113614 - Chatzilla needs some kind of auto-performing script

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Other Applications Graveyard :: ChatZilla, enhancement)

Description

[Mark Slater]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:0.9.6+) Gecko/20011205
BuildID:    2001120504

mIRC and other irc chat clients have the ability to perform actions (join,
whois, etc.) on connecting to an IRC server.

Would be nice for chatzilla to have.

Comment 1

[David Hallowell]

Useful for those IRC servers that use nickserv so you can identify yourself
automatically on login. Now we need an ASCII mpt-style spec for implementing
this (does he do ChatZilla specs?).

Personally I think this should be implemented both on a per server and per
network basis. At the moment the list of networks is fixed, but eventually it
should be possible in the future to define your own networks.

Comment 2

[Benoit]

On undernet-like networks, it would be great if the authentication to X was
automated, maybe integrated with the password manager? Well, and some way to
script the popups as well, once you are authentified, the commands for the bot
should appear in it. Maybe it's already there... but I don't see any
documentation anywhere :)

Comment 3

[Daniel Bachran]

Just an idea: this might even be done by exposing some hooks for different
actions after bug 136528 has been implemented. The user could then define some
functions (like onJoin(), onConnect(), onAway()) which get executed when the
respective action has been performed.

Comment 4

[Garth Wallace]

Daniel: I think this bug is for such a generalized scripting feature. I don't
think that it's really specifically for identification at login (which varies
from network to network anyway) like Benlu suggests. I think it's for a
Chatzilla equivalent of mIRC's "remote".

Comment 5

[Benoit]

I agree with the "action executed when an event occurs" approach. This bug
should probably be marked as depending on bug 136528 (aliases).
Then we would need some sort of event model (at least onConnect, onDisconnect,
onAway, onBack, onJoin - which all are local events).

And eventually something for really remote events (user x said 'foo', user y got
kicked by user z, ...) coupled with an users list.

See http://www.mirc.com/faq7.html#section7-3 for a full explanation of how it is
done in mirc (their syntax is not very intuitive i think)

Comment 6

[Garth Wallace]

benlu: I don't think we have to worry about mIRC's syntax too much. I would
expect any Chatzilla scripting to be done via JavaScript.

Comment 7

[Samuel Sieb]

This is mostly possible now.  See
http://www.hacksrus.com/~ginda/chatzilla/chatzillarc.js for an example.  And
when bug 121152 is done, you will be able to do pretty much anything you can
dream of.

Comment 8

[Konrad]

nice, a solution programmers like

just normal users are lost when asked to modify this example for the usual /msg
and /join commands in different netwworks

Comment 9

[Garth Wallace]

Konrad: could you please be more clear? Your comment doesn't make a lot of sense.

Comment 10

[Konrad]

Only people with programming experience can use that.
I have a little but still I did half evening and help to adapt it for my needs.
Thats really far too complicated for normal users.

Comment 11

[Garth Wallace]

mIRCscript is a programming language too, and I'd be willing to bet that there
is more information out there about using JavaScript (due to its widespread use
in webpages, many of which are not written by professional programmers) than
there is about mIRCscript. The difficulty in customizing Chatzilla probably has
more to do with lack of easily readable documentation for the API than any
failings in JavaScript itself.

Comment 12

[Konrad]

I don´t know mirc, chatzilla was my first irc client and is still my primary :)
What I know is mirc has two interfaces, this programming language and the easy
to use perform file.
Its very nice chatzilla does understand a standard programming language. For
programmers this example likely is all they need to get things running.
But an easy user interface like this perform file of mirc and other irc clients
is missing.

Comment 13

[Garth Wallace]

Konrad: not sure what you're saying. The "perform file" is just a place where
you can enter mIRCscript; at least it was back when I used mIRC. You still need
to write code to make it do anything.

Comment 14

[James Ross]

The latest version of ChatZilla (0.9.45) has a 'autoperform' preference, see
http://www.hacksrus.com/~ginda/chatzilla/faq/#autoperform.

Comment 15

[James Ross]

Chatzilla current has a "autoperform" pref, which is a list of commands run when
connecting to the server. This, I believe, covers the original bug report here.
If this does not cover it, please reopen this bug.

Comment 16

[Garth Wallace]

I think this bug goes beyond just autoperforming when connecting. It's for all
sorts of automatic scripts, like onjoins and automatic responses to privmsgs.

Comment 17

[James Ross]

That is all possible with normal ChatZilla plugins (scripts). I don't see any
advantage to trying to do all the stuff you can do with scripts in prefs.
There's (IMHO) no way we're implementing anything beyond a simple list of
commands to run, outside of a script.

Reporter, could you make clear what you wanted from this bug, and in particular
if the autoperform pref covers it satisfactorily. If it does, this bug should be
closed, and a new one opened for what Garth Wallace suggests (which seems to me
could be basically done with GUI for writing scripts).

Comment 18

[Prognathous]

Any reason why this bug is still open?

Prog.

Comment 19

[James Ross]

Updating summary based on comment 16. I disagree with comment 16, though, and
since the original comment 0 is now implemented, FIXED.