27/2009)

​View all closed tickets for this release.

• ICQ
  • Fix misparsing a web message as an SMS message. (Yuriy Kaminskiy)

• MSN
  • Increase NS command history size to prevent crashes on buddy lists that have a lot of buddies on other networks like Yahoo!

• MySpace
  • Accounts with empty buddy lists are now properly marked as connected.
  • Fix receiving messages from users of MySpace IM's web client.

• Yahoo
  • Fixed phantom online buddies. They should now properly disappear when signing out.
  • Fixed the crashes some users were seeing with cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com in 2.5.7.
  • Fixed compiling on systems with glib 2.4.x or older.
  • Fixed an issue with file transfers. This may not resolve all issues, but it should resolve at least some of the most common ones.
  • The pager server will automatically update to scsa.msg.yahoo.com if the user empties the field or if it is scs.msg.yahoo.com. This should ease the pain of transition to the new login method.

• XMPP
  • Fix an incompatibility betweeen Prosody and libpurple clients.

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Version 2.5.7 (06/20/2009)

​View all closed tickets for this release.

• Yahoo Protocol 16 support, including new HTTPS login method; this should fix a number of login problems that have recently cropped up. (Sulabh Mahajan, Mike "Maiku" Ruprecht)
• Only display the AIM "Unable to Retrieve Buddy List" message once per connection. (Rob Taft)
• Blocking MSN users not on your buddy list no longer disconnects you.
• When performing operations on MSN, assume users are on the MSN/Passport network if we don't get network ID's for them.

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Version 2.5.6 (05/19/2009)

​View all closed tickets for this release.

• libpurple
  • Improve sleep behavior by aggregation of longer timeouts on second boundaries to allow better power saving. (Arunan Balasubramaniam)
  • Fix various crashes on exit.
  • Make XML parsing more resilient to interactions with other libraries. This, along with the fix for libxml2 bug 564217, fixes the crashes on connect in XMPP with recent gst-plugins-bad (see #8830 for details).
  • Many security related fixes

• IRC
  • Correctly handle WHOIS for users who are joined to a large number of channels.
  • Notify the user if a /nick command fails, rather than trying fallback nicks.

• MSN
  • Fix a race condition causing occasional Pidgin crashes.
  • Fix some errors about the friendly name changing too fast caused by MSN/Yahoo integration buddies.

• XMPP
  • Less likely to pop up a new conversation window in disregard of the "Hide new IM conversations" preference.

• Yahoo
  • Fix a crash when sending very long messages.
  • Fix a bug where UTF-8 status messages get garbled when going idle.

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Version 2.5.5 (03/01/2009)

​View all closed tickets for this release.

• libpurple
  • Fix a crash when removing an account with an unknown protocol id.
  • Beta support for SSL connections for AIM and ICQ accounts. To enable, check the "Use SSL" option from the Advanced tab when editing your AIM or ICQ account. (Paul Aurich)
  • Fix a memory leak in SILC. (Luke Petre)
  • Fix some string handling in the SIMPLE prpl, which fixes some buddy name handling and other issues. (Paul Aurich, Marcus Sundberg)
  • Implement support for resolving DNS via the SOCKS4 proxy (SOCKS4a).

• ICQ
  • Fix retrieval of status messages from users of ICQ 6.x, Miranda, and other libpurple clients. (Daniel Ljungborg)
  • Change client ID to match ICQ Basic 14.34.3096. This fixes publishing of buddy icons and available messages.
  • Properly publish status messages for statuses other than Available. ICQ 6.x users can now see these status messages. (Daniel Ljungborg)
  • Fix receipt of messages from the mobile client Slick. (David Jedelsky)

• MSN
  • Fix transfer of buddy icons, custom smileys, and files from the latest Windows Live Messenger 9 official client. (Thomas Gibson-Robinson)
  • Large (multi-part) messages are now correctly re-combined.
  • Federated/Yahoo?! buddies should now stop creating sync issues at every signin. You may need to remove duplicates in the Address Book. See the FAQ for more information. Thanks to Jason Lingohr for lots of debugging and testing.
  • Messages from Yahoo! buddies are no longer silently dropped.
  • We now save and use the CacheKey for ABCH SOAP requests.
  • Don't try to parse Personal Status Messages or Current Media if they don't exist.
  • Convert from ISO-8859-1 encoding to UTF-8 when no charset is specified on incoming messages. This should fix some issues with messages from older clients.
  • Force sending the font "Segoe UI" if outgoing formatting doesn't specify a font already.
  • Queue callbacks when token updates are in progress to prevent two token update attempts from trampling each other.
  • Fixed a crash on Windows when removing a buddy's alias.
  • Update the Address Book when buddies' friendly names change. This prevents seeing an outdated alias or not seeing an alias at all for buddies who are offline when you sign in.
  • Update tokens for FindMembership and ABFindAll SOAP requests.
  • We no longer try to send empty messages. This could happen when a message contained only formatting and that formatting was not supported on MSN.
  • Buddies on both the Allow and Block list are now automatically removed from the Allow list. Users with this problem will now no longer receive an ADL 241 error. The problematic buddy should now appear on the buddy list and can be removed or unblocked as desired.

• XMPP
  • Resources using __HOSTNAME__ substitution will now grab only the short hostname instead of the FQDN on systems which put the FQDN in the hostname. (Matěj Cepl)
  • No longer send a 'to' attribute on an outgoing stanza when we haven't received one. This fixes a registration bug as described in ticket #6635.

• Pidgin
  • Tooltip windows now appear below the mouse cursor. (Kosta Arvanitis)
  • Tooltip windows now disappear on keypress events. (Kosta Arvanitis)
  • Tooltip windows no longer linger when scrolling the buddy list. (Kosta Arvanitis)

• Finch
  • Allow rebinding keys to change the focused widget (details in the man-page, look for GntBox::binding)

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Older Changes

Changes between 2.0.0 and 2.5.4 may be found in the FullChangeLog

Changes predating 2.0.0 may be found in the ChangeLog and ChangeLog.win32 files in the source distribution.