[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Chat Functionality with Jabber

[Adam Theo <theo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I forgot to mention, I've been doing this whole "Take Jabber to other
Projects" thing for a while, mainly with another official GNU Project,
DotGNU [http://www.dotgnu.org], which is aiming to build a complete
distributed computing and web services platform for the GNU Project. As
of a couple of weeks ago, they accepted Jabber as a major transport
protocol for middleware and data routing, equal to traditional HTTP. I
plan on doing this sort of thing for many other projects, one by one :-)

Adam Theo wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> As soon as I realize I'm playing alot of FreeCiv, and then sign up to
> the developers list to see what I can do to help out in my spare time,
> my spare time disappears... I swear, there's some natural law that could
> be explained in a mathematical equation about this.
>
> Anyways, I figure I can at least try to bring in one of my other hobbies
> to this project. Could anyone tell me about the chat functionality
> between players in FreeCiv? I assume it is a plaintext-based protocol
> that was home-grown to serve this need? I was told there are no docs on
> it, but was hoping an expert on the matter could tell me about it.
>
> The reason being my other hobby is Jabber [www.jabber.org], an open and
> free (as in freedom) XML protocol for instant communications. It began
> as an open Instant Messaging platform that could easily be converted to
> other protocols (such as AIM, ICQ, HTTP, SMTP, etc...), but is now being
> used in many places as a middleware protocol to exchange data between
> different legacy systems (precisely because it's easy to convert to
> legacy protocols).
>
> I believe Jabber would be an excellent solution for FreeCiv's chat
> functionality *at least*. It is simple and easy to impliment, there are
> many tools in many languages and under many licenses already out there,
> and the developer community is large and eager to help. I would also
> like to see Jabber used in other areas of FreeCiv, such as possibly
> adding a "presence" mechanism (like Instant Messaging presence) and a
> user/server directory for search & discovery features. I would be more
> than happy to explain in detail what Jabber can do and how it could be
> used, as well as do all of the documentation for FreeCiv's new
> Jabber-based chat system (I'm an odd Open Source/Free Software guy, I
> love doing documentation :-). Just let me know what your concerns and
> questions are, and I'll answer them.

--
     /\  Adam Theo, Age 22, Tallahassee FL USA
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