[FM Discuss] FM Transmission / web chat, irc gateway /

[Aleksandar Erkalovic]

hi,

so we talked in amsterdam about our current chat system and how to improve it.
also, adam started to bitch more and more so i decided to play a bit
with what i was talking
about (twisted framework and some of the things i did before). so i
decided to send
this to discuss and not just the tech list so more people could think
about the new
system.

anywho, FM Transmission (drum rolls please) is so far just a demo but
i look into it
as a foundation for our future chat system. because of some technical
issues (and my
lack of time) it is not so easy to just switch it with current chat
but will try to do something
for the Firefox sprint.

if you go to web page http://www.binarni.net:8080/htdocs/ you will get
web interface
for the chat. chat is connected with irc channel #flossmanuals
(irc.freenode.net server).
so it does not matter if you are using your favorite irc client or web
browser anymore.
you can go to irc and web page at the same time, try to chat and see
how it looks like.
on the irc channel side, irc bot called "fm" is sending the messages
for the web users.
we have _one_ irc user for _many_ web users. chat supports just the
basic messages
(user join, user left, public message send to channel) but other
things will come very soon.

system is adapted to flossmanuals, but it will be easy to use it
together with other
twiki systems or separately. small trivia.... "transmission" is title
of joy division song.

this chat system is something i wanted to implement some 6 years ago
for the wiki
system i was developing in mi2 so i have lots of ideas and some
thoughts what it could
have. soooo...

   soon to be implemented
   --------------------------------
      - authentification will go trough the twiki system. guest
users... will think of something.
         right now users get names according to template Guest+<number>
      - other messages and events. no private messages for now between
web and irc.
      - right now we sync every 5 seconds but i plan to implement full COMET
        communication that will enable web clients to get messages immediately.

   will be implemented
   --------------------------
      - we will have smaller version and full size client
      - more then one channel. so each "book" can have a seperate
public channel for instance
      - private messages between users
      - file attachments. once uploaded other users (web and irc) will
be able to download it
      - notifications from the flossmanuals on the channel. for
instance "user XY has changed
        the status of the book Inkscape to 'published'". basicly info
that is usefull to people
        during the sprint...
      - history/logs of the conversations. can be browsable trough the
web and can be
        saved as a wiki page or something
      - gateways to other networks except irc. would be cool to be
notified on some other network that people
        have comed for the sprint and etc... twisted has support for
some protocols but i am not so sure
        how popular are some of them today.
      - plugin system (text formaters, filters...)

so, please test it a bit. think about it. think what would you like to
see, what you think we should implement
and tell me. be aware this is just 0.0.10 version :) also, be aware i
will start and stop the service without
warning.

Aco

-- 
 http://www.binarni.net/