Rendezvous for Proteus

Posted on May 12, 2003 by Ian Betteridge

If you use instant messaging heavily – and I do – you probably find iChat a little lightweight. And, if you have multiple IM accounts on different services, the AIM-only nature of iChat is useless. So you should have a look at Proteus, which has a nicer interface and supports all the services.
But one thing that’s missing is support for automatic detection via Rendezvous – until now, that is. Andrew Wellington has created a nice little plug in that adds Rendezvous for Proteus, compatible with iChat’s local messaging service. It’s beta, and a little flaky, but works.

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  • http://danhon.com/ec/mtarchives/000511.shtml ext|circ

    The harder they come

    How has inventory management in computer role-playing games affected the way I pack? Memorable Quotes from alt.sysadmin.recovery. At Whedonesque:…

  • http://www.gyford.com/ Phil

    How does it compare to Fire? *Looks* like it’d be nicer… I’ve given up on Fire (and my non-AIM/iChat using friends) by falling in love with iCal…

  • http://www.gyford.com/ Phil

    Doh, I mean iChat.

  • http://www.ludicrous.org.uk Ian Betteridge

    It’s much, much nicer than Fire. The single-windo interface makes handling lots of open chat sessions much easier.

  • http://www.j-dom.org Jason Kitcat

    I’ve been using Proteus for a looong time now. 2.2x is certainly a lot better than early versions and superior to Fire. iChat is smoother around the edges and more pretty but Proteus is more than AOL….One worry, the developer, Justin, has been quiet for a while. I hope he hasn’t given up on us as I actually paid for a license!

    But nothing compares if you have friends who span ICQ, MSN, Yahoo etc… If only Jabber had worked out for me.

  • Doug Petrosky

    Forgive me, but what makes this application so nice? I mean ICQ is all but added to iChat, and who wants to talk to someone on MSN or Yahoo?

    And for the benefit of these other services you loose Voice, Video, and a much more attractive interface.

    BTW, what is up with clicking a button to send? This is IM, and does not require a bunch of detailed formatting. You type, you finish and you hit return.

    I don’t get the big attraction. It is a nice app, but iChat is better (oh ya, I forgot about address book and mail integration).

  • http://www.ludicrous.org.uk Ian Betteridge

    What makes Proteus a big win for me is the use of a single window to house all your messages. If you have more than a couple of chats open, then iChat starts to clutter up your screen a lot. Yes, you lose voice and video – but I’ve yet to actually use either of them meaningfully.