agreenman

It's always nice to be told that the test went OK, but what does that mean?

Okay, thanks! We're using ADCH++ if anybody would happen to know off the top of their heads. I'm sure the answer could be found by digging through the source code. I'll see if they've got anything over at the ADCH++ website, but I doubt it, seeing as documentation for these little things is rather sparse! EDIT: For anybody interested, poking through the source code shows that the +test command is basically a way to make sure you can communicate with the hub. Presumably if the hub didn't respond back "Test ok", then there's a disconnect somewhere. It appears to mostly be a way for devs to test their clients to make sure that the most basic, high-level connection between the client and hub can be made. I would assume the same applies to the test commands of other hub software!

DC is P2P. Meaning peers connect with other peers and the only way to know what those peers are doing is to be one of them. So no, you can't spy on your users. The best you can do is use the "Developer Plugin" which will let you see when users communicate with the hub (not with other peers). For example, you can use it as a "Search Spy" replacement, which effectively lets you see what people are searching for; however, you won't be able to determine the identity of the user, and it's very ugly unless you do some serious scripting to clean it up. Most of the outputted data is garbage and meaningless (at least to me), but a few regex filters can help filter out the searches and make them easier to read. You can also opt to display joins and disconnects in the main chat, if you wish to see who's using the hub.

I'm not sure if this is a bug with Apex or a bug with my hub, but ever since I can remember, even throughout multiple incarnations of the hub (different hardware, software, addresses) the number of total users has always been represented as "n / n+2". Here is one example with many users (taken about 2 years ago on 1.5.0): '> And here is an example with only 8 users (1.5.13): '> It would appear that the n value is correct, but what is that n+2 value? What does it mean? At first, I thought it was the number of online users out of the number of both online and away, but it would appear that the grand total is the first number. Then I thought maybe those extra 2 weren't counted because they were bots (we have two), but again, from the 8-user screenshot, it's clear that the bots are included in the first number. Can anybody provide some insight as to what both of those numbers are supposed to mean?

Awesome, that was just what I was looking for, maksis. We are running ADCH++, so that lines up with what you were saying about the hub and the chat-logging bot being those two hidden identities. However, Crise did say that an identity is created whenever a user speaks in chat. As far as I can tell, the hub speaks when you first connect (welcome message), and if you decide to display the history or do other hub-specific commands like changing the topic or +test. So presumably that is the identity for the hub itself... does the chat-logging bot ever actually speak in the chat? Would there be a separate username associated with that hidden bot? This is getting really specific and nitpicky, so I understand if nobody has an answer or there's not enough information (I can always try to provide more). Just trying to understand to satisfy my curiosity!

Thanks for the response! This has happened with both ADC and NMDC, interestingly enough. So is this representation technically "8 identities out of 10 total identities"? Or am I misunderstanding that? If that is the case, what do you suppose those two "missing" identities could be? I'm just curious because there have always been two identities not represented in the actual userlist, regardless of how many users are online or whether the hub is brand new. And is there any way to return a list of the identities to check and see which identities aren't showing up in the userlist?

Well you could easily set up a simple VM and install a DC client on it, then allow your friend to connect to that VM with something like TeamViewer. I'm not sure if there are any chat-only DC clients, but it would be pretty simple to say "Don't download anything" (it would only go to the VM anyway) or to give him only a few GBs to play around with so he actually can't do anything. Something light like Linux or XP would probably be your best bet since all he really wants is to chat.

Sorry for the old bump, but such a feature is exactly what I'm looking for right now. I'm looking for a way to increase the lines/characters in the main chat or PM windows before it gets cut off and I have to resort to opening the log file to see the rest. And example is if I'm on a hub with a releases bot and when sending a command to retrieve releases, if there are a lot, the beginning of the message gets cut off and the only way to view the beginning is to open the log file. Obviously, this is not ideal, especially for novice users who don't want to have to worry about performing extra actions.

Will you guys stop developing for XP once Microsoft's support stops? Or, I should ask, will future Apex updates work with XP once April 2014 rolls around? Even if that answer is "unofficially", I would be happy!