log_e.hixie.ch

2004-02-01 22:19 UTC Mozbot 2.6 candidate builds

If you use mozbot, I urge you to update to the latest development version. Assuming no blockers are found, I hope to release version 2.6 in a few weeks.

Here is a summary of the changes since the release of mozbot 2.4:

• New modules:

  Spell

  Checks for spelling mistakes:

  <Hixie> Checks for speling (sp?) mistakes.
  <mozbot> Suggestions for 'speling': spelling, spalling, sapling, speeling, spieling, spiling, spilling...
  

  ServicesLogin

  Enables mozbot to log in to network services such as Nickserv, K9, Q on Quakenet, or X on Undernet.

  Insult

  For those of you who mourn the passing of the insult server at the University of Colorado, you'll be glad that the insult server code was ported to mozbot so that mozbot can now natively insult people!

  Quotes

  If you have a MySQL server you can use the Quotes module to store and retrieve quotes. This module can automatically create the appropriate tables and so forth when you tell it which server to connect to.

  Currencies

  Mozbot can now provide you with up-to-the-minute mid-market quotes for currency exchange, using the information provided by xe.com.

• The bot now supports logging into password-protected IRC servers.

• The "!seen" command now stores its data in a separate file so that the configuration file doesn't grow without bounds.

• You can now tell the bot to stop talking to you by saying shut up.

• Added some protection for loops and annoyance attacks: mozbot will refuse to say the same thing more than a few times in a row.

• The Converter module now supports time conversions and mass conversions as well as the already-supported length, temperature and integer conversions.

• The XMLLogger module now logs mozbot parting a channel.

• The Greeting module has been greatly improved so that it now is much more talkative and fun.

• The built-in help command is a little more helpful. The help also now has two styles: compact (the default, as seen in previous versions), and tidy (the new longer alternate style). You can select the style you want by changing the "helpStyle" variable:

  /msg mozbot vars General helpStyle 'tidy'
  /msg mozbot vars General helpStyle 'compact'
  

• Mozbot will now handle nickname changes much more gracefully. It will also handle nickname clashes and erroneous nicknames in a much more solid way than the previous version.

• Similarly, mozbot is now much better at handling being kicked, parting a channel, being invited to or told to join a channel, and quiting IRC. You should no longer see the "I think I'm already *in* channel #foo!" message. (In fact I guarentee that you will no longer see it, since I changed the text of the message while I was making it less likely to appear.)

• If you use a bot that has strange restrictions such as not accepting long IRC names, or requiring correct usernames, mozbot will now automatically detect the problem and fix it on the fly with no user interaction.

• Mozbot is now able to ignore other bots entirely, and ignore people talking to other bots. You can enable this using the ignoredUsers and ignoredTargets variables, which are described in detail in the INSTALL file.

• Improvements to the mozbot module API: it now supports notices, modules can now get to the current message queue, and some other minor changes. The documentation has also had a number of errors corrected.

• The Infobot mozbot module is now slightly more helpful, and for those of you who are using mozbot primarily for its Infobot abilities, you can enable the eagerToHelp mode which will make the Infobot module respond even if asked a question without a question mark (this mode is on by default for compatibility with the Infobot bot). For those of you who just want mozbot for giggles, you can even enable ridiculouslyEagerToHelp mode which is just that. (Ridiculous, I mean.)

• The Bugzilla module has had significant updates and is now compatible with the latest version of the Bugzilla software.

• The Sheriff module has been updated to handle some common things people put in their sheriff lines.

• Over thirty other bug fixes.

You can get the full change log from bonsai.

Please let me know if you find any bugs. (If you can't catch me online, file a bug.) Thanks!