Psi

Open source; $0

Current Version: 0.12 (August 8, 2007)

Psi is a free, open source Jabber client for Mac OS X. (Jabber is an open source instant messaging system fully based on XML. Thanks to the server-side Jabber Agents, Jabber clients can communicate with users of other instant messaging systems, like AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, or IRC.) Psi is small, fast and responsive. It uses a graphical toolkit called Qt, which takes on the appearance of whichever operating system you run it on. For this reason, Psi doesn't use 'skins'. We'd rather it blend with your desktop like any other application. Psi has full support for Unicode. Unicode allows Psi to send and receive messages in other languages, even ones that aren't based upon the English letterset. In fact, you are able to use Psi in your choice of eight different languages, with more on the way. Cross-platform compatibility is important to the Psi development team; they believe that you should be able to use whichever operating system you wish. In keeping with this belief, there is a version for each of the three major OS's: Microsoft Windows XP, Apple Mac OS X and GNU/Linux/KDE3.

Version 0.12 adds/changes the following:

• Multi-user chat windows now join one on one chat windows and can be opened in tabbed form, either sharing a window, or seperately.
• The roster search has been updated, and now triggers a filter when typing into the roster window.
• An XML ringbuffer is now used, allowing access to already received XML in the XML console.
• When resolving a name for new contacts, the full name is now used if the nick name is missing from the vcard.
• Auto-connect on wake is now an independent option.
• MUCs can now be bookmarked, and auto-joined.
• The old config.xml file has been dropped in favour of the new options.xml format - all options in Psi can now be configured from the Advanced options pane (no more hand-editing of config files is required).
• Vcard avatars are now transmitted for the benefit of legacy clients and servers not supporting PEP.
• A new diagnostics group is available in the help menu, to allow debugging problems with the QCA security layer.
• Launching several instances of the same profile on Windows and Unices with DBUS now behaves more sensibly.
• On X11, the taskbar should now flash on new messages for compliant window managers.