2005.4.11 - 1.1pre10 is released. This release contains couple bug fixes, better chat logging path, and some error condition handling. See the ChangeLog for list of changes.
2005.4.1 - The lastest and the greatest Curphoo 0.3.12.4.1 has been released. This unofficial release is essentially 0.3.12 minus all the changes that Zinc creator/maintainer has contributed after curphoo-0.03.2 through curphoo-0.3.7. Some of the changes after 0.3.7 could not be merged into 0.3.12.4 because either it broke the code or simply didn't make sense such as help text for feature no longer existing. Curphoo 0.3.12.4.1 is fully functioning old school style chat client without any bells and whistels you've known and come to enjoy in Curphoo 0.3.12. It lacks any color customizations since all the color settings are hard coded into the code. Also name highlighting isn't saved on file so you have to do that everytime you launch Curphoo 0.3.12.4.1. Many of it's files are in python's pickle format which means you can't edit them very easily with your text editor. Chatter's list is all jumbled so it's harder to read. It doesn't have any regular expression based ignore feature so you'll have more opportunity to converse with those lovely pornbots. Also if you have chatter's ignore count more than about a thousand, your machine will eat up all your CPU cycles, chat client will slow down and eventually come to a grinding halt. Sounds real good huh? Without further delay the files are curphoo-0.3.12.4.1.tar.bz2, curphoo-0.3.12.4.1.tar.gz, or curphoo-0.3.12.4.1.patch against curphoo-0.3.12.tar.bz2. Be sure to backup your ~/.curphoo path because of the python pickle file format incompatibilities. Enjoy!
2005.3.31 - 1.1pre9 is released. This realase has whole bunch of bug fixes as well as some new features. One important to note to this release is that Zinc now works well in NetBSD 2.0. See the ChangeLog for list of changes. UPDATE (2004.4.2): It appears a silly bug crept in on 1.1pre9 release. ignore-im-spammer parameter in ~/.zinc/zincrc works backwards. Y turns off the feature and N turns on the feature. That feature should have been off by default but it got turned on by default mistakenly.
2005.3.22 - Congratulations! carameldelite18 gave birth to a healthy 8 lb. 0.6 oz. baby girl on March 18, 2005 11:49am. Yay!
2005.1.19 - 1.1pre8 is released. This release has some new features as well as some visual changes to Zinc. See the ChangeLog for list of changes.
2004.11.12 - Yahoo! chat servers are currently experiencing some technical problems. YMSG protocol servers are sporadically not accepting connections. To make matters worse YCHT protocol servers are not accepting relayed packets from YMSG protocol servers. What that means is YCHT users can make comments yet only see what other YCHT users are saying but not see any YMSG user's comment. Hopefully this is a temporary problem but until then YMSG is only fully functioning protocol even though it has it's own problems.
2004.11.6 - 1.1pre7 is released. After a long hiatus, Zinc development is back on track. This release contains variety of bug fixes as well as some new features. More notable feature is the remote-shutdown feature that allows you to shut down Zinc running remotely. OpenBSD users should be happy to know that 1.1pre7 will work once again. See the ChangeLog for list of changes.
2004.9.10 - 1.1pre6 is released. This release contains the usual bug fixes as well as some new long awaited feature. New feature for this release is the repeated comment auto ignore. See the ChangeLog for list of changes. UPDATE (2004.9.14): It appears 1.1pre6 is broken for OpenBSD. The fix for this problem will be released in 1.1pre7.
2004.8.11 - 1.1pre5 is released. This release contains bunch of fixes as well as some noteworthy features. Protocol failover feature has been added. When attempt to connect with YMSG protocol fails, it will attempt to connect using YCHT protocol. See the ChangeLog for list of changes.
2004.8.5 - 1.1pre4 is released. Couple of minor feature enhancements as well as bug fixes are included in this release. /help command will work once again. There is quite a bit of changes in the core of the program regarding thread handling. See the ChangeLog for list of changes. UPDATE: It appears /reconnect [protocol] feature is broken and doesn't work as it should. UPDATE: A very silly but harmless bug is preventing the feature from working as it should. You can wait for 1.1pre5 or you can replace your PacketQueue.py file with this file. If you've installed Zinc into system with install.sh, you should run zinc --install as root after you replace the PacketQueue.py file.
2004.7.28 - Flooders are still at it again but it's not a problem at all with Zinc. They have adapted into creating more random yahoo id and therefore ignore file will be necessary to fight it. In fact this is a good news since ignore entries scale much better than regex. First issue this command from inside Zinc: /set rc silent-autoignore Y. Also do the following two wget commands from your shell.
wget -q -O - http://larvalstage.org/zinc/files/regex.ignore.name >> ~/.zinc/regex.ignore.name
wget -q -O - http://larvalstage.org/zinc/files/ignore >> ~/.zinc/ignore
These two files will be updated regularly so you might want to do this wget every so often. You don't have to worry about duplicated entries accumulating. Zinc automatically removes duplicate entries for you.
2004.7.22 - 1.1pre3 is released. Couple of minor bug fixes have been included in this release. One notable change in this release is the fix for 45 minute reconnect fix. Install script has been modified for FreeBSD and OpenBSD. See the ChangeLog for list of changes. UPDATE: It turns out a bug crept in that would crash zinc if you do /help. This will be fixed in 1.1pre4 due shortly.
2004.7.15 - A dear friend as well as devoted user of Zinc has written a step by step guide to installing Zinc. Please read this page if you are new to Linux and want to get Zinc up and running. My thanks goes to Na'Tosha for her hard work.
2004.7.9 - There has been a rash of flooders in Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris:1 recently. You can ease this problem by adding couple regex based name ignores into ~/.zinc/regex.ignore.name file. There are some regex thrown in there for catching other pests as well. Also you should turn off auto-ignore message by doing this: /set rc silent-autoignore Y
wget -q -O - http://larvalstage.org/zinc/files/regex.ignore.name >> ~/.zinc/regex.ignore.name
2004.7.7 - 1.1pre2 is released. YMSG protocol code has been fixed in this release. One notable change in this release is the ability to send and receive extended ascii characters. You'll be able to send and receive words like El Niño, Français, or förvånad.
2004.7.7 - 1.0.1 is released. This is maintenance stable release to fix recent YMSG protocol change.
2004.6.23 - Yahoo! has changed it's protocol once again. Here is a news article on how Yahoo is blocking Trillian users. Currently Gaim and Zinc are using the same authorization protocol as Trillian so we are in the same boat. Here is Gaim's forum thread on this issue. Here is Gaim's bug tracker entry regarding current situation. For now you can still use Zinc by using YCHT protocol but just so you know PM is very unreliable in YCHT protocol. To use YCHT protocol, start Zinc by doing this:
zinc -p YCHT -s jcs.chat.dcn.yahoo.com
UPDATE (6:15am EST): Here is a thread on Trillian's Forum discussing the issue. UPDATE (2004.6.24 11:22am EST): There is now a slashdot story on this Yahoo! situation. The solution described in the story will not work since changing the server to scs.yahoo.com will put you in a server not connected to scs-dcng.msg.yahoo.com. This is simply not a valid solution to current problem. UPDATE (2004.6.24 1:45pm): Trillian folks have figured out what changes were needed to resolve this issue. The code is already in gaim cvs. The code porting task has been started for Zinc to fix YMSG protocol once again.
2004.6.17 - It appears there is yet another outage in Yahoo! chat servers. It's too soon to say what's causing the problem this time. It could be yet another DDOS on Akamai DNS like the one two days ago. UPDATE: The problem seems to have dissipated.
2004.6.15 - As of 6:29pm EST, Yahoo! servers seems to be having major technical difficulties. Stay tuned for more information on the status of the problem. UPDATE (10:19pm EST): There seems to be some confusion as to what is causing this outage. Here is an article that may be related to the current situation. UPDATE (2:25am EST): It appears the problem has been resolved.
2004.6.11 - Zinc 1.1pre1 is released. This is a new development release which will eventually become 1.1 final. 1.1pre1 has couple bug fixes as well as couple new features. Now you can assign color attribute in ~/.zinc/color file. Unfortunately this breaks the backward compatibility with 1.0 file format. If you want to try this 1.1 only feature please make a backup copy of files in ~/.zinc path before continuing. Installation procedure has not changed for 1.1pre1. See the ChangeLog for list of changes.
2004.5.26 - Zinc 1.0 is released. Credit goes to all those who contributed many countless hours making Zinc better.
2004.5.12 - Zinc 1.0rc6 is released. This is very minor bug fix release. If all goes well, version number will be the only thing that will change for 1.0 final.
2004.4.27 - Zinc 1.0rc5 is released. Hopefully this release will resolve the problems of 1.0rc3 and 1.0rc4.
2004.4.20 - Zinc 1.0rc4 is released. The code to detect multiple login attempt with same Yahoo! userid did not work very well. 1.0rc4 is just 1.0rc3 minus that particular code. 1.0rc3 has been taken off the circulation. It's best to just not launch multiple copies of Zinc with same Yahoo! id. UPDATE: It appears 1.0rc4 broke parts of auto reconnect feature. Until this is fixed, use 1.0rc2 instead.
2004.4.17 - Zinc 1.0rc3 is released. Hopfully this is the last release before the 1.0 final. Very minor bugs have been fixed in this release. See the ChangeLog for list of changes. Please check ~/.zinc/error file occasionally. This file is where tracebacks are dumped. Please email me that file if you see anything in there.
2004.4.3 - Zinc 1.0rc2 is released. This is a bug fix release. The major bug fixed in this release is the YMSG protocol fix for big endian machines. See the ChangeLog for list of changes. On the related note, FAQ page has been updated.
2004.3.31 - solaris_system has successfully ran Zinc under Sun Solaris 10 beta. It appears folks over at sunfreeware.com have finally fixed the Python package. UPDATE: Porting the glibc *NIX standard crypt function to Python has been completed. The YMSG protocol fix for big endian machines will be in 1.0rc2.
2004.3.19 - Zinc 1.0rc1 is released. This is first release candidate and from now on no new features will be added. 1.0rc1 does have one new feature. /checkupd command will now check new version availability. See the ChangeLog for list of changes.
2004.3.3 - Zinc 1.0pre32 is released. This is mainly a bug fix release with the exception of /ccs which will search for words on custom command file. This will be the last preview release before starting release candidate and eventually final. See the ChangeLog for list of changes.
2004.2.27 - Zinc 1.0pre31 is released. This release has whole lot of new code and new features. New feature enhancements are just too many to mention here. See the ChangeLog for a complete list. It's highly recommended that all current Zinc users should create a backup of ~/.zinc/ path just in case 1.0pre31 decides to misbehave. UPDATE: Be sure to delete ~/.zinc/en/msg file and let the new version rebuild the file. Don't launch two or more copes of Zinc with same yahoo id. The two instance of Zinc will try to reconnect and bump eachother off repeatedly. UPDATE: A problem was discovered with /ric and /rmc command. You can download this Regex.py file and replace the one that comes with 1.0pre31 to fix the problem. If you're about to install 1.0pre31, replace the src/Regex.py in the tarball with this file before running install.sh. If you've already installed 1.0pre31, copy the new Regex.py to /usr/lib/zinc path and do /usr/lib/zinc/zinc --install as root.
2004.2.3 - Zinc 1.0pre30 is released. This release is lots of bug fixes and some new features. Most notable fix is the window resize crash fix. List of changes are too many to mention here. See ChangeLog. Unfortunately the big endian related bug has not been fixed yet so if you are on big endian cpu, please use YCHT protocol for now until it's fixed. UPDATE: It appears there is a minor bug in 1.0pre30. If you are upgrading from an older version of Zinc, please remove ~/.zinc/syscmd file before running Zinc so that new syscmd file can be automatically generated.
2004.1.21 - It appers the new YMSG challenge and response algorithm isn't all that fully cooked for big endian cpu. Currently Zinc won't work on big endian cpu like PowerPC (Macs), sparc, alpha, etc. This will be fixed in 1.0pre30 but until then you can still use YCHT protocol without any problem. UPDATE: After some investigation the problem was isolated to the *NIX standard crypt function working differently for big endian cpu.
2004.1.17 - Zinc 1.0pre29 is released. This release is a minor bug fix and cleanup release to solve problems for Python 2.1 and to disable warning messages for Python 2.3 users. Incoming and Ougoing socket timeout has been changed to full one second and thread locking code has been slightly changed in hopes it will help the intermitten connection dropout problems people are experiencing.
2004.1.14 - Zinc 1.0pre28 is released. This release has the new YMSG challenge and response authentication code so now YMSG protocol works again. There is a known problem with this release. It will not run on Python 2.1. You need Python 2.2. or 2.3 for this release to work. This will be fixed shortly. I've also just started FAQ page. Please let me know of what you think of it. UPDATE: It appears Python 2.3 will spew bunch of warning messages upon install and launching of zinc. You can safely ignore those messages. This problem will be fixed in 1.0pre29.
2004.1.14 - The new YMSG challenge response algorithm has been successfully ported to python. 1.0pre28 will be released after some testing.
2004.1.10 - It appears amatus of gaim project has once again figured out the yahoo protocol authentication algorithm. This time he has figured out the algorithm for a generic case instead for one specific case. This is very good news. I will be converting his C code to python as soon as I can and Zinc will once again able to connect via YMSG protocol. Stay tuned.
2004.1.9 - Zinc 1.0pre27 is released. This is a very important relase since Zinc now support both YMSG protocol as well as older YCHT protocol. Zinc is probably the first chat client to support both protocols. Since YMSG protocol is going trough some trouble, YCHT protocol is only way to go at the moment. Installation hasn't changed. Simply run install.sh as root. Follow the instructions below:
If you've never used zinc before and want to use YCHT protocol instead of YMSG protocol, be sure to answer the initial setup questions as follows:
Yahoo! ID: youryahooid Password: yourpassword this will be invisible while you type Protocol [YMSG]: YCHT Server [scs.msg.yahoo.com]: jcs4.chat.dcn.yahoo.com Language [en]: Room [Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris:1]: 1) Save both Yahoo! ID and Password to ~/.zinc/usrpwd 2) Save only Yahoo! ID to ~/.zinc/usrpwd 3) Do not save any information Selection (1, 2, or [3]): 1
If you've upgraded from older version, launch zinc like this:
zinc -p YCHT -s jcs4.chat.dcn.yahoo.com
You can also edit ~/.zinc/usrpwd file so YCHT protocol is used in your default profile by making it look something like this:
default:youryahooid:yourpassword:YCHT:jcs4.chat.dcn.yahoo.com:en:Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris:1
You can also create secondary profile by doing something like this:
default:youryahooid:yourpassword:YMSG:scs-dcng.msg.yahoo.com:en:Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris:1 ychtprof:youryahooid:yourpassword:YCHT:jcs4.chat.dcn.yahoo.com:en:Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris:1
You can launch zinc with your alternate YCHT protocol profile by doing this:
zinc -a ychtprof
I'm sure gaim developers will reverse engineer the new Yahoo! challenge and response encoding algorithm in couple of days. Until then YCHT protocol is only way to connect to Yahoo! chat servers.
UPDATE (2004.1.14): better YCHT server setting is jcs.chat.dcn.yahoo.com since it will point you to multiple available servers
2004.1.9 - It's pretty clear at this point Yahoo! has changed their challenge and response encoding algorithm. There are folks at gaim working hard on this one as we speak. I'm currently working to implement YCHT protocol for Zinc. I'm currently about 50% finished.
2004.1.9 - Currently Yahoo! chat servers are having some issues. Either they have lost their minds or authentication hash has been changed thus making third party clients useless yet again... Stay tuned for updated information on this matter. UPDATE: You're not crazy. Servers are borked. Here is a thread on gaim forum discussing the problem.
2004.1.8 - Zinc 1.0pre26 is released. 1.0pre25 disaster was quickly diverted with the help of kings_knight3. Zinc is once again usable on Python 2.3.
2004.1.8 - Zinc 1.0pre25 is released. This release fixes many outstanding bugs big and small. Upgrading to this version is highly recommended. You should see improved performance and stability with this release. UPDATE: Some weird issue when running python 2.3 has forced 1.0pre25 to be pulled. Stay tuned for update. If you are the lucky few that grabbed the tarball, please don't run it on Python 2.3.
2004.1.1 - Happy New Year! With a new year, Zinc 1.0pre24 is released. This version fixes couple of bugs that were accumulated over the past two months. This release now strips those annoying html anchor tags gyach dumps into the chatroom.
2003.12.30 - Yahoo! has been messing around with server configuration recently. If you have trouble logging into Yahoo! chat server, try launching zinc with -s cs1.msg.dcn.yahoo.com parameter. By the way, thank you edge-op for providing this information. UPDATE (2004.1.1): It appears scs-dcng.msg.yahoo.com is a better choice because that will direct you to a number of available server instead of having you point to a specific server. I made this the default server to be used in 1.0pre24 and later. You can edit ~/.zinc/zincrc and ~/.zinc/usrpwd file. Be careful when editing them since it can cause weird problems if you make a mistake. If you messed them up you can simply delete those files and it will be automatically created when you run zinc.
2003.11.03 - Zinc 1.0pre23 is released. This release fixes many outstanding bugs as well as adds some new features like url parsing and caching. This release also fixes many long standing regex based ignore and filter bugs. Install script is now a bit smarter. It accepts --prefix= param now and it generates .pyc and .pyo files which will speed up zinc launch speed. UPDATE: It appears there is a bug where /help command wll crash zinc.. To fix this problem, exit zinc if you are already running, remove ~/.zinc/syscmd file and then run zinc. Zinc will recreate the file and /help command will work as it was suppose to.
2003.10.21 - Zinc 1.0pre22 is released. This is a quick bug fix release over 1.0pre21. It addresses the broken /join command.
2003.10.21 - Zinc 1.0pre21 is released. This releases adds room list feature as well as numerous bug fixes. *UPDATE* it appears /join command isn't working as expected. This will be fixed as soon as possible and 1.0pre22 will be released.
2003.10.10 - Zinc 1.0-preview20 is released. This releases fixes couple of bugs that was reported since 1.0-preview19. Stability should be back to the 1.0-preview16 level.
2003.10.04 - Zinc 1.0-preview19 is released. This is yet another bug fix release. It contains fixes to bunch of newly discovered bugs.
2003.10.02 - Zinc 1.0-preview18 is released. This release is to fix stability problems introduced by new YMSG protocol code.
2003.10.01 - Zinc 1.0-preview17 is released. Zinc is now 100% Curphoo code free. See ChangeLog for list of enhancements. If you are using any prior version of Zinc preview releases, you must either remove ~/.zinc/ path or rename it. Starting with preview17 Zinc will be installed in /usr/share/zinc/ directory.
2003.09.29 - Process of removing all remaining Curphoo code from Zinc is complete. Folks over at Gaim has figured out the new Yahoo! authentication routine. About 500 lines of C source code from Gaim has been ported to Python and it is working. 1.0-preview17 will be released after some testing.
2003.09.24 - Yahoo! has changed their protocol on their chat servers which made all the third party chat clients using YMSG protocol to become useless. Unfortunately Zinc uses YMSG and thus it stopped working as result. Currently various solutions are being explored and tested to overcome these changes.
2003.09.24 - Person by the Yahoo ID master_script_kiddie claiming to be the author of original Curphoo has alleged that Zinc is in violation of GPL. After careful review, it is my position that Curphoo's author has absolutely no bases to make that claim. There is absolute no evidence presented in this matter by him to make that claim. In conclusion Zinc is currently in full compliance with GPL.
Due to this obvious false and offensive claim, we made it our highest priority to remove all remaining Curphoo code from Zinc to eliminate any doubt as to legality of Zinc as a legitimate GPL'd yahoo chat client. 1.0-preview17 will be 100% Curphoo code free and therefore Curphoo author will not be able to make any claim on Zinc whatsoever. We are doing this not because we are forced to or feel we have something to hide the wrong doing but rather we want nothing to do with Curphoo code and it's author from here on. If you wish to be the judge for yourself as to this matter feel free to download the Curphoo 0.03.2 and Zinc 1.0-preview16 and examine the content of those two files. The reason for doing a comparison with Curphoo version 0.03.2 instead of 0.3.7 is because all code contribution except help.py in 0.3.3 through 0.3.7 has been made by the author of Zinc and therefore attribution of credit to those code should not be to author of Curphoo. Not surprisingly the removal of remaining Curphoo code will improve Zinc's stablity and performance. UPDATE (2004.1.1): One of the person accused me of violating GPL is now distributing unauthorized copy of Curfloo claiming that it is his own creation. The author of Curfloo condemns this action but currently just too busy to act upon the matter. Since Curfloo is not GPL'd code, this is a clear case of US copyright violation. This is nothing new since this same person also distributed a renamed version of Zinc after stripping all credit to me. This of course is a violation of GPL paragraph 2. Just so you know the only authorized source of curfloo is here and any other url being posted is a illegal copy of curfloo.