[jdev] Re: New MSN-t in the works

[James Bunton]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 06:20 am, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter at jabber.org>
>  James Bunton <james at delx.cjb.net> wrote:
> > > Contact me directly ... I had the same problem when porting Yahoo to
> > > JCR. I replaced the 'mtq' functions with glib-2.0 equivalents to get
> > > the same functionality, if you are interested.
> >
> > Yeah, it might be useful to have a JCR version as well as the Python one.
> > Could you let me know how you did it? I don't have any experience with
> > glib.
> >
> > > On another note ... I'm looking into using Gaim plugins as the
> > > "transport layer" and building a generic transport framework. The Gaim
> > > plugin API has most of the functions we would need for a transport, and
> > > this may be a way to streamline the development of transports for
> > > Jabber.
> > >
> > > Of course, I'm very interested in MSN-t with Twisted. Perhaps that
> > > would be a way to make a set of the legacy transports ... AIM, MSN, and
> > > Yahoo. Anything that will make the transport more usable and esaier to
> > > maintain.
> >
> > I think twisted would be a lot easier to work with than the GAIM plugins.
> > It's
> > a framework for creating networked applications that may use multiple
> > protocols. http://www.twistedmatrix.com for more info.
>
> Would it be possible to somehow build the GAIM plugins into Twisted? I
> know that Twisted has support for lots of protocols, but the closed IM
> protocols are not on that list AFAIK.
>
> /psa

It would probably be possible to build the GAIM plugins into twisted, but it 
would be messy, and that's what I'm trying to avoid =P
Twisted has support for the Oscar, MSN, IRC and Jabber IM protocols. It also 
has support for lots of others, like pop3, smtp, etc (maybe for later on =))

Right now I have the new transport working. It shouldn't be too hard to adapt 
for AOL/ICQ, all the legacy protocol code is in one directory, so that can be 
swapped out. I've still got a few critical things. Disco/Browse/Agents (think 
it's still worth supporting the last two?), as well as in band registration 
and groupchat.

Oh yeah, I wanted to ask. Has anybody got any good ideas for a better way to 
do Jabber<->MSN groupchat? The MSN protocol makes no separation between 
groupchats and ordinary chats, and extra people can be invited into a room at 
any time. So the only way I can think of handling it is..
* MSN contact invites a new person into the room.
* MSN-t notices, converts the room to a conference and sends Jabber user an 
invite to the virtual conference room
* Jabber joins the conference and receives any buffered events with 
jabber:x:delay
* If the Jabber user doesn't join the conference within (maybe 3 minutes?) 
then they get a message from the transport with a transcript of the 
conference room so far, and they leave the conference on the MSN side.

Any objections/suggestions?

For starting an MSN groupchat on the jabber side, just join any random room on 
conference.msn.host.com and invite your msn contacts to it.

---

James