fpgroups.com: Revised chat room

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Esak" <john at valar.com>
To: "Filepro-List at Lists. Celestial. Com" <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 6:43 PM
Subject: RE: fpgroups.com: Revised chat room


>
>> The wrapper/portal to Johns chat room is the right idea. 25 different
>> shaped
>> doors to the same room is a useful thing. 25 different rooms is a bad
>> thing.
>
>> I think you inexcusably overstate the issue. Frankly, I would rather see 
>> a
>
>> chat room that is more universally accessible than John's iVocalize. It
>> runs
>> on a proprietary server, it requires a proprietary client, requires
>> Windows
>> (last I tried), It's really about the _last_ way that I would have
>> implimented a chat room and is a bit inconvenient for me since I use a
>> non-windows desktop at least 50% of the time. I'm hardly protective of 
>> it.
>
>> In fact I haven't even logged in in a couple years. But, it already 
>> exists
>
>> and works well enough and the voice part of it is perhaps worth putting 
>> up
>
>> with it's limitations. My eyes happen to be ok, but other peoples who's
>
> A couple things. The server The FP Room runs on is my server... yes... 
> what
> is a "proprietary" server???

The server daemon software, like the client software, both are proprietary.
I'm not bothered by where it's physically running. By you hosting it, that 
just releives one of the drawbacks. You paid for the licenses and are paying 
for the server side net connection & bandwidth usage.
It's good that there are linux & mac versions of the client now, but, I bet 
that's just because it is java, which is not really all that desireable for 
simple fact of java, and aside from that, this could have only happened in 
the last year or so. IRC clients and servers have been not only around but 
ubiquitous since many years before ivocalize even existed, so what was my 
option even a year ago?
WHat is my option on say, Palm, today?

An example of non-proprietary and why it matters is, irc clients are 
available not merely on all platforms, but in many _forms_. Each useful in 
some way that other forms are not. For example:
* chatzilla, a mozilla/firefox plug-in, It's sometimes very convenient 
having an irc client built into the browser so that sometimes you don't need 
a client at all. It also allows for the use of irc:// urls. Available on 
most platforms where mozilla is available, which is most platforms.
* CGI:IRC, an irc client written as a cgi, thats inconvenient to set up in 
that you need to configure a web server somewhere, but if you have that, 
then from the users point of view that is the ultimate in convenience since 
it doesn't even require installing a plug-in and it's the only way thats 
really available anywhere, including locked down kiosks.
* x-chat, a standard native irc client, ported to linux/freebsd/windows/mac. 
Not java, ported, or rather, more like written reasonably portably and 
simply compiled. Supports lots of features not possible in other clients. 
There are numerous plug-ins written in numerous scripting and compiled 
languages, for example there is a text-to-speech plug-in.
* ircii and/or bitchx, plain text irc clients that work over 
serial/telnet/ssh/console/screen/mscreen etc...
* upIRC, a native palmos irc client that runs right on my phone, much more 
conveniently than, say, using the phones web browser to access cgi:irc, or 
using the telnet/ssh client to access ircii or bitchx, though those are both 
possible too. There are several other palmos and windows-ce/pocketpc clients 
as well.
* GAIM, an all-in-one IM client that knows how to connect to several of the 
common IM systems like AIM, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN-IM, etc.. as well as 
irc, though admittedly it's kind of sucky at irc, however for all the other 
IM systems it's very convenient having just one client configured to join 
all the networks where you have accounts. This matters because it's not 
really up to you to pick the system you like and just use it, since other 
users may not have accounts on say, ICQ, but only have an AIM or Yahoo 
account, so you need to have an AIM and Yahoo account too if you want to IM 
with them, or tell them to get an ICQ account for your convenience.
* There is even an irc client written as a zsh module, where your shell 
displays messages from a chat room or other person just like kernel messages 
and mail alerts etc, and you send messages to a chat room or other person 
using special built-in commands provided by the plug-in if it's loaded. All 
the while, your shell remains a normal shell where you execute whatever 
other commands you want. At no point does the irc client functionality 
occupy the terminal like an interactive app does. Basically not too unlike 
the old unix "talk" service, but does a lot more simply because it's irc and 
not talk.

Since anyone may write an irc client, and since irc has ben around a long 
time, many different irc clients have been written by now on pretty much 
every platform, far more than the few shown here.
This just shows a few of the different options and shows why it is far more 
convenient to participate in an irc chat room than an ivocalize one. I use 
every one of those examples above, and they were all available years before 
ivocalize even existed, let alone before ivocalize attained linux and mac 
client ability. (maybe not the zsh module that is only a few years old.)

Anyone may also write an irc server, and several of those exist too. The 
usual advantages and disadvantages of open source software apply. No license 
counts, no cost, no obligatory help, vast seas of voluntary help, only 25% 
of which is bad, ability to modify to suit, ability to port to other 
platforms, deploy anywhere and any how you like...

Aside from mac, *nix, windows, & pda's, there are also native clients for at 
least os/2, Symbian, qnx, more... and in various platform-agnostic languages 
like java, tcl/tk, smalltalk, etc.. it's probably hard to find any os or 
language that doesn't sport at least one irc client, no matter how obscure 
you try to get. It's even possible to write one in filepro, even without the 
new net commands. By more than one means even. Via user() and netcat. Or 
maybe even via plain file io commands and named pipes connected to netcat, 
or connected to telnet. Or plain file io commands and the virtual device 
nodes provided by the tcp/ip features built into ksh/bash/zsh.

The short version of all that is that there is really no end to the reasons 
why open source versions of whatever_you_want_to_do are more desireable, 
useful, & more widely convenient than any proprietary solution. But 
sometimes it just sounds so meaningless to say "there are many 
advantages...", it sounds like all the writer probably really means is "It 
doesn't cost me $35.50" or "If I copy it, which I am going to do anyways, at 
least if it's open source I won't get arrested." When really those are about 
the least of the issues.

Having said all that, do please remember that I am not forgetting that there 
is no open source equivalent to ivocalize. In this case we simply need a 
feature that doesn't exist any other way yet so it's better to use it than 
live without the feature. I am not actually trying to advocate replacing the 
the current fp room. I was just pointing out something Jose was failing to 
grant benefit of the doubt about and so I felt I needed to spell out in more 
explicit detail some disadvantages I perceive just to prove that I perceive 
any and am not even remotely driven by the motivations he implied.

> I hate to hear the place called John's room
> because I certainly have never called it that.

Noted. I'll try to refer to it as simply the fp room from now on, or if it 
becomes necessary to distinguish it from other fp rooms, then the ivocalize 
fp room or the voice chat room. Or maybe just by it's web address?

Brian K. White    brian at aljex.com    http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR
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