Additional Chat Protocols for RTCOMM
 

HI boys and girls.

As some of you may know, I much prefer the internal Nokia provided chat program over running secondary programs like Pidgin. Specifically, the integration of presence everywhere, including the Contacts app.

So, a while ago we saw Pidgin users get access to Facebook chat through the pidgin-facebookchat plugin (which can be found at http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/) and I wanted the same thing. I started working on this about two days ago and I wanted to show you all my current progress.

Attachment 3914
Contact app showing just people on the Facebook protocol.

Attachment 3915
Accounts dialog box

Attachment 3917
Presence system tray menu

Attachment 3918
Chatting through the Facebook protocol with my wife (ignore the timestamps, that's my fault)

At this point, I wouldn't consider this to be ready for release yet. The reason for this is because, as you can see in the above images, the Contacts app isn't actually showing if friends are online or not. Something about how I implemented this appears to have broken MSN in the same way.. still works, but status isn't shown.

When a chat starts, you'll get the standard incoming chat notification. It shows the Facebook profile number for the person instead of their name. This also happens at the start of the chat until about 30 seconds later, which you can also see in the pictures above.

Facebook notifications are supported by the plugin and are received by the tablet as shown by the syslog, however they aren't handled at this time. I'd imagine we could handle the notification the same way as a new incoming e-mail notification.

I would like to release this plugin as soon as the status issue for MSN and Facebook is fixed with the notifications being a secondary priority. I've reached out to Collabora, the guys behind RTCOMM, to see if they have advice or time to help me with these issues. I would appreciate any help from anyone that has knowledge of RTCOMM, telepathy and telepathy-haze so that we can polish this up and get it usable for one and all.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Sweet, that was the main reason I had to head back to pidgin!

that is really cool. Would be happy to beta-test ;)

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Though I do find that people think that i'm on facebook all the time. And get confused when I havent seen wall updates messages ect.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

I've also started hacking away at MySpace IM this morning.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Fantastic! Another wannabe beta-tester here.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Likewise, would definitely be interested in Beta testing this.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

this is perfect! Are you going to put this in extras as an update? I would love to use it. I didn't like pidgin and I am an avid rtcom user, but I miss the facebook option.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

I'm unsure how I'll release it.. let me just finish it first. ;)

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

sure I'll wait. Thanks

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Attachment 3941

I got inspired.

I was up until 4am last night, compiling, tinkering and playing with some other protocols added to RTCOMM. Here's what I've worked on and their status.

Facebook Chat
- Works, allows sending/receiving of messages
- Does not show online/offline status for friends
- Friends shown are just recent friends online, just like the Facebook chat on the site doesn't show offline friends.
- Seems to cause the Contacts app to have trouble with status for other protocols, probably because of something missing or misconfigured on my part.

Twitter
- Works very well
- Opens a new chat window when you come online which shows all recent tweets from friends (see above screenshot)
- Typing into the window sends your text as a new tweet
- Does not show anyone as a contact under Twitter except for Twitter.com (though I will try out another plugin that does do this soon)

Identi.ca
- Works the exact same way as Twitter, see everything above except I don't have another plugin to try out.
- Should work also with Laconica servers, but I didn't test it.

QQ
- Doesn't work currently, must force 2008 protocol first

MySpaceIM
- Doesn't work currently, not sure why yet

------

Other plugins that I will be trying out and hopefully packaging at some point include Skype (integrates contacts from the Skype app, but Skype must remain open), XFire, SIPE (MS Office Communicator), another Twitter plugin and maybe the Off The Record plugin that a lot of you have asked about over the years.

More good news, some Collabora and some Nokia employees have stated they will try to help out and make sure we get as many of them working as possible on Fremantle as well as Diablo.

I'll keep updating this thread with major milestones... for the low-down on the actual day-to-day hacking, follow me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/zerojay/).

Oh yeah, also forgot... very good chance that all these plugins can also be used simply with Pidgin... as long as it's not too old anyways.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

this is really great and cool. being able to integrate this stuff will be fantastic. keep up the great work!

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Thank you for all your hard work. Though I've not used most of these protocols, I'm thrilled to have them available not only in my preferred mobile OS, but in RTCOMM, my preferred client. I love having options available. Thanks!

Also, please remember to take a few moments to update your Summit sponsorship to reflect this important, new project you've undertaken. You're developing for Fremantle now, and that should give you some bonus points.

EDIT: Along those lines, a developer-focused talk on how to add new RTCOMM protocols or a user-focused talk demonstrating your new ones might be something for you to consider.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Thanks for the ideas. I think I'll do exactly that.

Actually, I can't edit the two fields I need to... should I just redo the registration or will that affect anything?

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

What fields do you need to edit? When I go to the "Events: Maemo Summit 2009" page, I'm offered an "edit your registration" link below the map. Editing the text in "Reason for requesting Nokia sponsorship" appears to work for me.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

There's two fields that aren't changable... perhaps because of a bug or oversight. Basically your primary and secondary projects. I've made the changes to the reason for requesting sponsorship though.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Don't worry about it... We know what you're up to. ;)

Tim

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Looking to release a beta of the Twitter client for RTCOMM this weekend. Here's a preview. It doesn't get more simple than this, really.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3197/...447ca3808a.jpg

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

what abt integrating google voice?
pliz don't blam me!
this is just a proposition. ;)

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

This would be better integrated into the Internet Call app. Which I do hope they do. :)

Tim

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Well, I haven't released anything this past weekend because there seems to be some sort of issue between telepathy-haze and the Galago address book backend causing it to crash and making presence information stop showing up for your contacts.

I can't release something that will break functionality. The good news is that Collabora is interested in helping me out and getting the issue fixed. I don't have any sort of ETA... just know I won't let this drop. :)

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

I really would like to help,
but unfortunately I don't even know how things work,
I think i will start reading all tutorials. hope it's not gonna take long

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

@zerojay: How's it going? :)

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

I'm stalled at the moment. The issue here is that the protocols I'm adding appear to cause Galago to crash. Galago is what apparently deals with keeping track of your friends online statuses and sharing it with other apps. Because of this crashing issue, all user status is lost for all telepathy-haze protocols (AIM, ICQ, IRC, etc...)

This is a major problem. I'm still working on it and the Collabora guys will help me with it when they have some time.

I don't know if there's anything that can be done to fix this for Diablo or not... but I will keep pressing onward.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Have you made any progress on this, as it would all be really cool.

Does any of it work correctly, and even if not, would it be worth putting up what you have for others to download and experiment, test and possibly help fix?

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

http://cass.no-ip.com/~cassidy/blog/...t-in-Telepathy

Hmm.. this might be interesting... ;)

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Still working on it zerojay ???

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

seems this might change the game a bit.

facebook to start using the XMPP protocol in its chat client?

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Facebook has been promising xmpp for years now. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

It's been a month now. How's it going with this? Any progress? :P

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

given the news thatg Collabra has now released 0.8 which enables FB chat on M5, is there any hope for a backport so that FB aznd twitter and the rest of Zerojay's great work etc will progress and be released.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

pretty pretty please!

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

bump zerojay is there any news on this?

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

The problem is that the software behind the address book showing you who is online and not is crashing... so that software will have to be updated too and that's outside of my realm. Collabora would be the ones to help you with that.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

This would be great if Facebook didn't just roll out XXMP support. I'll still use the other stuff like twitter though.

Re: Facebook Chat for RTCOMM
 

Indeed, facebook is now working with the native chat client in the N8x0 - smashing.

look here for details - http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=44050