Continuing yesterday’s Gnome story where we mentioned the webcam/voice project for Gaim, Tim Ringenbach wrote us in with more info and a preliminary screenshot from their project, gaim-vv.
Currently there is support for viewing other people’s Yahoo! Webcams, but not for letting other people view yours. Filamoon tells me he has msn voice support nearly done, using linphone, and he seems to have some msn video related code. But that’s his area and I’m not completely up to speed about where he’s at with it. He’s currently busy with exams and doesn’t have a lot of freetime. I don’t know if he’s replied to you yet or not.
No one has yet stepped forward to code anything (voice or video related) iChat, AIM, or any other protocol.
My current goal is to write a good infrastructure, so that adding support for other protocols is relatively easy. Once that is done I can look into getting it merged with Gaim. At the same time I’ll be looking into implementing sending support for Yahoo!. Thanks to the libyahoo2 project most of the Yahoo! related code for that is already there, but there’s no UI or core code for it, nothing to read from a webcam, etc.
The MSN support is using linphone which I believe can already read from webcams and stuff. Eventually we need to make them us the same code path
however. — Tim Ringenbach
Well, this will boost VOIP, and that’s great. We’ll be able to talk and see each other from Unix machines. No need of Windows software.
I’m still waiting on file transfer!! I need file transfer. Why would they work on video if the instant messenger isnt done yet?
Damnit…
Actually file transfer works, however like on every client of every protocol it doesn’t always work. I understand Gaim has more issues than others, but if you are looking for one that never fails it isn’t going to happen soon. Even IRC DCC runs into issues quite often.
I suggest putting a restricted ftp login on your machine if you want never failing file transfer. Change the password often.
I’d like to see my webcam work in Linux also….. Rebooting into Windows when I want to use it kinda sucks.
Is any collaboration being done with the GnomeMeeting project for gaim-vv? As far as I know, GM’s video conferencing support is pretty solid.
because microsoft has closed the netmeeting client (which is a H323 protocol client) and msn one’s is very different, it’s documented (there’s a lot of rfc about it)…
you have to know the ip adress of other people in order to be able to communicate and it’s incredbly difficult to configure through firewall… I try all version since the 0.11alphe one and even if the program is great, it’s really hard to get in touch with other world people…
maybe a plugin into gaim could have help to increase its audience but not…
the other problem is the number of dependance into gnome libs it requires… incredible…
One time i chat with one of the maintener of gnomeeeting and he said that they never had been able to create a statically linked gnomeeting despite the lot of wishes for this…
Not having these capabilities is the very thing that is keeping Linux off some people’s desktops (I know of one personally.) This is definitely gonna help if they get it up and running
why don’t they integrate GAIM with GNOMEMeeting?
just like Kopete is doing!…
>why don’t they integrate GAIM with GNOMEMeeting?
>just like Kopete is doing!…
They might. But doing so would basically only make GAIM a video phone client.
Although ICQ (and probably also AIM/iChat) use a variant of Netmeeting, there would have to be a bit more integration to use the Gnomemeeting core for video chat on that protocol.
And Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger probably don’t use Microsoft Netmeeting as a basis at all, so Gnomemeeting integration couldn’t serve as a basis for voice and video features in those at all.
>I’m still waiting on file transfer!! I need file transfer. >Why would they work on video if the instant messenger isnt >done yet?
>Damnit…
LICQ has ICQ file transfer. AMSN has MSN file transfer. I believe GAIM has Yahoo file transfer. Not sure if any open source client has AIM file transfer, though.
well, KDE with kparts would be able to embbed gnomemeeting in gaim easily…or I’m I wrong? It’s a shame if they aren’t doing this that way…
The author of GnomeMeeting, Damien Sandras, does not like the idea of integrating it with an IM-client. His comment is this –
Also, don’t forget GnomeMeeting is a VoIP/IP Telephony application with videoconferencing features, while iChat is an IM application with videoconferencing features. The big difference is that GnomeMeeting can be used as softphone in companies and infrastructures using Voice Over IP, and things like MCU’s, gatekeepers, IPBX’es like Asterisk or commercial ones, … Integrating it with something like gaim, and having something as simple as iChat, would mean loosing all those features.
Read the full article and his comments here – http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5280
/J
If you are thinking about adding Yahoo voice support to Gaim-vv, you will find the protocol and an implementation of it here –
http://phpaint.sourceforge.net/pyvoicechat/
/J
why integration will make us lost any feature ??
integration does not mean downgrading.
Well, I guess what he mean is that it does´nt make a natural match.
GAIM is a client that support various different protocols for instant messaging. What would make a perfect match imho is the support for the native voice and webcam features in those protocols.
-J
It all sounds nice and useful, and with a girlfriend far from me I too am waiting anxiously for the day the dual-boots are over, but… my webcam doesn’t even work with Linux! I have a pretty common device, a logitech webcam messenger, and it isn’t supported. I know Logitech is the real responsible here for not releasing drivers/specs, but the result is putting off many people. Hopefully someone someday will write this driver (i am no coder)!
Heh, I was just about to say the same thing. My girlfriend lives in Aus, so video chatting is verrrry important to me, and will continue to be so until I’ve moved out there later this year. Because of this, as much as I would love to completely switch over to Linux, I can’t, at least until they’re able to provide drivers for my webcam and the ability to vidchat with MSN IM users.
So KUDOS to this here project, I wish them the best of luck.
Gaim does file transfers both ways for at least AIM and IRC (I wrote the patch for IRC file transfer using the AIM FT code). I think you can receive files through MSN and maybe Yahoo.
As far as I can tell, AYTTM does Yahoo webcam (both receiving webcam and sending webcam) already. (although I haven’t tried it yet)
http://ayttm.sourceforge.net
Plus, there is a Linux client for AIM.
Never not once been able to transfer files.
People have sent me files and I can’t recieve them.
It’s hard having to explain why I didn’t get the file.
What versions of Gaim have you tried? It evolves and improves rather rapidly (it’s in the top most active projects on SourceForge). I use email and www for sending and receiving files, but I am pretty sure that Gaim can do it too.
sounds like there is a big mass of code, some (un)lucky git gets the task of bringing it all together without introducing 10,000000 deps to gaim.
ouch!
im sure they will manage it. now if gaim would just get their core/ui split finished so we can have a nice gnome front end (esp. since gossip is confimed as being jabber only for good).
Gaim hasn’t had any form of MSN file transfer support in a stable version for a long time; they had a bad but half-working version a while ago, but that got ripped out around the time of 0.7 I think. Now there’s just no support there at all, at least in 0.76 – I haven’t checked CVS out lately. amsn does file transfer great, but is ugly as hell and has a horrible interface. and, of course, only does MSN. I thought open source was supposed to solve this kind of problem by making it really easy to merge features? sigh…
AMSN cannot support input methods because it is tcl/tk. that’s a huge minus to me as most of my friends don’t speak enlish. gaim cannot support file transfer and profile picture(or avatar)… and also cannot use input method on dMSN (i am using FreeBSD/JDK1.4.2)… sad. i am currently stick to gaim. it is difficult to get files from people in the list
It should be noted that Gaim is not part of the GNOME project. Therefore this is *not* a GNOME story.
Sunny Dubey
I’m not opposed to integration of my work with an IM, it is even planned to create a DBUS interface reusable in other software.
I’m opposed to turn GnomeMeeting into an Instant Messenger, because it is aimed to be more than that.
That’s all.
Hello there,
does anyone know, if there is a possibility to communicate with ICQ-Phone users, from Linux or Mac? This is really annoying for me, that this cannot be done so far. Is there any project, which works on that?
Thanks and regards,
Anton
i see all these complaints about file transfers not working with gaim.. but i have a friend that uses windows aim, and me linux gaim.. and she never has problems sending me files.. im goin to go with your firewalls / routers getting in the way.. im DMZ server (or watever its called) and am currently not running a firewall.. not a problem for us..
maybe not posting blame on the creators when something dont work for you? 😉 do what i do.. turn things off (or on) til they work.. maybe change environments..
just my two cents..
I’m against this. Instant messenging and video conferencing are different applications. Idealy, GnomeMeeting would be able to communicate with Gaim to use it as a source for the videoconferencing. They are different applications and should not be merged, just like Rhythmbox and Sound Juicer. Gnome is built (or should be) like legos, where you can use each component as you want and replace each component with another one. In order to do video conferencing, I shouldn’t need gaim and to do instant messenging, I shouldn’t need GnomeMeeting. Gnome is built like legos while KDE is built like a jigsaw puzzle where it all fits together. I personally prefer legos then a jigsaw puzzle.
I perfectly agree with your statement. GAIM should use GnomeMeeting, and vice-versa, but they prefer reinventing the wheel