LarsBlog

I just spent a bit of time setting up the new Pidgin 2.1 release from PortableApps. It seems like a nice improvement over the original Gaim, but I did have a few difficulties setting it up the way I liked:

1. I like to set up the key bindings so that within a conversation, enter adds a line and ctrl-enter sends the message. It reduces the danger of me sending messages accidentally (especially when a window pops up unexpectedly!). To do this, you have to edit your GTK keybindings file, but locating which file this is can always be troublesome. In this instance, it is:
   
   X:\PidginPortable\App\GTK\share\themes\MS-Windows\gtk-2.0\gtkrc
   (for default window installs anyway)
   
   The contents that needed to be added to this file are:

   binding "my-bindings"
   {
       bind "Return" { "insert-at-cursor" ("\n") }
       bind "<ctrl>Return" { "message_send" () }
   }
   widget "*pidgin_conv_entry" binding "my-bindings"

   (Note - if you make the mistake of running X:\PidginPortable\App\Pidgin\pidgin.exe instead of X:\PidginPortable\PidginPortable.exe - all of your settings (including the gtkrc file) will be created and used from your Windows profile Application Data\.purple directory, rather than within the PidginPortable directory mentioned above.)

2. I also like to set up a short-cut so that the escape key will close my current conversation window. This setting is made in X:\PidginPortable\Data\settings\.purple\accels by adding the following line:
   

   (gtk_accel_path "<main>/Conversation/Close" "Escape")

3. Lastly, I wanted to try out the new spell-check functionality using aspell. There is an X:\PidginPortable\App\aspell that is empty except for a readme file. So first up, I had to download and install aspell from here. Don't forget to install a dictionary also. Once everything is installed, copy the bin, data and dict folders from c:\Program Files\Aspell and put them in the App\aspell directory.

Most (all?) of these changes require Pidgin to be restarted to take effect. I hope that might same someone else a bit of time!

The following links were helpful:
http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Pidgin#HowdoImakeEntermakeanewlineandCtrlEntersend
http://blog.ozmonet.com/2007/pidgin-ctrl-enter-to-send-message/
http://www.romantika.name/v2/2007/05/09/my-version-of-pidgin-portable/