diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'doc/FAQ')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/FAQ | 71 |
1 files changed, 71 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/FAQ b/doc/FAQ new file mode 100644 index 00000000..e4fdcaed --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/FAQ @@ -0,0 +1,71 @@ +Frequently Asked Questions about BitlBee +======================================== + +Well, maybe not exactly "Frequently", but definitely "Asked" ... mostly by +the developers :-) + +Q: WTH were you guys on when you thought of that _weird_ name? +A: Though we live in The Netherlands and one of us even lives in Amsterdam, + we're not on drugs ... most of the time. + +Q: Okay, so the cops are so evil there, you can't even admit the truth, but + WTH does BitlBee mean then? +A: There are a few explanations. But the most symbolical goes like: the two + colors of the bee symbolize the two worlds betwee which the Bee flies. On + the one hand there's the IM-networks, on the other is IRC. + + Truth be told, it's absolute nonsense. The biggest nutcase in the + development team just played around with words for half an hour or so. + BitlBee was the result. We liked it, we kept it. We lovingly shorten it + to "the Bee" or even "het Bijtje" (Dutch for "the little Bee") sometimes. + +Q: What is 'root' doing in my control channel? I didn't start the Bee as + root. +A: 'root' is just the name for the most powerful user in BitlBee. Just like + in the system, it is root who is the ... eh ... root of the + functionality. Luckily, in BitlBee, root follows your orders (mostly), so + no BOFHs there. + + We get some complaints from time to time that 'root' is a confusing name. + Because of that name, some package maintainers have renamed root to, for + example, BitlBee. We recognize that some people see that need. If the + package maintainer hasn't renamed root, you can do this yourself with the + 'rename' command. + + The name root is not likely to change in the 'official' releases, though. + We find the metaphor of root correct and feel that there is no important + (security threatening) reason to change this non-creative piece of + artistic creativity. + +Q: When is $random_feature going to be implemented? +A: It depends on the feature. We keep a list of all wishlist "bugs" in our + Bug Tracking system at http://bugs.bitlbee.org/ + +Q: The messages I send and/or receive look weird. I see weird characters and + annoying HTML codes. Or, BitlBee does evil things when I send messages with + non-ASCII characters! +A: You probably have to change some settings. To get rid of HTML in messages, + see "help set strip_html". If you seem to have problems with your charset, + see "help set charset". + + Although actually most of these problems should be gone by now. So if you + can't get things to work well, you might have found a bug. + +Q: Is BitlBee forked from Gaim? +A: BitlBee 0.7 was, sort-of. It contained a lot of code from Gaim 0.58 + (mainly the IM-code), although heavily modified, to make it work better + with BitlBee. We were planning to keep BitlBee up-to-date with later Gaim + versions, but this turned out to be very time-consuming because the API + changed a lot, and we don't have the time to keep up with those changes + all the time. + + These days, we replaced the Yahoo! code with libyahoo2 (which is a + separate Yahoo! module. It's derived from Gaim, but separately + maintained) and wrote our own MSN, Jabber and Twitter modules from + scratch. Most of the API has also been changed, so by now the only traces + of Gaim left are in the "nogaim" filename. + + There is good news for Gaim (or now Pidgin, of course) fans though: + BitlBee can now be compiled to use libpurple for all IM interactions. + This makes BitlBee a bit more resource-hungry, but adds support for many + IM protocols/networks that couldn't be used from BitlBee so far. |