As many people do, I have two different AIM screen names. While iChat allows you to add additional .Mac account names, it dosn't appear to have a way to allow you to toggle between two different AIM screen names.
So I wrote this script to allow you to do so. It basically rewrites a file named com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist in your ~/Library -> Preferences directory, swapping out the screen names. I'd suggest backing up this file before running this script by doing:
% cd $HOME/Library/Preferences % cp com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist.backupHere's the script; beware of line wraps in two of the lines within the case statements -- be sure they are stretched out on one line in your copy.
#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
echo 1>&2 "usage: aim second_name or first_name"
exit 127
fi
aimfile=$HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist
case $1 in
# remove the line break before $aimfile in each of the
# first_name and second_name lines below
first_name) cat $aimfile | sed 's/second_name/first_name/g' >
$aimfile.bak && mv $aimfile.bak $aimfile;echo "first_name now active";;
second_name) cat $aimfile | sed 's/first_name/second_name/g' >
$aimfile.bak && mv $aimfile.bak $aimfile;
echo "second_name now active";;
esac
[robg adds: I haven't tested this, as I have only one iChat ID. But you should be able to just save the script, make it executable, and then run it whenever you wish to swap your AIM name. I think you'll need to quit iChat first before running the script, though.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040123161558277