aMSN 0.95 (+Anti-aliasing+Skins+Plugins) without compiling

[NeTo]

NOTE: This guide is for Breezy only! For Dapper, follow this guide instead.

I have created debian packages for aMSN 0.95 (final), Tcl/Tk 8.5a3, based on the packages for previous versions. This will let you install the most recent aMSN (as of the date of this thread) in breezy in a breeze.

• Tk is built with support for anti-aliased fonts, meaning that aMSN will look very nice.
  
• Furthermore, I have made two extra packages with tons of plugins and skins. The skins package has a even a skin matching the Ubuntu Human theme

I will first cover the aMSN installation, and then some customization tips.

I have only built i386 packages. For other architectures, you'll need (yup) to compile from sources. Hopefully, as everything is already debianized, that ain't that hard either (read the ''Building from Sources" below). If you build for other architectures, be sure to post the links here when possible, to add them to this post.

A last note: Some of these packages are hosted on my home PC, which is only online for a few hours a day with a slow net connection. So, if you're unable to download them, try again after a few hours.

Contents
1. Install Tcl/Tk, aMSN
2. Customization Tips

2.1 Sound
2.2 Anti-aliased Fonts
2.3 Extra Skins and Plugins

3. Video/Audio Conference Support (Optional)
4. Other packages

4.1 Dev. files: tcl8.5-dev, tk8.5-dev
4.2 aMSN CVS snapshots (+Chameleon plugin)

5. Building from Sources

You will get a fully functional aMSN installation just by following the steps at 1. Now, to the guide itself:

1. Install Tcl/Tk, aMSN

Although there is no need for compiling, you must still download and install the packages. So, open a terminal window an type:

sudo apt-get install imlib11 sox libpng12-0 docker tcltls

This will download all the required dependencies, mostly for aMSN.

After the packages are installed, type the following:

wget http://www.doeweling.com/files/ubuntu/amsn/tcl8.5_8.5.0-1~neto3_i386.deb
wget http://www.doeweling.com/files/ubuntu/amsn/tk8.5_8.5.0-1~neto3_i386.deb
wget http://www.doeweling.com/files/ubuntu/amsn/amsn_0.95-1~neto1_i386.deb

After downloading, you'll end up with 3 .deb files. To install them run:

sudo dpkg -i tcl8.5_8.5.0-1~neto3_i386.deb tk8.5_8.5.0-1~neto3_i386.deb amsn_0.95-1~neto1_i386.deb

Finally (and just in case), you need to create some symlinks:

cd /usr/lib
sudo ln -sf libtk8.5.so.0 libtk8.5.so
sudo ln -sf libtcl8.5.so.0 libtcl8.5.so

And that's it! Now you are ready to use aMSN. Enjoy!


2. Customization Tips

2.1 Sound

• To enable sound in Ubuntu, run the following in a terminal:

  sudo apt-get install esound-clients

  Now, run aMSN and go to Tools->Preferences, select the Others tab, and head to the Sound Server option.
  
  Make sure that Use a different program is selected, and type in the textbox below it: esdplay $sound
  
• To enable sound in Kubuntu, type the following instead: artsplay $sound

2.2 Anti-aliased Fonts
If you followed the installation steps above, anti-aliased fonts work out of the box. Just go to Fonts->Preferences->Appearance, click on Change Fonts, and select a nice font/font size.


2.3 Extra Skins and Plugins
Several skins and plugins are already packaged for Ubuntu, and are just a few miles away (considering where I'm located ). Just open a terminal window and type:

wget http://www.doeweling.com/files/ubuntu/amsn/amsn-plugins_0.95-1~neto1_i386.deb
wget http://www.doeweling.com/files/ubuntu/amsn/amsn-skins_0.95-1~neto1_i386.deb

And to install them:

sudo dpkg -i amsn-plugins_0.95-1~neto1_i386.deb amsn-skins_0.95-1~neto1_i386.deb

Restart amsn and check Tools->Skins and Tools->Plugins to see what's included.

Some notes on the plugins:

• For changeit the required program talk-filters is already included and installed in /usr/bin/amsn-plugins/changeit/. You can check the contents of that folder to see what other filters are available besides pirate (the default).
• gename requieres fortune installed if I'm not mistaken, so remember to install fortune-mod if you want to use this plugin.
• Say it requieres Festival installed. I haven't tried it yet, but you should only need to run

  sudo apt-get install festival

  if you want to use this plugin.

3. Video/Audio Conference Support (Optional)

This aMSN version has built-in webcam support, so if your webcam works in programs like GnomeMeeting, you are ready to use it in aMSN.

But MSN has also a Video/Audio Conference feature, which is not enabled in aMSN by default,as it will be implement using the libraries from the Farsight Project in the future.

Anyway, you can still enable Video/Audio Conference in aMSN (at your own risk) using the linphone-im libraries I compiled. To do so, you will need to uninstall Linphone if you have it installed, as these libraries replace the Linphone libs:

sudo apt-get remove linphone liblinphone1 libortp0

Then, you need to install some packages:

sudo apt-get install libosip0

The following step is to download linphone-im:

wget http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy/amsn/linphone-im_0.12.1-1~neto2_i386.deb

and install it:

sudo dpkg -i linphone-im_0.12.1-1~neto2_i386.deb

The next time you start aMSN, Video/Audio Conference support will be enabled by default, and you need to take no further steps. To use it, as explained in the aMSN wiki:

Now you should be able to receive Audio conversations or Video conference invitations (NOT WEBCAM in MSN6, it's different). You can also issue invitations by: CTRL+S : MSNAV::inviteAV email@em... A <-- Audio conversation MSNAV::inviteAV email@em... AV <-- Video Conference (with audio)

I now the plugin loads and starts conferences correctly, but I haven't tested it yet. If it is broken beyond repair, or if you want to install the actual linphone, you can safely remove this package by issuing the command:

sudo apt-get remove linphone-im

aMSN will start as usual the next time you run it.


4. Other packages

4.1 Dev. files: tcl8.5-dev, tk8.5-dev

In case you need other packages, like tcl8.5-dev or tk8.5-dev, you can download them from http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy/tcl-tk/

For example, for tcl8.5-dev, you can type the following commands:

wget http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy/tcl-tk/tcl8.5-dev_8.5.0-1~neto3_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i tcl8.5-dev_8.5.0-1~neto3_i386.deb

4.2 aMSN CVS snapshots (+Chameleon plugin)

Now and then, I will build packages from the aMSN CVS tree (it won't happen frequently though). You can get the packages with:

wget http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy/amsn/amsn_0.95+cvs20060408-1~neto1_i386.deb
wget http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy/amsn/amsn-plugins_0.95+cvs20060325-1~neto1_i386.deb

And to install them:

sudo apt-get install amsn_0.95+cvs20060408-1~neto1_i386.deb amsn-plugins_0.95+cvs20060325-1~neto1_i386.deb

One new interesting feature is the Chameleon plugin, which changes the default Tcl/Tk controls with better looking ones.


5. Building from Sources

What a lengthy guide! Finally I reach the last part. If for some reason you need to re-compile any of this packages, you can download the sources from http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy-sources/.

The sources are in the tcl-tk and amsn subfolders, and have the debian naming scheme.

To compile a source file:

• Download the three files that make up the source. They have the package.diff.gz, package.orig.tar.gz and package.dsc naming scheme. For example, for tcl8.5 you can run:

  wget http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy-sources/tcl-tk/tcl8.5_8.5.0-1~neto3.diff.gz
  wget http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy-sources/Sources/tcl-tk/tcl8.5_8.5.0.orig.tar.gz
  wget http://netosoft.no-ip.org/Ubuntu/breezy-sources/Sources/tcl-tk/tcl8.5_8.5.0-1~neto3.dsc

• Extract the package. For the example above the command would be:

  dpkg-source -x tcl8.5_8.5.0-1~neto3.dsc

• Install the build dependencies for your package. For example:

  cd tcl8.5-8.5.0
  sudo apt-get build-dep amsn tcl8.4 tk8.4 linphone
  sudo apt-get install libxft-dev

  You can remove any of the package names in the second line depending on what you're compiling. Notice I typed tcl8.4 and tk8.4, as those are the packages apt-get knows about, and share the same dependencies of tcl8.5 and tk8.5 (except for libxft-dev).
• Now, you can compile the package with:

  dpkg-buildpackage -nc -uc -rsudo

Finally, I can't end up this guide without showing how it looks like :