What is Charla 2?
Charla 2 is an open source client for Yahoo! Messenger for Mac OS X. It can be used as a replacement for Yahoo!'s own Messenger client.
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Why might I want to use Charla 2 instead of Yahoo!'s own Messenger client?
Charla 2 supports fades, chat, multiple simultaneous logins, spam filtering, scripts, customizable colors, PM history, and has many other features that Yahoo!'s own Messenger does not have, and is open source to boot.
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Why might I want to use Charla 2 instead of this multi-protocol client or this one?
Charla 2 supports more Yahoo! specific features such as fades, webcam, and chat.
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Does Charla 2 support private messages?
Charla 2, in contrast to Charla 1, has excellent support for instant messages, with full support for smileys, colors and fades, fonts and styles, and history.
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Does Charla 2 support chat?
Charla 2 also has full support for chat with smileys, colors and fades, fonts and styles, emotes, retroactive ignore, and most of the features from Charla 1.
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Does Charla 2 support webcam?
Charla 2 can view webcams hosted on the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger for Mac or Windows. It cannot host webcams for others to view (simply because my webcam is evil and does not work on Mac OS X).
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Does Charla 2 support voice chat?
Voice chat uses a speech protocol that is built into Windows and not available on the Mac, so until there's a way to play TrueSpeech on Mac OS X, Charla 2 will not support voice chat.
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Does Charla 2 support file transfer?
File transfer is written, but not yet hooked up. It will be soon.
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Does Charla 2 support conferences?
Charla 2 does not support conferences, and because there does not seem to be much demand, no support is planned.
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Does Charla 2 support multiple simultaneous logins?
Yes, you can log in with an unlimited number of accounts simultaneously.
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How do I set fonts, styles, and colors? I don't see the Charla 1 buttons.
In contrast to Charla 1, Charla 2 can send text with multiple styles. The goal is to be able to paste styled text into the text box and have it appear identically on receiving computers. You can set the colors, fonts, and styles in the font menu. Note that sending fonts and sizes is currently turned off, though colors and styles should work.
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Are Charla 1 filters supported?
Private messages have some support for Charla 1 filters. Chat does not. Filters are deprecated and their functionality superseded by scripts. I will release scripts that clone the functionality of most of the standard filters.
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Are Charla 1 emotes supported?
No. The functionality of emotes has been superseded by scripts.
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What are scripts?
Charla 1 has a powerful scripting engine based around Philippe Mougin's excellent F-Script. A script in Charla 2 is a piece of F-Script code called a "block." Scripts can be both run manually and inserted directly into the workings of Charla 2, making Charla 2 extremely flexible and customizable. Unlike filters, which had to be compiled specially, scripts can be added or changed without even needing to restart Charla 2.
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Where can I get some scripts?
Right here
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How do I install these scripts?
Most of the scripts tell you where they should go. For example, let's say you want to install buzz, the script that makes Charla 2 respond to the buzz command. Open Preferences and click Edit Preferences for your account. Click on Scripting in the left column. The script suggests installing itself right before MessageWindowController addMessageToWindow in ReceivePrivateMessage, so click on the ReceivePrivateMessage disclosure triangle. Select the line "MessageWindowController addMessageToWindow" and click New Script. Double click on the newly created script to edit it, give it a title ("Buzz?") and paste the entire contents of the script into the window. The click OK, then OK for the Preferences window, and finally Save All Changes. The script should now be installed, as you can verify by sending a message <ding> to yourself.
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What about the Script menu?
The Script menu is designed to resemble the old Emotes menu. It lets you manually trigger scripts, rather than merely responding to events. Ask a Question is an example of a script designed to be put in the Script menu.
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What are those files in the Charla 2 folder?
Charla 2 stores all of its data in its Preferences file and in the folder ~/Library/Charla2. Each folder corresponds to an account. Inside each of the account folders is the Buddy Data folder, where customizations for each person you come in contact with are stored, the History folder, where PM history is stored in standard RTFD files, and Preferences.bin, which stores the individual preferences for the account.
It is safe to delete any of the files in the Charla 2 folder, or the entire folder itself, at any time.
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Which commands are supported in chat?
Right now, /think, /join, /ignore, and /unignore are supported. Support for more commands is planned, especially /help!
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What is the Debugging menu for?
Debugging lets you turn on packet logging. Packets displayed in black are data that Charla 2 sends, and packets displayed in magenta are data that Charla 2 receives. You can log packets to help me fix bugs that you find, or simply for your own interest.
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Does Japanese chat work?
I don't know! I believe I have fixed the Japanese room list, but nobody appears to be present in the rooms upon joining. I believe that part of the problem is the encoding: I use UTF8 for everything, but Yahoo! uses encodings like Shift JIS at least in part. I do not have much experience in this area, and would appreciate any help getting this working.
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Do you know about this bug?
A list of bugs that I know of is available at issues.txt.
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