New unreplied() method for plugins that want to handle PRIVMSGs unreplied by any...

[rbot] / ChangeLog

2007-02-15  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Plugin: new unreplied() method to handle PRIVMSGs which have not
        been replied to.

2007-02-12  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Remote Service Provider: from an idea by halorgium <rbot@spork.in>,
        initial steps towards a DRb-based remote service provider for rbot.
        When complete, it will give plugins the ability to listen to
        'messages' from remote clients connected to the bot, allowing for such
        things as svn notification without RSS polling, remote control of
        the bot, or even (why not?) botnets.
        * Remote Service Provider: BotModules can now include the
        RemoteBotModule interface that provides them with the remote_map()
        method that works just like the map() method, but for remote commands
        * Remote Service Provider: Remote clients can now login remotely
        before executing commands. This in fact integrates the remote access
        auth security with the User/BotUser used on IRC itself.

2007-02-08  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Languages: Japanese support with language files, salutations, larts
        and praises, thanks to hagabaka (Yaohan Chen <yaohan.chen@gmail.com>)

2007-02-05  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * sendmsg improvements: the bot sendmsg() method and all the methods
        that rely on it (say(), notice(), and message methods such as reply())
        now accept an option hash to customize its behaviour.
                * :newlines, which can be set to either :split or :join,
                depending on whether newlines in messages should be used as
                split-points, or should be be replaced by some string (defined
                in the :join_with option)
                * :max_lines, which determines the maximum number of lines to be
                sent by each messages. Last line is truncated (see next
                options). Set to nil to have no limits.
                * :overlong, which determines the behaviour when overlong lines
                are to be sent; possible values are :split or :truncate.
                * If :overlong is set to :split, :split_at determines the
                string/regexp to split at; default is /\s+/, other usual
                choice could be /\s+\|\s+/.
                * If :overlong is set to :split, the :purge_split option
                determines whether the :split_at expression should be removed
                from the next lines (defaults to true).
                * If :overlong is set to :truncate, the value of the option
                :truncate_text is replaced at the end of the truncated line
        * LinkBot plugin: initial commit of a plugin to handle messages from
        eggdrops and other bots that act as cross-network channel links.
        Suggested by hagabaka (Yaohan Chen <yaohan.chen@gmail.com>)


2007-02-03  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Plugin message mapper: Enhancements to the :requirements option.
        When the requirement of a parameter is a regular expression with
        capturing groups /(...)/, the corresponding map parameters will be
        assigned (by default) the first non-nil capture instead of the whole
        regular expression. If a specific capture group is desired instead,
        the requirement should be in the form
                [/some regexp/, integer_index_of_the_desired_group]
        or in the form
                {
                :regexp => /some regexp/,
                :index => integer_index_of_the_desired_group
                }
        and a nil index will still give the default behavior.
        If you want the whole regular expression to be the matched parameter
        value, there are three options: use an index of 0, wrap the whole
        regular expression in a capturing group, or use non-capturing groups
        /(?:...)/. The latter is preferred because it's much faster.
        When exploiting the capturing groups feature, please try to remember
        to use /\s+/ instead of plain spaces / /, unless it's absolutely
        necessary to have single spaces.

2007-02-02  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Plugin message mapper: Requirements (as set by the :requirements
        hash) are now embedded in the regular expression matcher rather than
        being cheked separately afterwards.

2007-01-30  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * New IRC Framework: Server methods to retrieve a Channel or User are
        now more robust to empty or nil nicks and channel names passed as
        parameters.

2007-01-29  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Timer rescheduling: it is now possible to reschedule the period
        any particular Action is taken by issuing the command
                @bot.timer.reschedule(handle, new_period)
        where +handle+ is a timer handle returned by the @bot.timer.add() that
        created the action, and new_period is the new period for the Action.

2007-01-23  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Reduced saving: the salut, lart, and quotes plugin now only save
        their datafiles if anything changed since last time. This speeds up
        operations such as saving and rescanning; it also allow hand-editing
        of the data files while the bot is running, since a rescan will load
        the changed data files without overwriting them with a useless save
        before. Of course this only works if there are no pending changes in
        the running bot.

2007-01-12  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Server timeout: rework the server timeout code. Instead of PINGing
        the server unconditionally every server.ping_timeout seconds, we only
        PING it if we don't receive anything in the user-chosen timeout (lazy
        PING). The code rewrite also seems to have fixed the "bot stalling
        doing nothing" problem, which seemed to have been a consequence of
        @socket.select not having a timeout.

2006-11-01  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * SSL support: patch from Robin H. Johnson <robbat2@gentoo.org>

2006-10-28  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * A-Z game: try to guess the word the bot is thinking of: every miss
        helps by reducing the range of allowed words, until it's so small
        around the correct one that you can't miss it.

2006-10-27  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Flood protection: first attempt at penalty-based flood protection.
        This should make rbot much less prone to Excess Floods *and* still
        serve normally without excessive delays.

2006-10-25  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * HttpUtil: Strings returned by get_cached now have a cached? method
        which returns true or false depending on whether the result was taken
        from the cache or not; this can be exploited by plugins that parse the
        result in some particular way, since they can now skip the parsing
        stage if they cache the parse result.

2006-10-24  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * HttpUtil: initial implementation of proper caching based on
        last-modified and etag HTTP headers

2006-10-17  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Salut plugin: handles (multilingual) salutations (hello/goodbye)

2006-10-15  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Language stuff: plugins can now handle language changes in a natural
        fashion. lart is the first plugin to make use of this. NOTE: this
        is not (yet) backwards compatible: the old larts/praises files from
        previous rbot setups have to be renamed manually
        * Language stuff: italian translations
        * Utils.safe_save(filename): allows 'safe' saving of a file: it needs a
        block, to which it will yield a temporary file on which operations can
        be carried out. When the block returns, the tempfile will be renamed to
        the given filename

2006-09-21  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * New Auth Framework: restore backwards compatibility: 'auth
        <masterpassword>' and 'login owner <masterpassword>' both work.
        * Topic plugin: cleanups. Implement 'topic undo'. 'topic undo' after a
        'topic undo' undoes the last undo.

2006-09-09  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * New Auth Framework: rbot was opping anyone who asked for it (opme
        plugin). Fixed, and cleaned up.

2006-09-01  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * New Auth Framework: document and fine tune permissions view the auth
        core botmodule.
        * Version: when run from a svn checkout, the bot now tries to report
        which svn revision it's at, and if there are local changes

2006-08-31  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Nickserv plugin: bot will now try to inform nickserv when password
        is changed. Moreover it's not necessary to specify the nick anymore if
        you want to change the password for the current bot nick. Also do some
        internal cleanups while we're at it.

2006-08-29  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Script plugin: new (UNSAFE!) echo functions. Just like eval, but
        m.replies the result of the evaluation.
        * New Auth Framework: config keys now have their own permissions. So
        you can allow people to view or edit only some of the config values.
        auth.password defaults to false. Still needs some work.

2006-08-26  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Plugin message mapper: new implementation. Multi-word parameters now
        need not be the last, and it is possible to retrieve the entire
        substring with preserved whitespace by using to_s. Also, parts of the
        map string can be bracketed to make them optional. Examples:
                remind :user [about] *stuff
        will respond to
                remind me about washing my teeth
        and also to
                remind me washing my teeth
        It is possible to have parameters in brackets, in which case they will
        be optional too, and default to nil or [] (resp. single- and
        multi-word parameters) unless an alternative is provided in the
        :defaults hash for the message map options.
        * Script plugin: new (UNSAFE!) eval function. Not documented in help.
        Not permitted by default.

2006-08-25 Mark Kretschmann <markey@web.de>

        * Added quiz plugin, a multiplayer trivia quiz game.

2006-08-20  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Topic plugin: fix a bug that prevented it from loading
        correctly.
        * New IRC Framework: make sure that NOTICEs and PRIVMSGs do not
        raise an exception when the target is in one of the special forms
        #<mask> or $<mask>. Needs some work, though, since this case should be
        handled specifically.

2006-08-17  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Fix help: It got broken while rearranging the plugin stuff, now it's
        properly fixed.
        * New Auth Framework: forgot to create the InvalidPassword exception.
        It's a RuntimeError now.
        * Fix help: this time for real (or so I hope).
        * New IRC Framework: topic plugin now works correctly.
        * New Auth Framework: nickserv plugin now defaults to false for its
        auth, so that only owner can do stuff with it
        * New Auth Framework: fix horrible typo, assignment instead of
        equality test when checking for the username during login.
        * Keywords plugin: tell and forget work again without 'keyword' before
        them.

2006-08-12  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Subregistry: force prefix to be a String with to_s

2006-08-11  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * AutoOp plugin: adapted to the new IRC framework.
        * AutoOp plugin: trigger autoop on nick change too.
        * New Auth Framework: allow? method now informs a user when they don't
        have permission to do what they asked for.
        * New nickreply and nickokay methods: they act like the old reply
        method, but include the nick of the user the bot is replying to when
        talking in public. The usual reply method can be configured to act
        like this as default.

2006-08-10  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Fix a bug in new IRC Framework: the list of channels a quitting user was
        on was not built correctly, causing an exception when the user was not
        in the first channel in the list of channels.
        * Fix a bug in new Auth Framework: BotUser's name is changed via
        username=, not name=.
        * New HalfLife 2 plugin from ocr: queries online servers for online
        status and number of users.

2006-08-07  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Add kick method to kernel: plugins can now use
                @bot.kick channel, user, reason
        to kick a user from a channel
        * RSS plugin: fix rewatch_rss method
        * RSS plugin: the different ways to represent channels before and
        after the New IRC Framework was causing strange problems such as
        watched feed not being listed as such, undeletable watches, double
        watches etc. Fix this by checking both for the Channel objects and
        their to_s form when checking for watches or deleting them.

2006-08-06  Giuseppe Bilotta <giuseppe.bilotta@gmail.com>

        * Updating the ChangeLog again: describe the new stuff in trunk which
        will be made available in the next release. Use Gnu style for new
        changelog entries (yyyy-mm-dd name <email address>\n<tab> ...):
        there's a macro for this since at least Vim 6.x and higher, called by
        <Leader>o (default leader: slash (\))
        * New IRC Framework: Server, Channels, User, Netmasks etc are all
        proper Ruby objects. The better organization will allow multi-server
        connections to be implemented more easily
        * Modularize core: split the internal functionality from what can be
        implemented as botmodules (which work just the same as plugins). Move
        Configuration, Basics and Auth out of the 'kernel' into core
        botmodules.
        * New Auth Framework: BotUsers are now Ruby objects with attached
        PermissionSets which define what the BotUser can do, by channel if
        necessary. The new framework allows very fine-grained control while
        still being very easy to manage for elementary usage. BotUser data can
        be exported and imported, but no backwards compatibility has been
        implemented yet. Most plugins still have to be updated to the new
        command-path-based mechanism.

Sun Aug 06 17:33:55 BST 2006  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * 0.9.10 released
        * Changes: Lots of new and updated plugins, including one to poll RSS feeds.
        A first step towards a better auth system (total revamp due in 0.9.11).
        Improvements to network and server code which should provide greater
        stability. A new message queueing mechanism with bitrate throttling. A new
        logging framework for debugging and tracing the activities of the bot. A
        new split-db registry system for better performance and transactional
        usage of bdb for resilience. More integration with Nickserv where
        available including optional automatic ghost-killing.

Wed Sep 07 20:16:46 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Fixed quit, broke it last commit
        * Fixed trap() for win32

Sun Aug 21 13:29:55 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * fix for bug in quakenet plugin (trac #14)
        * multiple fixes for unescaped bot nick in regexp's (trac #13)

Fri Aug 12 20:51:38 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * fix up autoop plugin a bit

Thu Aug 11 00:13:11 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Added two plugins from Robin Kearney <robin@riviera.org.uk>
        * Threat (US threat level :P)
        * bash (bash.org quotes)

Thu Aug 11 00:04:31 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Patches from "Alexey I. Froloff" <raorn@altlinux.ru>
        * Do not use "/home/#{Etc.getlogin}/" for default home directory, use
        "#{Etc.getpwnam(Etc.getlogin).dir}/" instead.
        * Do not try to load same plugin from different locations.  Added ability
        to disable system-wide plugins - create PLUGIN.rb.disabled in user's
        plugins directory.
        * For example, to disable freshmeat plugin installed in /usr/share/rbot/plugins/freshmeat.rb one can create empty file ~/.rbot/plugins/freshmeat.rb.disabled

Mon Aug 08 23:08:01 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * new markov plugin for random inane chat

Sun Aug 07 18:20:24 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * stop insult plugin being used to insult the bot

Sun Aug 07 17:53:06 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * workaround for people without YAML::load_file
        * quit message for restart

Sun Aug 07 15:11:07 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * fix address_prefix, broken in 0.9.9, reported by ruskie.

Sat Aug 06 00:54:34 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Released 0.9.9

Fri Aug 05 23:55:20 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * few more tweaks preparing to release 0.9.9

Thu Aug 04 23:03:30 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Improved ircd recognition of rfc2812.rb
        * de-string'd, de-cap'd rfc2812.rb, looks less shouty now
        * moved the Q auth stuff (for quakenet) into a new qauth plugin (untested!)
        * finish fixing the httputil

Thu Aug 04 00:11:52 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Tweaked the debug() stuff a bit. Need to do this more cleanly really
        * Added a fair bit of documentation for some of the new features

Wed Aug 03 15:25:07 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Added french language file (TODO most of the plugins just talk english)
        * The way the Enum configs were set up, it wasn't possible to add language
        files to rbot at runtime (the directory was only scanned at startup). Now
        you can set a values Proc, which is called to return a list of allowed
        values whenever it's queried.
        * Added Config module for determining where we were installed.
        Unfortunately rubygems is a total whore in this regard, and I hope the
        current hackery I have to do to support it becomes redundant in the
        future.

Wed Aug 03 00:31:41 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Added Rakefile, tweaked gemspec

Tue Aug 02 16:27:36 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Fixed the new http.proxy* settings, they work!
        * Fixed a bug with auth-checking for the config module
        * misc tweaks

Sun Jul 31 02:20:08 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Updated docgen to generate rdoc again with the new repo structure
        * added new restart command to the core bot, quits irc and reexecs the
        bot, to pick up new code/libraries etc.

Sat Jul 30 22:33:36 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Config items are now objects, various types are available.
        * The config wizard will now use registered config items if :wizard is set
    to true for those items. It will ask questions in the order they were
                registered.
        * The config module now works for doing runtime configuration.
        * misc refactoring

Sat Jul 30 01:19:32 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * config module for configuring the running bot via IRC
        * BotConfig.register method for various modules and any plugin to register
        bot configuration which the new config module will expose for them.
        * various other tweaks as I continue to refactor..

Fri Jul 29 13:07:56 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Moved some stuff out of util.rb into the plugins that actually need
        them. Those methods didn't belong in util as they were plugin-specific.
        * moved a few more plugins to use map() where appropriate
        * made the url plugin only store unique urls

Thu Jul 28 23:45:26 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Reworked the Timer module. The Timer now has a smart thread manager to
        start/stop the tick() thread. This means the timer isn't called every 0.1
        seconds to see what needs doing, which is much more efficient
  * reworked the ircsocket queue mechanism to use a Timer
        * reworked the nickserv plugin to use maps
        * made server.reconnect_wait configurable
        * added Class tracing mechanism to bin/rbot, use --trace Classname for
        debugging

Tue Jul 26 14:41:34 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Prevent multiple plugin registrations of the same name
        * reworking the config system to use yaml for persistence
        * reworking the config system key names
        * on first startup, the bot will prompt for the essential startup config
        * new config module for configuring the bot at runtime
        * new config module includes new configurables, for example changing the
        bot's language at runtime.
        * various other fixes
        * New way of mapping plugins to strings, using maps. These may be
        familiar to rails users. This is to reduce the amount of regexps plugins
        currently need to do to parse arguments. The old method (privmsg) is still
        supported, of course. Example plugin now:
          def MyPlugin < Plugin
                  def foo(m, params)
                          m.reply "bar"
                        end

                        def complexfoo(m, params)
                          m.reply "qux! (#{params[:bar]} #{params[:baz]})"
                        end
                end
                plugin = MyPlugin.new
                # simple map
                plugin.map 'foo'

    # this will match "rbot: foo somestring otherstring" and pass the
                # parameters as a hash using the names in the map.
                plugin.map 'foo :bar :baz', :action => 'complexfoo'
                # this means :foo is an optional parameter
                plugin.map 'foo :foo', :defaults => {:foo => 'bar'}
    # you can also gobble up into an array
                plugin.map 'foo *bar' # params[:bar] will be an array of string elements
    # and you can validate, here the first param must be a number
                plugin.map 'foo :bar', :requirements => {:foo => /^\d+$/}


Sat Jul 23 01:39:08 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Changed BotConfig to use yaml storage, method syntax instead of hash for
        get/set, to allow more flexibility and encapsulation
        * Added convenience method Message.okay (m.okay is the same as the
        old-style @bot.okay m.replyto)

Wed Jul 20 23:30:01 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Move some core plugins to use the new httputil
        * fix wserver's redirection handling for relative (i.e. broken) redirects
        * fix tube plugin's html parsing

Wed Jul 20 01:18:06 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

        * Add new httputil object to the bot object, to be used by plugins etc
        that wish to make http requests. It sets up all the proxies etc for them
        according to bot config.

Sat Jul 16 02:23:13 BST 2005  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Apply most of Rene's patch and fix various plugins.
        * New plugin: autoop (auto ops via hostmask)
        * New feature: karmastats

Wed Oct 13 16:16:31 BST 2004  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Fix bug with quotes plugin where it gets confused and sees both a quote
  and a keyword, both plugins are triggered by, for example "addquote foo is
  bar"
  * fixed this by implementing the "has_responded" flag on a message. When a
  plugin replied to a message (or it manually sets m.replied to true), the
  keywords plugin will honour that flag and not examine the message for
  keywords. This flag can also be checked by listen plugins that don't want to
  interfere with other plugin commands.

Mon Oct 11 00:37:52 BST 2004  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Fixes to the NickServ plugin

Sat Oct 09 23:23:24 BST 2004  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Keyword searching

Fri Oct 08 00:40:07 BST 2004  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * fixed insult plugin
  * fixed excuse plugin

Thu Oct 07 23:28:05 BST 2004  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * searching for urls in the url plugin
  * roshambo (rock/paper/scissors) plugin from Hans Fugal <hans@fugal.net>

Sat Apr 17 20:56:50 BST 2004  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Oh, found new tv plugin in my inbox from ages ago, but it's still not
  working so I guess it changed again since then
  * New eightball plugin from Daniel Free

Sat Apr 17 20:44:43 BST 2004  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Fixed the babelfish parser so translate works again.
  * Misc other fixes
  * Note some plugins are broken (excuse,insult) because the server they use
    went away. I don't know of a replacement right now.
  * tv plugin seems broken, perhaps the html changed.

Thu Jan 15 21:37:38 GMT 2004  Tom Gilbert <tom@linuxbrit.co.uk>

  * Fixes for ruby 1.8

0.9.8
* new plugin from Alan Third <alan@idiocy.org>, allows you to search and list
  UK TV programmes.

0.9.7
* various plugin updates
* fix (again) for C to F temp conversion in weather plugin
* channel topic patch from Peter Suschlik, gives plugin better access to topic
  changes and related information

0.9.6
* changes to layout of slashdot plugin output
* freshmeat plugin, show latest updates or search
* fix to C to F temp conversion in weather plugin
* status command returns some bot status
* fortune plugin
* using BDB::Btree everywhere now, instead of BDB::Hash, because the Btree api
  allows me to set my own key comparison function. This is needed to keep
  supporting case insensitivity (vital for IRC), which was sadly broken in
  0.9.5 :( All existing dbs will be upgraded automatically.
* roulette plugin - play russian roulette :) also keeps game stats.
* new config option, NO_KEYWORD_ADDRESS. If set to "true", the bot will always
  respond to keywords it knows even when not addressed and the message doesn't
  start with '. Message must end with "?" however.
* hopefully fixed welcome message parsing from certain server types

0.9.5
* plugin object registry
  This provides persistant storage for plugins via a hash interface. The
  default mode is an object store, so you can store ruby objects and reference
  them with hash keys. This is because the default store/restore methods of
  the plugins' RegistryAccessor are calls to Marshal.dump and Marshal.restore,
  for example:
    blah = Hash.new
    blah[:foo] = "fum"
    @registry[:blah] = blah
  then, even after the bot is shut down and disconnected, on the next run you
  can access the blah object as it was, with:
    blah = @registry[:blah]
  The registry can of course be used to store simple strings, fixnums, etc as
  well, and should be useful to store or cache plugin data or dynamic plugin
  configuration. 

  If you don't need to store objects, and strictly want a persistant hash of
  strings, you can override the store/restore methods to suit your needs, for
  example (in your plugin):
    def initialize
      class << @registry
        def store(val)
          val
        end
        def restore(val)
          val
        end
      end
    end
  Your plugins section of the registry is private, it has its own namespace
  (derived from the plugin's class name, so change it and lose your data).
  Calls to registry.each etc, will only iterate over your namespace.

  The nickserv and karma plugins use the new registry and should serve as a
  useful example. Basic usage of the registry is simple, just treat it as a
  hash, with values that never die (unless you delete() them).
* Change to the nickserv plugin. The old method of putting the nickserv
  password in rbot.conf was useless for multiple nicks or easy updates. The
  plugin now uses the plugin registry to store passwords for any nicks it
  owns. The plugin can be told to register the current nick (supply a password
  or it'll generate one), identify for the current nick (if the password is
  known), and can be told the passwords for other nicks. If NickServ asks the
  bot to identify, it will automatically do so if it knows the appropriate
  password.
* karma plugin now uses the plugin registry, it should automatically import
  your existing, stored karma data into the registry.
* The babelfish plugin now caches results in the bot registry to speed up
  common lookups.
* New message types and plugin methods to grab them,
  quit(QuitMessage):   Called when a user (or the bot) quits IRC
  nick(NickMessage):   Called when a user (or the bot) changes Nick
  topic(TopicMessage): Called when a user (or the bot) changes a channel topic
* A plugin's listen() method will now receive any kind of Message, e.g.
  PrivMessage, NoticeMessage, NickMessage, JoinMessage, etc
* New plugins:
  seen: the usual "seen" stuff: 
        rbot: seen giblet?
        giblet was last seen xxx ago doing xxx
  cal:  calls the unix cal program to display a calendar
  math: evaluates mathematical expressions:
        rbot: math 2+2
        rbot: math 4 to the power of 8
        rbot: math ((232+432) - 4) / 2
        (ported from infobot. Thanks to Kevin Lenzo, who wrote the
        original infobot math module)
  slashdot: displays latest headlines or searches for articles
  url:  stores urls mentioned in channels for regurgitation later
  weather: grabs and parses METAR weather data, will remember the last weather
           code you asked for so you don't have to :)
* New utility function, Util.http_get(url) for getting remote data via http,
  just dumps response.body into a string and returns it, or nil if anything at
  all goes wrong. Useful for simple plugins.
* random quit messages if none specified, messages set in language description
  file
* keywords are now stored in bdb databases - your old keywords.rbot will be
  imported. Static keywords (fact packs) are also stored in bdb databases, and
  rbot will automatically convert any text .fact file dropped in the confdir's
  keywords subdirectory, at startup, into a bdb file. If both a db and a text
  file exist of the same name (except the extension), the text file will be
  imported and merged into the database.
  static keywords will be looked up in each factpack db in turn, in
  alphabetical filename order - so you can prioritise using the filename if
  you wish.
* fixed a bug with autsplitting long sent lines, the last line was often being
  split unnecessarily.

0.9.4
* Massive cleanup of rfc2812.rb, contributed by Lars Christensen
  <dsl8950@vip.cybercity.dk>, gets rid of a lot of regexps
* Fixed bug reading static keyword files - "foo <=is=> bar" may not have
  worked for a couple of releases, only "foo<=is=>bar" was working - this was
  not intended and should be fixed now
* Experimental send queue, to prevent the bot from flooding out, the delay
  between sending messages to the server defaults to 2s, but is configurable
  in conf.rbot, set SENDQ_DELAY (0 to disable queueing). You can also set/get
  the value from the bot, "rbot: options get sendq_delay", and 
  "rbot: options set sendq_delay 1.5", if you have sufficient auth for "config"
  This is a bursting sendq, most ircd's allow bursts of up to 5
  lines, with non-burst limits of 512 bytes/2 seconds. To set the burst limit,
  configure SENDQ_BURST in conf.rbot, or do the same kind of stuff with
  "rbot: options set sendq_burst 2", etc.
  The defaults are 2s/4 burst, which seem to work okay for me.
* support for multiple, customisable, addressing prefixes. Set ADDRESS_PREFIX
  in conf.rbot to a space separate list of addressing prefixes, e.g
  ADDRESS_PREFIX = | ! =>
  Would mean that all of the following in channel messages would cause the bot
  to respond:
              rbot: version
              |version
              !version
              =>version
* bb plugin removed, bb is nearly over and it doesn't work 100% anyway
* Two plugins from brailsmt (from #ruby-lang on openprojects), a stats plugin
  which monitors usage of 1-word sentences, and lart, which allows you to ask
  rbot to lart people - with an optional reason - larts are user-definable and
  can be added on the fly.
* made google.rb work for people with 1.6 ruby's net/http

0.9.3

* fix quit messages
* new plugin for handling nickserv-protected nicks, use NICKSERV_PASSWORD in
  the config file.
* fixes to a few other buglets
* new plugin to grab bigbrother headlines, still buggy and only useful for UK
  folks who love bb :-)
* fixes to various plugins
* Patch from akira yamada <akira@ruby-lang.org>
  DNS plugin: Use resolv-replace if found, do lookup in new thread
  Fix bug joining channels with keys

0.9.2

* better "connect failure" error message
* better option parsing, and --debug option
* access to bot's online help via commandline, eg:
  ./rbot.rb --help
  ./rbot.rb --help core
  ./rbot.rb --help "core save"
* Fix broken help from last point release
* Plugin API modification and cleanup. You no longer need to set @listen to
  true in order to get all NOTICE and PRIVMSGs, you just need to define the
  method. The method is now called listen(), renamed from listener(). This
  should be the last time the plugin api is changed incompatibly.
* New plugin method kick(). Use it to see kicks (duh :))
* New plugin methods join(), part(). Obvious uses.
* Example plugin autorejoin.rb, uses kick event to rejoin channel and insult
  kicker
* fix bug in remind plugins "remind me no more" recognition.

0.9.1

* Fix welcome message recognition for certain IRCd's.

0.9

* Allow keyword definitions which end in '?', like this:
  bot: foo is bar\?
* rdoc documentation!
* fixed broken address regexp, "rbot: .foo" was being treated as an addressed
  form of "foo" (lost the .)
* fix stupid bug in last release (looking for wrong default conf dir)

0.8

* Tarball layout change. modules all in rbot/ now, and the rbot/ default
  configuration moved to rbotconf/. This lets the thing run from an unpacked
  tarball while also being ready to run with the modules installed somewhere
  else.
* change hashbang to /usr/bin/env ruby, in order to use PATH looking for ruby,
  it's BSD friendly!
* allow "botnick : foo" style addressing, and even "botnick... foo"
* slap plugin (contributed by oct)
* renamed bot.send to bot.sendmsg, I didn't really want to override send() ;D
  (thanks Kero)

0.7.1
* Made sane for packagers. Looks in the right places for plugins and language
  files now, so extra effort shouldn't be needed there.

0.7

* Fixed "nick taken on join" bug
* Dice plugin patch from David Dorward
* fix searchquote regexp
* conf.rbot: PASSWORD -> SERVER_PASSWORD, to prevent confusion with PASSWD,
  which is for master auth.

0.6

* Fixed addquote (was incrementing quote ID twice)
* now strips colour/bold escapes from incoming messages (rbot was ignoring
  messages addressed using a bolded colon, for example).
* minor bugfixes
* more language breadth
* Addressing works better now
* Can autojoin channels with keys, conf.rbot line is:
  autojoin_channels #chan1, #chan2, #chan3 key, #chan4 key, #chan5
* dice plugin fixes

0.5

* Initial release