[Gossip-dev] Integrating with Gossip

[Jerry Haltom]

Ever heard of Imeem? Their software is basically an IM client which
allows for users on the IM network to share files with each other. It
provides a nice interface for browsing pictures, browsing music files,
movies, etc.

The idea is pretty nice. To integrate these different functions into a
users contact system. It makes sense from an interface perspective. You
see your friends, you want to see what files your friends are letting
you see. Same channel of communication.

My problem with Imeem of course is that all their services are provided
by them only for use with their users. And it's all built into the IM
client.

I'd like to make it easy for me to duplicate some of their
functionality. To do this I need to be able to write an application,
such as a picture browser, which exchanges messages with a remote
picture server. It makes sense then to have a single communication
framework by which I can do so.

I could put the picture browser into Gossip prime, but I don't want to,
and I suspect you don't want me to either. ;)

I'd rather have some way which a separate picture app can run on both
machines, but use the user's Jabber as a communication transport: either
to exchange the actual data over XMPP, or to use XMPP to establish an
out of bound connection in another manner.

Each app could establish it's own connection to Jabber. Maybe this is
ideal, it could log on as a separate resource. But then at least the
Jabber libraries need to be sharable... and probably account
information, and stored passwords.

Or there could be one daemon running in the user's session functioning
as a Jabber backbone upon which other services can piggyback their own
data.

That's the basic idea. Comments? :)

On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 11:57 +0000, Martyn Russell wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 18:46 -0600, Jerry Haltom wrote:
> > It has occurred to me that I want to write a program that uses Jabber.
> > Not a big deal! However, the nature of this program makes me want to
> > integrate into the user's existing IM client. The details of the program
> > aren't exactly important (I want to allow a user to browse another
> > user's files.)
> 
> For what purpose?
> 
> > What I really want though is access to the Jabber transport from an
> > external program. I want my program to be able to launch, and perhaps
> > thru D-BUS, send custom XMPP messages to other JIDs.
> 
> Mmm, this doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Using Dbus to send any
> message over a socket to some server sounds like a security nightmare.
> 
> Unless you could be more specific? :)
>