Documentation - Widely out of date, but fun for historical reasons

Getting Started

When AutoProfile is fully configured, setting your status to "Away" and "Back" on your account is as simple as typing a command into the nearest open IM dialog box, as follows:

/away <text> # Makes your status "away" /back # Makes your status normal

If you add some text after "/away", it will also be placed in your away message wherever you typed "%a". This is intended to help quickly change the look of the away message on the fly. The away message used will be the one specified as the default.

Alternatively, you can choose exactly which away message to use by going to the buddy list menu. Under Tools->Plugin Actions (and possibly under AutoProfile), you can press "Go Away". From this menu you can also quickly edit your profile.

A window will pop up displaying your current status. The countdown timer displays the time until your away message will be updated again. Selecting one of the times listed in the left column will display the away message that was shown starting at that time- the top listing is also the current message. Closing the window or pressing "I'm back" will return your status to normal.

If you wish to type a message that starts with "/away" (or any of the other letters, precede it with a space or it will not be sent otherwise.

If you have enabled queued messages, they will also be displayed in the pop-up window. Double-click on a name to view the received messages without coming back.

Setting Your Options

Gaim Away/Idle, Sounds, and Sound Events preferences

Because AutoProfile deals with away messages/status, it naturally has options similar to that of Gaim. Hence, setting options in "Away/Idle" in the Gaim preferences menu will affect AutoProfile. WARNING: AutoProfile has no way of knowing when you change these options because they are in a different menu. It is highly recommended that you only set them while you do not have AutoProfile in "away" mode. AutoProfile will double check these settings immediately before changing your status. If not done, Gaim and AutoProfile will both operate, leading to redundancy.

"Queue new messages while away": Full compatibility.
"Auto-reply": Full compatibility in AutoProfile 2.09 and up.
"Idle time reporting": Seperate from AutoProfile
Auto-away, etc: Not implemented

"Sounds when conversation has focus": Seperate from AutoProfile
"Sounds while away": Full compatibility
"Event: Message received": Full compatibility
"Event: Message received begins conversation": Full compatibility

Changing update rates (Behavior tab)

"Delay x minutes between profile updates": This option sets the rate at which AutoProfile will change your profile from the moment you log on.
"Delay x minutes between away message updates": This options sets the rate at which away messages will change once you have gone away.

Special auto-responses (Behavior tab)

When you are away, your buddies can send a trigger string to you to create a new auto-response message. This is especially entertaining if your away messages draw randomly from a humorous quotes database, for example. Buddies will be notified of this functionality in the first auto-response AutoProfile sends by default. The trigger string is included as to avoid spamming the conversation by accident by sending a regular IM.

"Special auto-responses": This enables/disables this feature. When turned off, regular auto-responses will not notify your buddies.

"Delay x seconds between auto-responses": This options sets the minimum rate at which your friends can ask for a new auto-response. This is to ensure that you cannot be flooded with requests that require responses, thus sending you over the rate limit. When an auto-response is sent, the delay period begins, during which no other conversations will be sent auto-responses as well (so multiple sn's cant create the flooding effect).

The message sent to new conversation is intended to inform your buddy that they can trigger more messages- make sure they can tell what the trigger message is from what this message is. This message will be sent whenever there is a new converation only.

The trigger message option lists the text that your buddy must type at the start of their message to you in order to receieve an auto-response. Change it to something fun! This is to limit AutoProfile from spamming the conversation window.

Choosing what text will show up (Output text tab)

AutoProfile lets you create a library of "messages", with a menu that works almost like the regular Gaim away message menu. You can add new messages and delete a selected one using the buttons at the top. The other two buttons control which messages are set as your profile and which for your away message (these can be the same one!).

Below the selection menu is a preview menu in which you will see exactly what the final message will look like. The actual text you specify is somewhat different. Much like how AIM allows users to type "%n" when they want the name of their buddy to show up, AutoProfile comes with many more similar options to add different types of text. Each of these different elements is called a component. By putting together multiple components, you can create some pretty crazy messages!

Choosing what accounts will be affected (Accounts tab)

If you use seperate accounts for talking to different categories of users, and want to restrain the text you use to only certain accounts, use the "Accounts Affected" dialog in the main preferences windows. Select the account you want to change the setting for in the list, and then simply press the corresponding button and you're set! If "yes" is listed for that account, then AutoProfile will handle the messages, otherwise you can set your away messages/profiles using regular Gaim interfaces/methods.

Available Components

Each component can possibly have it's own configuration options- to determine if it does, click the name of it under the component list in the "Component Preferences" tab.

External Text (+ Winamp, XMMS, iTunes, Windows Media Player)

First and foremost, got some automatically refreshing text that is not created by any current AutoProfile components? You don't need to write a new component to add it- the Text File component reads in data from a specified file verbatim. To ensure that nothing unexpected happens, you can limit the amount of text taken from this file.

Included with this component are instructions on how to generate text from Winamp, XMMS, Windows Media Player and iTunes using programs external to AutoProfile- let everyone know what you're listening to!

Log statistics

If you have saved logs of your conversations, AutoProfile can parse them and display all sorts of information about them. There are so many countless options/different statistics that it's impossible to list them here- they range from the number of messages sent to the number of conversations, from grand totals to averages in just the last week. NOTE: Using this component will increase the time it takes Gaim to start up- AutoProfile must analyze the logs at boot time.

Executable

Much like the Text File component, this component will read the output of a program on the command line if you are running a Unix-based system. Specify the command line prompt and you should be good to go.

Fortune

This is quite possibly the one that started it all! Fortune grabs a random quote out of a selected database (the options determine what file provides all the possible quotes) and places it in your text. The databases are in the standard fortune format that dates back almost a decade, so there are plenty of fun quotes files circulating on the internet.

If you're interested in writing your own files, the format is pretty simple. All you need to do is hit enter at the end of a quote and type a percent sign "%" at the start of the next line.

I have a theory that it's impossible to prove anything, but I can't prove it. % JackS: "From what do you see yourself dying?" AlexF: "Regicide." [04/27/2001] % In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. -- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address %

And so forth... =)

Count down/up

This component can either act as a countdown timer to some deadline, or a counter of time elapsed since an event. Set the reference time to that special event/deadline and choose what units you want to show (you can hide seconds or days if you wish).

Uptime

The uptime component, assuming you're using a Unix based system with uptime installed, will print out the output command with a little formatting.

Timestamp

Timestamp will insert the time the text is created into your component according to your format- specified using strfmtime-like style

HTTP

Got some webserver out there pumping out some text that you would like to grab? Specify the URL of the output text and it will be literally copied in, HTML tags included. Updates from Internet sites happen at a different time from when away messages/profiles are generated (just in case your connection is running a bit slow). You can set the refresh rate accordingly, and if you're impatient, just click "update".