GSOC idea

[Viktor Lofgren]

>From what I understand, the Bonjour is a primarily separate messaging
protocol. What I suggest is more like "finger" of old UNIX fame. It shares
one or more IM accounts and a small piece of descriptive information as
to who is running pidgin, and lets the communication happen across the
already established protocols.

The "XEP-0174: Serverless Messaging"-specification allows one to list
alternative Jabber-accounts, while my protocol would not have this limit.

Though it does feel like a very narrow niche to fill, and I fail to find any
significant justification why this plugin is necessary.

>From the FutureSOCProjects-list, I'm kind of interested in was the emoticon
cache suggestion. But I'm not sure how to go further with that.

- Viktor

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 9:51 PM, Evan Schoenberg, M.D.
<evan.s at dreskin.net> wrote:
> Viktor,
>
> On Mar 25, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Viktor Lofgren wrote:
>
>> Hello. My name is Viktor Lofgren, and I'm a physics major from Sweden. I am
>> indeed another GSOC-hopeful bogging down the mailing list.
>>
>> I have a kinda neat idea I've been playing around with for a while: A plugin for
>> local-network presence announcement. It would naturally not be enabled by
>> default, and require both ends to have it enabled to do anything. But what it
>> would do would basically be something like send out a broadcasted packet
>> requesting a reply from anyone running the plugin with their IM handle and
>> possibly some sort of description or whatever.
>>
>> I think it would be very useful functionality for anyone on a reasonably big
>> network, on an open wireless network, and so on.
>>
>> Does this pique anyone's interest, or is it back to the drawing board for me?
>
> Are you familiar with the Bonjour protocol, an implementation of which is already in Pidgin? What would you see your proposed plugin adding that would be unique relative to it?
>
> Cheers,
> Evan