Heliotrope is a client/server framework for driving Libpurple (the instant messaging engine behind the universal chat client, Pidgin). It allows developers to quickly write custom IM applications in Python, without understanding all of the internals of Libpurple.
Heliotrope supports most of the IM features that one expects from an IM application (eg. sending/receiving messages, custom statuses, multiple IM protocols, file transfers, etc...). It does not yet support IRC, nor Audio/Video features.
Currently, Heliotrope runs on MS Windows XP, Vista and 7. Support for Mac should be coming soon. Patches to make it work on Linux are welcome!
You will need to following tools to build Heliotrope:
- Pidgin source code: http://pidgin.im/download/source/
- Mingw compiler: http://www.mingw.org/
- Swig: http://www.swig.org/
On Windows, just adjust the paths in Makefile.mingw and issue:
make -f Makefile.mingw
The Heliotrope project name came about as an alternative color to "purple". See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliotrope_(color)
Yes, by all means! If you find bugs or missing features, please join the project and submit patches!