Notable changes

Mam fixes

Many issues with the Message Archive Management have been fixed. It should now work a lot better.

“Address” configuration field for servers

It’s now possible to configure an IRC server like “freenode@biboumi.example.com” and set its address to something like “chat.freenode.net”, or even an IP address. With this feature, you can create “aliases” with whatever name you want: this is shorter, it decouples the IRC network from its address (and it’s easier to remember: did you use chat.freenode.net or irc.freenode.org before, if you get it wrong, you’ll get connected twice, and your nicknames will conflict, etc…). Also, if, for some reason a specific server is down (for example), you can re-configure this server and modify the value in the “Address” field to something else, and you won’t have to change all your bookmarks on that server, you can just keep using the same JIDs.

Virtual channel

The virtual channel (the channel with an empty name, like %freenode@biboumi.example.com) has been removed. It was a dirty work-around to be able to stay connected to a server without being in any channel. It made the code very complex, and it was awkward to use.

In a future release (hopefully soon), we will be able to re-create this feature using the roster. See ticket #3353 for more details on what to expect.