[Pidgin Plugins] #471: autodetect IRC server message truncation

[Pidgin Plugins]

#471: autodetect IRC server message truncation
------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
  Reporter:  tmetro           |       Owner:            
      Type:  FeatureRequest   |      Status:  closed    
 Milestone:                   |   Component:  PluginPack
   Version:  PluginPack2.2.0  |    Severity:  major     
Resolution:  wontfix          |    Keywords:            
   Pending:  0                |  
------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
Changes (by jbailey):

  * status:  new => closed
  * resolution:  => wontfix

Comment:

 The IRC specification mandates that no IRC message may be longer than 512
 characters.  Since every IRC message must end with a carriage return and a
 line feed, this reduces the available character count to 510.  Actual
 messages are sent with the PRIVMSG command, with the format "PRIVMSG
 target :text", thus reducing the 510 characters by 8 characters (length of
 PRIVMSG plus following space) plus the length of the target's name (user
 or channel), plus 2 (space following target's name and the : before the
 message's text).

 For a practical example, if you are sending a message to #guifications on
 irc.freenode.net, here is what gets sent:
 {{{
 PRIVMSG #guifications :This is my test message.\r\n
 }}}
 (where \r and \n are carriage return and line feed, respectively).  As
 stated above, you lose 2 characters for the line termination, 8 characters
 for PRIVMSG and space, and 2 more for a space and :.  Here you also lose
 an additional 13 characters due to the length of the target's name, in
 this case #guifications, thus your message can be exactly 487 characters.

 This is a well-known IRC limit and has been in place for as long as the
 IRC protocol has existed (over 15 years).  I don't see a reason for us to
 hack around this bug in IRCHelper, nor do I see a reason to hack around it
 in libpurple proper.  Libpurple doesn't autosplit for any protocol, and
 implementing it for IRC would set a bad precedent.  IRCHelper is intended
 to make IRC behave more like other protocols in Pidgin; it does that quite
 well and has no need to go beyond that scope.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://plugins.guifications.org/trac/ticket/471#comment:1>
Pidgin Plugins <http://pidgin.guifications.org/>
Plugins for the Instant Messaging client Pidgin and its backend library libpurple