GSoC 2009 Idea

[Etan Reisner]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 09:07:36AM +0530, Sreyansh Gandhi wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> My idea is basically letting users to make their conversation more
> interactive with Images and screenshot. AFAIK (to my knowledge), there is no
> chat client that will let you embed a picture along with the chat
> messages..

AIM has supported embedding images (and in fact any file at all I believe)
into the chat window directly for a very long time. I believe XMPP has
support for inline images as well, and has even improved this support
recently. MSN supports a very limited version of this sort of thing in
that it supports custom smileys.

pidgin has supported this on AIM for as long as I am aware of and
according to the code pidgin also supports it for ICQ, GG, MySpace, SILC,
and SameTime.

> Following features can be provided:
>
> - Letting users embed picture in chat box (drag-drop a pic in box. A pop up
> will open to send, use as buddy icon(already exists) and EMBED PICTURE IN
> CHAT).

This should already occur for the protocols that pidgin supports inline images for.

> - Take a SnapShot of picture and paste it in chat box (provide a Image
> capturing icon, clicking on that will let user embed picture)

pidgin is not a screen shot application, nor should it be. The Send
Screenshot plugin on the third party plugins page
(http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/ThirdPartyPlugins#Miscellaneous) was
created to support this sort of feature more easily.

> - Play around with image say using marker to show what exactly you wanted
> to. (a colored pencil for marking would definitely help).

This sounds like whiteboard support which pidgin supports for a very few
protocols in a rather limited fashion. I believe whiteboards are supported
for SILC and Yahoo! at the moment (Yahoo! calls it 'Doodle' I believe, at
least that is what we call it in pidgin for Yahoo!).

Adding better whiteboard support for Yahoo! and SILC is a worthwhile goal
as is adding whiteboard support for other protocols that have similar
features. I don't think improving the existing support would make for a
SoC project but adding support for a new protocol might (though I can't
say whether it would be approved or not).

> Advantages:
>
> - Makes pidgin useable for people who want to collabarate and work along
> with chat. Say send a screenshot of a Directory in Shared folder and
> indicate other user can dload this file. etc.
>
> - With this feature we can mimic 'Sharing Photos' feature of Yahoo!
> Messenger.
>
> - Take Screenshot of charts/graphs and show other users (Conference).
> Something like virtual meeting.
>
> - Boost Pidgin users. People ll migrate who are in need of this feature :)
>
> Please let me know how the idea is. Any suggestions?

    -Etan