Profanity

Profanity is a console based jabber client inspired by Irssi,

Installation

Dependencies: ncurses, libstrophe, glib, expat, xml2 and openssl.

Optional Dependencies: libnotify

Libstrophe can be found at: https://github.com/metajack/libstrophe

To run unit tests requires head-unit: https://github.com/boothj5/head-unit

All other dependencies should have packages for your distribution.

Once depdendencies have been installed, run:

./bootstrap.sh
./configure
make

To build and install in the current directory.

If you wish to install on the system, switch to root, or sudo and:

make install

Running

profanity

Some older jabber servers advertise SSL/TLS support but don't respond to the handshake, if you have trouble connecting, run with the -notls option:

profanity -notls

Preferences

User preferences are stored in

~/.profanity

The following example is described below:

[ui]
beep=false
flash=true
showsplash=true
notify=true

[connections]
logins=mylogin@jabber.org;otherlogin@gmail.com

[colours]
bkgnd=default
text=white
online=green
offline=red
err=red
inc=yellow
bar=green
bar_draw=black
bar_text=black

The [ui] section contains preferences for user interface behaviour:

beep:       Try to sound beep on incoming messages if the terminal supports it
flash:      Try to make the terminal flash on incoming messages if the terminal supports it
notify:     Send a desktop notification on incoming messages
showsplash: Show the ascii logo on startup

The [connections] section contains a history of logins you've used already, so profanity can autocomplete them for you. This section is populated automatically when you login with a new username.

The [colours] sections allows you to theme profanity. Available colours are

black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta

Setting a colour to default, lets the terminal use whatever default it would use for foreground/background depending on the setting.

Using

Commands in profanity all start with /.

To get a list of possible commands, and find out how to navigate around try:

/help