mcabber is a small XMPP (Jabber) console client.
The mcabber screen is divided into 4 regions. The roster, alias buddylist, is on the left. The chat window, or chat buffer, is on the right. The input line lies at the bottom of the screen, under a small log window.
Two status lines surround the log window. The bottom status line is the “main status line” and reflects mcabber general status. The other line is the “chat status line” and shows the status of the currently selected buddy.
To display buddies chat buffers, you will have to enter chat mode. You can enter chat mode by pressing enter (unless vi mode is enabled), and leave chat mode with the ESC key. Simply sending a message will also enable chat mode (unless vi mode is enabled).
There are several advantages to the two-mode implementation: first, it allows accurate “unread” message functionality, as described in the next section; without this, merely scrolling to a specific buddy will “read” the new messages of all buddies in-between. Second, it allows quickly hiding the conversation with a single keystroke. Third, it allows jumping between the few buddies with whom you are conversing with the /roster alternate command described in another section, without having to manually scroll back and forth.
Features include:
- SASL/SSL/TLS support.
- MUC (Multi-User Chat) support.
- History logging – save discussions to text history log files.
- Command completion – complete your command line if you hit the Tab key.
- OpenPGP encryption.
- OTR (Off-the-Record Messaging) support.
- Chat States support (typing notifications).
- Input line history – any message or command entered is in the input line history and can be reused easily.
- Dynamic modules that extend the program’s functionality.
- External action triggers – some events (like receiving a message) can trigger an external action such as a shell script if you enable it in your configuration file.
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and Windows (via Cygwin).
Website: mcabber.com
Support: User Guide
Developer: Mikael Berthe and others
License: GNU General Public License
mcabber is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Return to Console-Based XMPP Clients
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