schlitt.info - php, photography and private stuff
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:Author: 		Tobias Schlitt
:Date:			Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:36:43 +0200
:Revision: 		3
:Copyright:		CC by-nc-sa


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Twitter avatars in TwIRCd
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:Keywords:  php, twitter, irc, twircd, fun
:Description:
    TwIRCd now supports Twitter avatars on IRC through ASCII art. ;)
:Abstract:
    TwIRCd__ integrates Twitter__ with your IRC__ client by implementing an IRC
    server, mainly developed by Kore__ until now. During the past weekend, our
    unofficial PHPUGDO__ hackathon, I seized the chance to implement support for
    Twitter avatars for it. Pretty useless, but fun. ;)

    __ http://github.com/kore/twircd
    __ http://twitter.com
    __ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat
    __ http://kore-nordmann.de
    __ http://phpugdo.de

TwIRCd__ integrates Twitter__ into your IRC__ client by implementing an IRC
server, mainly developed by Kore__ until now. During the past weekend, our
unofficial PHPUGDO__ hackathon, I seized the chance to implement support for
Twitter avatars for it. Pretty useless, but fun. ;)

__ http://github.com/kore/twircd
__ http://twitter.com
__ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat
__ http://kore-nordmann.de
__ http://phpugdo.de

I don't think there's much more to say, just click the screenshot below to see
Twitter avatars in Xchat in action.

.. image::  http://files.schlitt.info/blog/twircd_avatars_small.png
   :alt:    Avatars in TwIRCd
   :target: http://files.schlitt.info/blog/twircd_avatars.png
   :align:  center

So, how can you use avatars? Pretty simple:

1. Install libcaca (including the img2txt tool)
2. Update your TwIRCd install
3. Query the *twircd* user in your main *&twitter* channel and say ``set avatar
   true``

You can define ``avatarHeight`` in addition, which defines the number of lines
an avatar image will take. Values above 15 give pretty good image results, but
will obviously consume way too much space. 7 is the default.

The syntax for setting options in TwIRCd will change again, but since the
project is not released anywhere, yet, and it won't be soonish, that should not
hurt. You can expect these changes in `my Github fork of TwIRCd`__.

__ http://github.com/tobyS/twircd


..
   Local Variables:
   mode: rst
   fill-column: 79
   End: 
   vim: et syn=rst tw=79


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Comments
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- alava tdt at Sat, 11 May 2013 16:39:09 +0200

  What I can found is that TwIRCd proxies Twitter through an IRC server, so
  that you can read, search and update Twitter using your IRC client. It is
  written for PHP 5.3 using an extensible architecture and does not require
  anything but the PHP socket extension.

  Could you help for this?