[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Chat Functionality with Jabber

[Adam Theo <theo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mike Kaufman wrote:
> On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 02:03:05PM -0400, 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 code responsible is found in server/handchat.c
> the client's code is found in client/gui-*/chatline.c
>
> The message from a client is sent as a simple string: (from the gtk client)
>
>  theinput = gtk_entry_get_text(GTK_ENTRY(w));
>
>   if (*theinput) {
>     mystrlcpy(apacket.message, theinput, MAX_LEN_MSG-MAX_LEN_USERNAME+1);
>     send_packet_generic_message(&aconnection, PACKET_CHAT_MSG, &apacket);
>
> the server does all the parsing.
OK, excellent, I'll digest this over the next couple of days (I don't 
know C, so I'll have to grab a few fellow Jabber developers who do :-).
> Is Jabber GPLed?
Jabber is a protocol only. And since protocols cannot be copyrighted, 
no, it is not GPL'ed. But that means it is inherently open and free, and 
the Jabber Software Foundation does not try to hoard the protocol specs 
or restrict others from using the Jabber protocol in any way, unlike AOL 
or Microsoft with their IM protocols. Now, the server implimentations. 
The Open Source [http://jabberd.jabberstudio.org] one is GPL'ed, yes. 
The DotGNU team will be using it as the codebase for their Jabber protjects.
> What sort of needed or desired functionality do you believe that jabber 
> could bring that our current mechanism doesn't offer?
That is difficult since I don't know what the current chat protocol is 
capable of. That's why I was asking  :)
But I'll have a nice list of features which Jabber can improve upon or 
add, I'm sure. Probably one of the biggest things Jabber can improve 
upon, in my guesstimation, is security over the wire. Jabber has a very 
good authentication now, and is probably leaps and bounds more secure 
than the home-grown protocol you have now (not to insult or anything, 
just theorizing).
> even if jabber doesn't take off here, please stick around. pretty soon
> here, I'm going to make a big push for updated documentation.
> see http://www.freeciv.org/manual/ for the sorry state of affairs :)
Certainly. As I said, I love FreeCiv, and love doing documentation  :)

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