Trillian™ Smilies
Trillian™ is very popular chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC. It comes with a defualt set of several dozen smilies/emoticons that you can use while chatting. A great many of them have cooresponding smilies in other clients so that when you type :) you will both see something similar. However, all of the other clients have their own default set that don't all have anything in Trillian™ to match them. If you regularly converse with someone using another of these clients you probably can't see all of the smilies that they are typing on their end.
Below is a quick example of how to add additional smilies. This all applies to Trillian™ Basic version 3.1. If it doesn't work for your version or edition let me know what does and I'll post it.
Here is what you need to do
- Get a copy of the image file for the smilie you want to add.
- Place the image in the right directory
- Add the proper entries to the XML file that lists the smilies
- Restart Trillian
1. Get the image
Have the person with the other client find it and send it to you. Or, better yet, if you have any talent, make your own. They are normally a 16px by 16px gif file. If you make your own you'll need to give it to someone else to add to their client or you'll be the only one that can see it - which might be what you want :)
2. Save the image
Copy the image to the directory that holds all the smilies. For my
default installation (on a Windows box) it is:
C:\Program Files\Trillian\stixe\plugins\TP21Emoticons-16x16
For this example we're going to add a file named superSmile.gif. It is a
smilie with red cape and blue tights. No, I don't really have one.
3. Update main.xml
In the same directory there will be file named main.xml.
First, make a back up copy of it, just in case you mess up the original. Open the file in your editor.
The first section of the file has a long listing with elements named 'bitmap'. Copy one of these lines and paste it back in right under the last 'bitmap' line.
Change the text in the name attribute to the name you want to call your new smilie. In
this case, 'superSmile'. Make sure there are no other existing bitmap entries with the same name.
Then change the text of the file attribute to the
location of the new image, if you followed step 2 then all you need to do is change
the actual file name to 'superSmile.gif'.
The final line should look like this:
<bitmap name="superSmile" file="../../stixe/plugins/tp21emoticons-16x16/superSmile.png"/>
Now you need to add the line to tell Trillian how to handle your smilie. I added
mine to the group "wordExtraSmileys", not sure if it matters or not, but it
works there. Find the line in the file that looks like this
<group text="&wordExtraSmileys;" initial="0">
Scroll down to the last 'emoticon' line in that section and copy that line.
Paste the copy in right below the last line.
Change the text attribute to whatever key sequence you want to be substituted
with the new smilie. If you are matching another IM client make sure the key
sequence is the same as that client or you wont see it when someone else types
in the sequence for their client. Be sure to check if that key sequence is
already duplicated, if so you might need to remove the existing one.
In the source element change the value of the name tag to the same value you
entered above for the bitmap name, superSmile, for our purposes.
The rest of the line lets you specify the position of the image on the screen.
For a normal 16px by 16px image, you would make the values for both right and
bottom '16'.
With that done the final line should look like this:
4. Save and restart
Now save file and restart Trillian™. Send and IM to someone and type in (superSmile), you should see the new smilie instead of the text you typed. If they also loaded the smilie then they'll see it too.
If you have a question, comment, bug fix, or addition let us know. We'll add it
to the demo with the proper credit. Either post a comment below or drop us an
email at comments@directedinsight.com