offline history & irc auto commands

[Adam Ambrus]

hello,

i am a happy pidgin user since i am on ubuntu 7.04 (alright, it was gaim 
that time, but you get my point.)

i would like to ask you, whether you could help me (please don't tell me 
"UTFG U N00B," i've tried to) finding a plugin which would allow me to 
view the IM logs from conversations.

i see that pidgin does not show any contacts when offline - does not get 
  the contact list blah blah stuff.

but i understand that the logs of conversations must be saved somewhere 
on the disk - it would be _dumm_ of pidgin to download it each time.

now, the Question1 repeated: How to view/where to look for these log 
files? any plugin for this?

thank you for answer.

PS: Question2: is there any way to autoidentify yourself on irc channel? 
for example, on freenode, you need to type '/msg NickServ identify 
password'. is there any way to automatize this task?

thanx.

-AA