TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter is for advanced users and those who have programming skills or who want to develop a hardware or software solution for Skype. So if you are a typical user, skip this chapter. The Skype development team recognizes that you might want to extend Skype in ways that they have not foreseen or add functionality to the Skype program that is not a priority on the Skype feature list. To enable you to write your own external applications that access Skype functionality, the Skype developers have released the Skype application programming interface (API). The Skype API is supported on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux operating system platforms. On Windows platforms, the Skype API is supported on Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Although it might function on Windows 98/ME systems, it is not supported. There is nothing for the Pocket PC as of yet. On a Mac, you must be using Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) or later, and the latest version of the Skype Client for Mac OS X. Linux platforms supported are Fedora Core 3, SuSe 9, Mandriva 10.1 Debian; and Gentoo 1.4, all of which require Skype For Linux, version 1.1.0.3 or later.
Simply put, the Skype API allows you to control Skype from within your own applications and to monitor information received about your Skype contacts. The Skype API supports a wide range of control commands and status messages. Some...
