GSoC 2009 Idea

[Peter Saint-Andre]

On 3/20/09 8:55 PM, Etan Reisner wrote:
> 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. 

Correct:

http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0231.html

> 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).

In XMPP we've had various debates and proposals for whiteboarding, but
we don't yet have a settled protocol. We had a GSoC project for this a
few years back, which resulted in whiteboarding support in the Psi
client using this protocol:

http://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/sxe.html

If you're interested, let me know and I can connect you with some of the
appropriate XMPP developers.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

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