One-way Cyrillic support in ICQ

[mackeev]

I've just started using this extension with AIM/ICQ through the sameplace.cc server and found out some strange things:
1. My understanding there is no simultaneous support of the both AIM and ICQ, right?
2. My counterparts in ICQ communicate in Russian. They can read my messages, but I receive gibberish from them. No problem with that in AIM, though.
3. I can't decipher Away (status) messages of my contacts if they are written in Russian.
4. A general problem: Copy is disabled in the communication area, and sometimes this function is really needed (to copy some text received and paste it elsewhere).

[X-Pilot (x-pilot)]

First of all, why all of those problems are in single bug?! o_O [split them - this bug should be closed as "invalid"]

>1. My understanding there is no simultaneous support of the both AIM and ICQ, right?

ICQ = AIM, it's same network [http://sameplace.cc/wiki/how-to-chat-with-contacts-from-other-networks#toc0 ]

>2.They can read my messages, but I receive gibberish from them. <...>

AFAIK, it happens only with clients which not support Unicode (QIP etc.). Well, as solution (on SP side) it's possible to change received messages per symbols from bad encoding to "normal". To do this some changes in "chat.xhtml" and in script are needed (add table of symbols to change). But it shouldn't be in main branch of SP: this patch will disfigure symbols from French and other alphabets (with letters like Àà Ââ Çç Èè Éé Êê etc.) - it will change them to Russian ones (according table).

2. <...> No problem with that in AIM, though.

Interesting :) Anyway, it's related to Transport, not SP. Bard may be can setup up transport a bit better to support Cyrillic - dunno...

3. I will check it

4. Duplicate of bug#200545 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/sameplace/+bug/200545 )

Overall: 1 - question, 1 - duplicate, 2 - problems... :/

[Massimiliano Mirra (bard-hyperstruct)]

Thanks mackeev for reporting, and pilot for checking this!

> 1. My understanding there is no simultaneous support of the both AIM and ICQ, right?

Correct, the transport will support only one account for Jabber user. A workaround might be to create an extra Jabber user, for ICQ (or AIM) only, or to communicate with one's AIM contacts through one's ICQ account (or vice-versa) since the two networks are interoperable.

> 2. My counterparts in ICQ communicate in Russian. They can read my messages, but I receive gibberish from them. No problem with that in AIM, though.

I'm afraid X-Pilot's answer summarizes all we know about this so far. :-(

> 3. I can't decipher Away (status) messages of my contacts if they are written in Russian.

This is probably related to 2 -- status written in Russian set on a Jabber client looks fine here.

> 4. A general problem: Copy is disabled in the communication area, and sometimes this function is really needed (to copy some text received and paste it elsewhere).

Yes, looking into it. Unfortunately a totally obvious problem with a totally non-obvious way to attack it.

I'm leaving this bug open in case more info on ICQ/Cyrillic issues come up. As X-Pilot says, it would be helpful (and friendlier to my decreasing mental sanity :-) ) to have different reports for different issues in the future.

[Massimiliano Mirra (bard-hyperstruct)]

> Yes, looking into it. Unfortunately a totally obvious problem > with a totally non-obvious way to attack it.

I retract this, it's easy enough for plain text selections once you know where to look. (Thanks dafi for pointing me in the right direction!)

Expect this in next release.

[mackeev (mackeev)]

Prompted by x-pilot, I started to do some research with different ICQ clients. I stumbled into a snag on a first one - a flash-based client on the icq2go page - with even grimmer results. I receive nothing but punctuation marks from this client's users. Just blank fields if there were no commas or periods in messages. I doubt if a remap table will help here.

[mackeev (mackeev)]

While playing with ICQ2GO, came across an interesting phenomenon.
Client: flash ICQ (LAUNCH button on the ICQ2GO page)
Logged in with an ICQ number - blank spaces instead of Cyrillic letters on the sameplace side
Logged in as an AIM user - everything's just hunky-dory.
I'm kinda perplexed.

[mackeev (mackeev)]

Nonetheless, I'll stick to a workaround chatting with Russian ICQ users while connected as an AIM user.

[mackeev (mackeev)]

One more observation...
When chatting with an ICQ user who uses ICQ2GO (I'm registered as an AIM user):
1. If the ICQ user uses a flash client -- blank space on my side.
2. If there's a java client in use -- everything's alright.
If I'm registered as an ICQ user, I receive question marks instead of letters in the second case.

[X-Pilot (x-pilot)]

I made a little fix for encoding.

How to use it:
1) Download the latest package of SP - http://repo.hyperstruct.net/sameplace/devel/sameplace-devel.tar.gz
2) Extract it somewhere to your local disc
3) Download "CP1251 Workaround"
4) Extract contents of "CP1251 Workaround" somewhere to your local disc
5) Merge 'em (overwrite "chrome" folder of SP with "chrome" of workaround)
6) Open "Tools" -> "Preferences" -> "SamePlace".
7) Change Default Application URL to [PATH_TO_SP_ON_YOUR_DISC]/chrome/sameplace/content/app/chat.xhtml
8) Restart Firefox

P.S. Flash often sux with Russian symbols, so do not trust it.

[Massimiliano Mirra (bard-hyperstruct)]

It wouldn't be hard to put this in the chat app by default and allow
activating it with a menu option, the problem would be having the chat
app recall the setting (since local storage doesn't work for pages
served from file://).

Finding a way to have the chat app remember settings is in the todo, however.

[mackeev (mackeev)]

Flash works perfectly if I log in as an AIM user, though.
I've downloaded the archive, but I'm somewhat reluctant to install it. Like I said, I just register as an AIM user at the sameplace server and can read Cyrillic from ICQ users just fine (except from flash, of course; but none of them uses it).
... And I have no idea where Tools ->Preferences->Sameplace is located.

[mackeev (mackeev)]

The last remark was, of course, a joke, meaning I'm coming through all these just to make it dumb-proof, that every next guy (or gal) can just install it and use it.
Anyways, I'm more concerned with autorec now, but it's another thread...
Thanks for all your trouble.