Pidgin ZNC Helper

Pidgin is a popular multi-protocol messaging applications, mostly due to its open-source license. One way to enrich its functionality is to apply plugins that fulfill certain functions. One such plugin is the Pidgin ZNC Helper, a timestamp correction tool for ZNC messsages.

Installing the plugin only requires you to copy and paste the DLL file in the "Plugins" folder of Pidgin, found within its installation directory. Please note that if you are running Pidgin, the new plugin will only be visible in the dedicated window only after restarting the application.

What Pidgin ZNC Helper does is detect IRC bouncer timestamps and rewriting them, so as to make them easier to read. In other words, you get normal timestamps instead of IRC bouncer timestamps, which usually display the information in a particular mode. When loading messages from ZNC bouncers, their timestamp looks something like "(19:00:00) [18:00:00] Dinner time!". Pidgin ZNC Helper corrects this double timestamp, showing the new timestamp as: "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S".

Once you set the timestamp format to the above, there is just one moe thing you need to take care of, namely checking the "Append Timestamps" option in your ZNC. Otherwise, the plugin will not work.