convoread

Command-line tool for Convore.

Latest version: 0.5, 2011-02-18.

Description

convoread is a tool for sending and receiving Convore messages from the command line.

Some of it's features include:

• Interactive console chat interface
• Desktop notifications¹
• Convenient topic switching
• Unread topics by group
• Recent topics and messages

Future versions of convoread will allow creating topics, managing notifications, etc.

See a discussion on Convore for convoread announcements and support.

What's New in 0.5

• More readable chat logs with topic change messages
• Command /ts displays topics by group, including unread messages count
• Command /t selects a topic and lists recent messages
• Removed command /ls
• Recent topics are updated dynamically based on incoming messages
• Input and output characters don't interfere anymore
• Timestamps in the local timezone
• Various bug fixes

See also the changelog.

Usage

Run the program:

$ convoread
welcome to convoread! type /help for more info
>

You are now in convoread shell. You can just watch your live stream indefinitely:

*** topic mygroup/1234: Some tests
13:06 <user1> hello
13:21 <user2> convoread works
13:22 <user1> @user2 indeed!

*** topic othergroup/5678: Another topic
14:07 <user3> convoread is nice
>

You can also list recent topics and send messages:

> /ts
python:
    4393    3 pyquery - a jquery-like library for python
    4383    1 Fate of PySide
vim:
    3012    1 Configuring Vim for Python
mercurial:
    2412    1 Extensions I just can live without
emacs:
feedback:
> /t 3012

*** topic vim/3012: Configuring Vim for Python
12:46 <user3> i configured it in .vimrc
12:47 <user3> and i use this feature every day
> hello vim community!
13:25 <user3> welcome
> so, vim or emacs? :)
13:26 <user3> vim!
>

Press /q to exit:

> /q
quit

You can also enable desktop notifications for Ubuntu and similar systems that support libnotify:

$ convoread --notify

For more info on usage type:

$ convoread --help

Installation

You can install (or update) it from PyPI:

$ pip install -U convoread

Or you can clone it from GitHub and then use develop command to get it symlinked to your system-wide $PATH:

$ git clone https://github.com/foobarbuzz/convoread.git
$ cd convoread
$ python setup.py develop

Or symlink it to your home directory only:

$ python setup.py develop --user

Check that ~/.local/bin is in your $PATH.

Requirements

• Python >= 2.6 (Python 3 has some issues yet)

Optional:

• libnotify for desktop notifications
• PIL (Python Imaging Library) for avatars in notifications

Configuration

convoread uses login and password, supplied in ~/.netrc file in a standard format. If you're wondering, what is the format of .netrc:

machine convore.com
    login <your-username>
    password <your-password>

Authors

• Andrey Vlasovskikh
• Alexander Solovyov
• Mikhail Krivushin
• Timofei Perevezentsev

License

MIT License.

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1. At this moment desktop notifications work only for Ubuntu and similar systems with libnotify installed.↩