I've tried to think how to start with that nagahiro's WEBUI_MODULE idea. But, really, I'm not very experienced with creating web pages / web software from scratch. What I'm much better at is creating desktop applications. Now, I've seen these mentions about this Botmanager application for Budabot 0.6 which you could use to admin bots. So, I thought that would be something that I could do. So, here's the idea that I had:

Normally, when you double click chatbot.bat/.sh a new command prompt pops up which shows messages that bot prints, right?
So, this could be enhanced with a GUI application which would have the message output text area, just like the command prompt. But, in addition to that the UI would have buttons for starting, restarting and shutting down the bot. There would also be a text input field where you can give commands to the bot.

I'm not quite sure though what language I should use to program this. I'm most familiar with C++. Other languages I could use are PHP, Ruby, and... maybe Python.

And since this is a GUI application, a GUI library is needed to implement this. PHP would be ideal as it is the common language we use here. Now, I have years of experience using Qt-library. There is [urlhttp://sourceforge.net/projects/php-qt/]PHP-QT[/url] project which would allow using Qt with PHP, but unfortunately that project seems to be dead. There is also PHP-GTK library, which also is a bit stale, and GTK I have never used and I'm not really fond with the learning it would take

This would leave other scripting languages or C++, I know that Ruby and C++ has working implementations of Qt. Python seems to have to have quite active implementation as well: http://www.pyside.org/.

Ideally, really, the language should be something that others can use as well, so I wouldn't be the only one who can develop and maintain it.

Any other ideas, suggestions?

I would think PHP for the portability. Especially for those of us that run bots in Linux. Plus it is in line with the coding of the bot, so dependencies are (or should be) already in place.

Just my thoughts.

Great idea, and yeah I suggest php for the same reasons. Plus if you ever leave it would be easy to continue it alongside the bot.

Hmm, I guess there is no other way than start learning GTK then.
I will first attempt to compile the php-gtk extension for Windows, and see if it works.

I have managed to compile GTK+ and all its dependencies with VS2008 using same settings as the PHP binaries which comes with Budabot package.
Next I have to figure out how to compile the PHP-GTK extension. When that is done some "Hello World" example comes next

I will probably make a new branch of trunk and add the new GTK-binaries there + the example code. Then continue to develop from there onwards.

Very nice.

I know a lot of people run multiple bot instances so handling multiple bots in the gui might be a worthwhile feature for it.

It's alive!

Well, sort of

Feel free to give it whack, it can be found from:
https://budabot2.googlecode.com/svn/branches/adminui

Run adminui.bat.
The example code is in adminui/adminui.php.

Yeah, I agree that could be a useful feature as well.

I have NO idea what this thread is even about...
Explanation for the non geek please?

He's writing a Windows GUI for Budabot similar to the old BotManager program that Derroylo wrote for Budabot 0.6.