Oh god been a long time since I’ve blogged and my new blog is finally on Planet KDE

Let give some progress about libpapillon, which is a Qt4 library I’m working on to implement Windows Live Messenger 8 protocol. Since last week, I’m working on XML schemas and WSDL description of the MSN AddressBook webservice. WLM use this web service to retrieve the multiple contact lists (Allow, Block, Reverse, Pending) and the address book (which is now the Forward List). This is still a work in progress though. I never thought that I would have fun writing those XML Schemas, it’s a good thing because it’s generally a boring and dirty work.

All those web service work will lead me to kwsdl_compiler from kode(/trunk/KDE/kdepim/kode), which should be in kdepimlibs IMO, that really some love. There is gSOAP to generate WSDL bindings but I prefer working on a WSDL compiler that generate Qt code and also cleaner code. That make me also contribute to a part of KDE that need love too.

I feel like blogging today =)

For KDE4, I decided to rewrite the MSN plugin, which is now named Messenger plugin. Why Messenger ? Well you have MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger and now Windows Live Messenger(rebrand of MSN Messenger), the name in common ? Messenger.

This time, I’m doing it the right way (well I’m hope =)). I already began working on it in SVN, taking shape as a separate Qt4 only library that implement the Windows Live Messenger protocol. Windows Live Messenger is in beta stage, but when KDE4 will be out, Windows Live Messenger 8 will be out.

The library use the CoreProtocol/Task/Stream architecture that liboscar, libkyahoo and libiris(Jabber) use. I named this library “libpapillon”, papillon is the French word for butterfly.

Of course help is always appreciated. Help on research on MSNP13 protocol is encouraged

Today (or yesterday ?), Google released a new version of Google Talk that support avatars and chat themes. No this isn’t a Google-sponsored blog post

Most of you using Kopete to connect on Google Talk noticed that for some time, vCard worked with Google Talk’s server. Why ? Because they use vCard-based avatar for their avatar support. For no problems with Kopete 0.12 to display and export avatars with Google Talk, which is nice

Another unexpected thing from Google, their chat themes in offficial client is using the Adium theme, which I wrote support in Kopete 0.12. My collegue Johann make me notice that. But they didn’t mention it anywhere on their website which is a shame. The question of a IM theme standard came to mind. I need to talk with Adium developers about this matter.

This semester is one of my best semester ever at school. I’m doing a stage. Normally, you are doing stage in an corporation. But my college also offered to do stages at college. For nuberous reasons, I decided to stay at college. Staying at college means that I was getting a freedom to do my own stage project.

So last semester I though of a nice project. Instead of doing some projects submitted by the teachers, I proposed if my KDE contribution could be a stage project. Guess what, it was accepted : But I’m doing also some smaller projects that the teachers submitted to me.

My KDE contribution project is settled as 3 days/week.It been 2 weeks since school has begin, and there are 13 weeks lefts. In these days I’ve been working to make Kopete trunk compilable besides some protocols. Also I made some minor refactorings. Also I have worked on Solid too, working on the Hardware Browser.

So far, I planned some things that I’ll do during my stage. This not mean that I’ll complete every item in the list neither begin them.

• Make Kopete trunk compilable and remove Qt3 support
• Use KConfigXT in Kopete where applicable.
• Enhance KConfigXT compiler to support features that are missing mostly for Kopete’s usage (for now, emit signal on changed settings). Maybe it would a nice challenge to rewrite kconfig_compiler using /branches/work/kode-x (from Cornelius Schumacher, as presented at aKademy 2005)
• Refactor the handling of online status and status messages in Kopete
• Make contactlist manipulation and other assorted tasks(message API is one) async with Kopete::Task
• Port Jabber plugin to Qt4, libiris2, QCA2
• Refactor View, Message, ChatSession classes (maybe ChatWindow too)
• Jabber: new service discovery dialog
• Jabber: Random Jingle work
• Solid: Complete Hardware Browser as the API evolve
• Solid: Help on API design
• Solid: Help with Network part.

This is great isn’t it ?

I’m in my last days of completing the Kopete XHTML+CSS engine that use the Adium Message View style format. The only features that are misssing is: Support for Action template, Get Hot New Stuff support for new theme format. After coming the documentation of all this mess that I hope my colleage Johann will help me with that.

But also I need someone that use a Right-to-Left language to test the new engine if it’s work nicely with RTL language. If anyone want to help me with that, please contact me on my Jabber address: darkshock@myjabber.net or just by email: michael.larouche at kdemail dot net

After that, work on Jingle audio support in Jabber plugin will begin.

There is a not so fun thing about IM. This IM world is ruled by closed protocols like MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu. My target is MSN.

Currently in Kopete, if you receive a file from a user using MSN Messenger 7.5(7.0 works fine), the resulting file is null(0 bytes). I’m refering to bug #116950 in KDE’s Bugzilla. Since the guy who refactored the MSN P2P protocol in Kopete is gone, the bug is left unfixed. Users and not happy with that annoying bug and me too. So because nobody is trying to fix the bug, I tried myself. So I captured packets from file transfert in MSN 7.0 and MSN 7.5. And the packets are mostly the same ! I’m really not a expert of MSN P2P too. So where this bug came from I don’t know. So if someone want to look after this bug, MSN plugin users will really appreciate

With this lead to my rant. I’m really tired of all those undocumented IM protocols, and changing protocol all the time. This is bad and open-source developers waste their time trying to reverse-engineering these protocols. So please, use Jabber. It’s open, decentralized and fully documented. And we have a KDE Jabber here at KDETalk, so don’t be afraid to use it

I forgot to mention one thing about Chat Window topic.There is a topic at Kopete board on kde-artists.org about Improving Chat Window:
Kopete board at kde-artists.org (link no longer work)
Here you can post your thoughs and ideas too about Chat Window.

In other news, Adium format style preview works in Appearance config For those who found my screenshot too bloated in the previous entry, that’s because I’m using a bloated Chat Window Style, there are minimalist themes and also there are easy to develop, it’s just XHTML file template plus CSS files.

Heh, this is a long time since I blogged. I’m very busy with school and social life on these days. But I found time to work on something nice for Kopete.

For KDE4 I wanted to give a new look and code to the Kopete Chat Window. I discussed on IRC about that, and a conclusion came that we needed to dump XSLT style engine in favor of something else better. Johann pointed me to Adium chat window style themes and I felt in love with all those themes

And I couldn’t resist and Johann convinced me, then I’m doing it right now in Kopete 0.12 development branch.

See the result(using Metal Chat 2 theme with Blue & Red (No Header) variant)

I just finished the initial GUI configuration and there is already 2 new themes using Adium format in SVN. If you are interessed to try it out, see this status wiki page of XHTML+CSS engine of Kopete:
http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Kopete+XHTML%2BCSS

There is also Conrad Hoffmann who is working on a new chatwindow GUI:
http://conrausch.elise.no-ip.com/kopete/chatwindow/
He has some good ideas and I’m looking forward to see his work commited in SVN
So that’s mean for KDE4, I will be able to concentrate on libkopete, Jabber/XMPP plugin and other things in Kopete.

Since my latest post, I have made so lots of changes to the global identity stuff.

See the new configuration module:

I have also rework the way to apply the global identity from a code perspective. I added a signal to Kopete::ContactList called “globalIdentityChanged(const QString &key, const QVariant &value)”.

During the process, Duncan has rewritten how MetaContact handle the displayName and the photo, an I helped him to fix bugs

That’s all for today, back to my coding, MSNP11 porting in Kopete MSN plugin.

On Friday, I finally got my SVN account It seems that it was created earlier but they were errors in the automatic email system and I didn’t receive my confirmation email. I had to resend a email to sysadmin because I needed my SVN account ASAP to commit my initial work on the global identity.

For the past few days. I been working on implementing the application of the global identity. Thanks to Oliver Goffart advice and suggestions, I was able to implement it. But to full support, it requires me to examine each protocol and check how to apply the nickname on the server. For now, it is only implemented in MSN and Jabber. MSN was pretty straightforward since they were a method to change the nickname(changePublicName()). For Jabber, I needed to retrive to vCard, change the nickname in and repost it on the server. But it’s not finish. Gadu-Gadu, ICQ, AIM, Groupwise, IRC, Yahoo still do not apply the global identity if applicable.

The work on global identity has pushed Jabber and Gadu-Gadu maintainer to improve their code a little bit. And it’s work on the other side. Since I have committed my work into the Kopete SVN, I got request to improve my code mostly from Gof I love working on Kopete, it’s really a fun learning experience.