X-Chat NewsWindow 1.0

X-Chat NewsWindow is a perl script for X-Chat (or X-Chat Aqua) implements one of those annoying announcer scripts that announce your currently playing audio track in iTunes or your current audio or video track in VLC to your IRC channel because you feel for some reason that everyone wants to know.

I basically consider this script to be a better counterattack than just abusing the annoying mIRC users and getting the usual ignorant "pfft. sif mac" response. Since VLCs meta-data support leaves a bit to be desired, it obtains the album name from the containing folders name and the track name from the filename (minus the extension). This works quite well if you have a well labelled music collection. Note: If you use this script, exercise discretion. Not everyone cares what youre listening to.

To use this, you must first turn on logging in VLC. To do this, open VLCs preferences, and under the "Interface > Control Interfaces" preference page, tick the "File Logging" option. Then under the "Interface > Control Interfaces > Logging" page, enter "/tmp/vlc_log.txt" as the log filename. You can choose a different name or location if you wish, but if you do, change the path definition to it in the vlc_announce function below. You may have to choose the "Add Interface > Debug Logging" menu option (under the VLC menu) if VLC hasnt already turned it on via the preferences change.