Salut à tous,

Grâce à Parinux, je vais faire une conférence lundi prochain pour présenter le projet « Salut à Toi », n'hésitez pas à venir pour discuter si vous vous y intéressez, en tant qu'utilisateur, contributeur potentiel, ou autre.

La conférence aura lieu à l'Espace Public Numérique la Bourdonnais, à côté du Champs de Mars, et commencera vers 19h15. Il faut vous inscrire: l'entrée est libre, mais il faut estimer le nombre de participants. Toutes les infos sont ici: http://www.parinux.org/content/conference-de-presentation-du-projet-%C2%AB-salut-toi-%C2%BB-par-goffi.

Le projet bouge bien en ce moment, c'est le bon moment pour venir discuter :)

Goffi

Salut à tous,

edit: la vidéo a été à peu près resynchronisée :)

je me suis amusé à faire un greffon qui exporte les entrées/sorties d'une commande Unix à un contact. Le principe est très simple: vous entrez une commande (pour l'instant ce n'est pas implémenté dans les frontaux, aussi il faut utiliser directement l'API D-Bus, via D-Feet ou qdbus par exemple), ainsi que les contacts autorisés à communiquer avec, quelques options éventuelles et c'est parti !

Il y a 2 intérêts principaux à faire ceci:

le premier est que vous pouvez donner l'accès à un interprète à n'importe lequel de vos contacts (je fais un exemple avec FTP dans la vidéo, j'ai également fait des tests avec bc, ipython et zsh), sans utiliser de machineries lourdes telles que ssh qui demandent la création d'un accès, d'avoir un client, un port ouvert etc. Bon évidemment ça reste très simpliste, ce n'est pas un terminal, mais ça dépanne. Les caractères d'échappements (ce qui donne des couleurs par exemple dans un interprète) ne sont pas gérés, et ça peut donner de la bouillie (j'ai eu le cas avec ipython). J'envisage de les intercepter et les convertir en couleur via XHTML-IM à terme (enfin faudrait déjà gérer XHTML-IM dans SàT :p ).

le second est de permettre de faire des bots très facilement: il suffit de faire un script qui lit l'entrée standard et réagit en conséquence. Vous pouvez faire ainsi un bot en quelques minutes avec n'importe quel langage de script (sh, Python, Ruby, etc) ou autre. Et vous pouvez directement le déboguer dans un terminal, sans avoir besoin de serveur XMPP pour tester. Pour vous montrer la simplicité de la chose, j'ai fait un petit essai en Python, voici ce que ça donne:

#!/usr/bin/python
#-*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import sys

class QuickBot(object):

    def out(self, msg):
        sys.stdout.write((u"%s\n" % msg).encode('utf-8'))
        sys.stdout.flush()

    def start(self):
        while(True):
            _input = raw_input().decode('utf-8','ignore')
            if _input.startswith('!'):
                args = _input[1:].split()
                try:
                    getattr(self, "cmd_%s" % args[0].encode('ascii').lower())(args[1:])
                except (IndexError, AttributeError, UnicodeEncodeError):
                    pass

    def cmd_salut(self, args):
        self.out(u"à Toi !")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    bot = QuickBot()
    bot.start()

Le contact n'a qu'à faire !commande [arguments] pour le faire réagir (ici !salut). Pour ajouter une commande, il suffit de faire une nouvelle méthode nommée cmd_ma_commande, par exemple cmd_toto ajoutera la commande !toto. Facile non ?

J'ai fait une petite vidéo pour vous montrer ça à l'œuvre, désolé pour le décalage du son, j'ai probablement mal réglé un paramètre, et je n'ai pas trop le temps de recommencer 15 fois.

Bon sinon j'ai également fait un petit widget web pour Libervia (il n'est pas encore poussé sur le dépôt). Évidemment c'est limité (à cause des restrictions javascript), mais ça permet d'afficher ce que vous voulez à côté de vos discussions, et de profiter des possibilités de mise en page de Libervia (on pourra par exemple, mettre 4 sites dans une grille).

Enfin, n'oubliez pas que demain aura lieu un hackathon dans les locaux du Loop, cf mon précédent billet.

À bientôt

Comme d'habitude, pour lire la vidéo, vous devez utiliser un butineur récent (le dernier Firefox/Iceweasel par exemple).
Vous pouvez aussi utiliser VLC (version >=1.1 uniquement), en allant dans le menu « Média/Ouvrir un flux réseau » et en mettant cette URL: http://www.goffi.org/videos/pr%c3%a9sentation_S%c3%a0T_6_export_commande.webm
Enfin, vous pouvez utiliser mplayer: mplayer "http://www.goffi.org/videos/pr%c3%a9sentation_S%c3%a0T_6_export_commande.webm"

Cette vidéo est sous la licence Creative Common BY-SA

Salut à vous !

No news is good news ! The lack of news on the blog lastly is due to the work on Salut à Toi, which is comming in a new 0.3.0 release.

Really a lot of new things in this release, the 0.2 being more that one year old. If you follow the blog, you should have seen some of them like the radio collective, the pipe over XMPP, Primitivus becoming modal, the license change to full AGPL v3 or the group microblogging improvments. Other are still in early stage like the "Bellaciao" Qt frontend, or the quiz game. This year also came the new website, and misc other additions, more or less big. I will not talk again about all of this, there were already posts about most of named features. The installation instructions are at the bottom of this page.

Instead, let's talk about the new online demo. You'll find it at http://www.libervia.org, and you'll just have to click on "register" to easily create a new account. This account come with a Jabber address (Jabber Id or jid), and will let you talk to the world. Don't hesitate to join the SàT room (menu "Groups/join room", then let the default address which is the one of the room: sat@chat.jabberfr.org) to ask your questions or just talk about the project.

Web Interface

The main goal of this demo is to let you try the web interface.

You can add widget as you want by drag and drop. This way, by moving the name of a group (well, you'll need to add some contacts of course ;) ) to the center, you'll create a new panel with the microblogs of this group. If you do the same thing with a contact, you'll start a chat. Drag over the "contact" header in the same spirit, and you'll obtain a panel with all microblogs, from all groups. In the future, it should be possible to save the layout to bring it back easily.

To send a message in a discussion, you need to click on it (the title bar become red, like for Louise in the screenshot above). When you enter a text, a green banner certify you that you're talking to one person or in a room.

If you unselect the widget, you can either click on an other one, either click on the gray space under the text entry (it's the status area). If you enter a text without nothing selected, it will be your status message.

For group microbloging, enter the target group by writing your message like this "@group: message". e.g.: "@friends: Salut à Vous !". A message written like "@@: Salut à tous" will be public (readable also for people which have no account, see below). NB: the banner will be blue for a group message, and red to say "careful, this message will be public, either for people you don't even know".

You can also try the collective radio, or the french tarot game (which will hopefuly work correctly).

public microbloging

the public messages page is a the following address: http://www.libervia.org/blog/login (e.g.: http://www.libervia.org/blog/goffi). Here you'll find open microblogs (the ones written like "@@: message") from the person, a bit like identi.ca or Twitter. This page is currently really basic, it will for sure become better with time.

using an e-mail client(MUA)

Like seen previously on the blog (well, in french actually :) ), you can use an e-mail reader like Thunderbird, KMail or Mutt to connect to SàT.

So far it's really basic (it's not yet possible to create directories with IMAP, the account must be logged will using the e-mail client, you can't send message on the traditional e-mail network), but this should become better and better to finally bring a full e-mail server.

This feature show the way to many experiments through XMPP gateways or project like Weboob. Thank to it, we can for example send message through KMail to IRC, SIP or SMS (using gateways like Spectrum's ones). Add Weboob to this (using an XMPP gateway that I have started), and you'll can send messages to website like DLFP.

We can imagine "smart" answer: are you never annoyed by receiving notifications for messages from a website, and to have to connect to it using a web browser, just to read and/or answwer the message ? It will be possible to automate this, so you'll can do everything from your favorite email software.

I have other ideas in head, which should slowly come.

To use this, you have to indicate your jid (which is like login@libervia.org) as your e-mail address, the IMAP and SMTP server to use are www.libervia.org (both) and the respective ports are 10143 and 10125. So far, you have to be logged to the web interface to be able to check you e-mail with your e-mail client, a issue which will of course disappear in the future. Other issue: you can't create an IMAP directory yet, so you'll have to save your messages/draft and other templates locally (in Thunderbird, in the account parameters, you'll have to put "Local Folders" for everything in "Copies & Folders").

Once the configuration is done, you can try with a jabber contact: ask her to sent you a "normal" message (the ones with a subject) with - for example - Psi or Gajim, and answer her with you e-mail client :)

Installation

The installation should be really easy (for people on GNU/Linux: multi-platform is not yet managed; please be patient ;) ), as the project is on pypi. So, a simple "pip install sat" (as root) should be enough. If you're using Arch, a package is already here (thanks to Link Mauve). On a fresh install of Debian, the following command should install "Salut à Toi" (to enter as root):

#apt-get install python-pip python-dev
#pip install sat

Once SàT is installed, you can launch it (by entering "sat"), then use the console ui (by entering "primitivus"). To use Wix, you'll have to install media as shown on the wiki. And don't forget the new website, with useful links and some screenshots: http://sat.goffi.org

Okay, I think this post is long enough (and I need to sleep to be honest), see you soon...

Goffi

Salut à tous,

voici quelques infos en vrac sur l'évolution du projet, ainsi que les vidéos des dernières conférences (voir plus bas).

Une nouvelle version est proche (oui je sais ça fait longtemps que je l'annonce, mais c'est vraiment le cas), je suis actuellement en train d'implémenter les dernières fonctionnalités que je voulais voir dans Libervia.

Primitivus est désormais modal, à la vi: cela signifie que l'ont peut utiliser un mode adapté à ce que l'on fait (pour l'instant il y a 3 modes: normal, commande et insertion). L'intérêt est encore limité (il n'y a qu'une commande :quit), mais le but était de préparer le terrain pour des futures fonctionnalités (je pense notamment à des commandes du style :split et :vsplit).

Une nouvelle extension a vu le jour: un perroquet (parrot). Cette extension simple permet de répéter tous les messages entre 2 contacts. L'idée est de pouvoir faire communiquer 2 personnes (ou plus) sur 2 réseaux différents (par exemple IRC et SIP) sans que celles-ci n'aient besoin de créer un compte ou faire quoi que ce soit de particulier.
Certains bots faisaient déjà ça, l'avantage ici est que la mise en place est simple et rapide. Grâce aux transports XMPP, de nombreuses combinaisons sont possibles. Le principe sera peut-être étendu à terme au microblogage (ainsi en postant un microbillet XMPP, on pourrait le voir copié automatiquement sur d'autres réseaux - par exemple identi.ca, IRC, un forum, etc -).

Une autre extension permet désormais d'utiliser les commandes textuelles de type IRC (par exemple: « /nick nouveau_pseudo » dans une discussion de groupe). Ainsi un perroquet se met en place entre 2 contacts en écrivant « /parrot mon_autre_contact » à un contact.

Après avoir hésité à implémenter le partage de fichiers avant de sortir une nouvelle version, je pense qu'il est plus sage de le faire après, pour éviter de repousser sine die.

J'ai fait cet été une conférence aux RMLL à Genève (voir ci-dessous). Le salon était intéressant, Salut à Toi était à côté des projets amis Weboob et MOVIM.

Une autre conférence a eu lieu aux JDLL. N'étant pas officiellement filmée, nous avons fait une vidéo de fortune que vous trouverez ci-dessous. Les diapos ne sont pas visibles, aussi la présentation est jointe au billet.

Les deux vidéos (et la présentation) sont sous licence CC By-SA. J'en profite pour remercier les organisateurs de ces 2 salons, c'est agréable de pouvoir discuter directement avec les gens qui s'intéressent au projet.

À bientôt, probablement pour l'annonce de la nouvelle version.

Goffi

RMLL 2012

Cette vidéo est sous licence Creative Common BY-SA (merci à l'équipe des RMLL pour la prise de vidéo, vous trouverez cette conférence ainsi que les autres sur http://video.rmll.info)

JDLL 2012

Cette vidéo est sous licence Creative Common BY-SA

Présentations

• Présentation de la conférence des RMLL 2012
• Présentation de la conférence des JDLL 2012

Salut à vous,

un rapide billet pour vous annoncer l'ouverture d'un nouveau site de présentation de Salut à Toi: http://sat.goffi.org . Le but était d'avoir un site un peu plus accessible que la page du wiki, et permettant de rapidement se faire une idée du projet. Il est disponible en français et en anglais (tout aide pour une traduction dans une autre langue est la bienvenue).

D'autre part, je suis allé aux Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre à Genève ce mois-ci, et j'y ai fait une conférence que vous trouverez à cette adresse: http://video.rmll.info/videos/salut-a-toi-communication-libre-federee-decentralisee-et-standard/ . Le salon s'est très bien passé. Je faisais stand commun avec Romain du projet ami Weboob, et j'ai également pu revoir les équipes d'autres projets tels que MOVIM (nous étions voisins), Jappix ou Newebe.

Les visiteurs avaient l'air intéressés par SàT, et de plus en plus de monde connaissait le projet au moins de nom. Espérons que l'année prochaine la version courante sera utilisable par tous...

after the shell pipe over XMPP, here is a new feature in "Salut à Toi": collective radio.

The idea is: you are in a chat room with a common playlist, and everybody can add a song to the playlist. The song is played simultaneously for everybody, making it a collective radio experiment.

So far, there are maximum 2 songs in queue, as soon as one song is played, anybody can add a new one. In the future, we can imagine a more sophisticated system to choose who can add a song in queue (e.g. each one in turn, with a vote if songs played are appreciated, or with a game: the one who can answer a quiz question can choose next song).

Maybe in the future we'll see thematic rooms: jazz, rock, experimental, discovery, song with nice lyrics, etc. Or maybe we'll spend some evenings with friends, each one adding nice songs after the other, or playing blind test. We can also imagine party were everybody can participate to the playlist.
If in addition you use it on your phone: you are your own radio disc jockey :)

Following is a video showing the current implementation of the proof of concept, it's in french but quite easy to understand.

For the record: I'll be in Brussels next weekend for the FOSDEM, where I'll make a demo of the project at the XSF stand; don't hesitate to come to have a chat :). In addition I'll have a short talk in the devroom on saturday evening (18:00), you can have more information by clicking on this link.

To play the video, you nead a recent browser (e.g. Firefox 4+ or the last Chromium).
You can also use VLC (>=1.1 only), by using this url as a flux: http://www.goffi.org/videos/pr%c3%a9sentation_S%c3%a0T_5_radio_collective.webm

Last but not least, you can use mplayer: mplayer "http://www.goffi.org/videos/pr%c3%a9sentation_S%c3%a0T_5_radio_collective.webm"

This video is licensed under Creative Common BY-SA

Salut à tous,

un petit billet très rapide pour vous dire que j'ai fait un entretien pour DLFP: https://linuxfr.org/news/entretien-avec-goffi-d%C3%A9veloppeur-de-s%C3%A0t-client-de-messagerie-instantan%C3%A9e-libre où j'indique notamment que je souhaite lancer un site basé sur libervia avant la fin de l'année (si j'y arrive, ce n'est pas gagné), et que j'ai commencé une interface basée sur Qt.

D'autre part j'ai été aux Journées Du Logiciel Libre à Lyon récemment, et j'y ai fait ma première conférence. L'ambiance était très familiale, ça m'a bien plu, j'espère y retourner l'année prochaine.

Je suis particulièrement débordé en ce moment, c'est assez difficile de trouver du temps à consacrer à SàT, mais j'y arrive tant bien que mal.

À bientôt...

Comme d'habitude, pour lire la vidéo, vous devez utiliser un butineur récent (Firefox 4 ou le dernier Chromium par exemple).
Vous pouvez aussi utiliser VLC (version >=1.1 uniquement), en allant dans le menu « Média/Ouvrir un flux réseau » et en mettant cette URL: http://www.goffi.org/videos/pr%c3%a9sentation_S%c3%a0T_4_copie_et_pipe.webm

Enfin, vous pouvez utiliser mplayer: mplayer "http://www.goffi.org/videos/pr%c3%a9sentation_S%c3%a0T_4_copie_et_pipe.webm"

Cette vidéo est sous la licence Creative Common BY-SA

4 jours après la précédente version, une nouvelle version mineure est disponible, qui corrige quelques bugs (syntaxe « gcp RÉPERTOIRE1 RÉPERTOIRE2 » et code de retour) et qui ajoute des tests.

Sinon ça avance toujours côté SàT, mais il y a énormément de choses à faire, aussi de l'aide serait bienvenue :)

G'day all,

I have been working for a while on an XMPP client with a daemon/frontends architecture: the idea is that you have the main logic centralised in the daemon side, and you can make very different lightweight frontends for the view. The project is intended to be a modular, multi-platform, multi-frontend communication software. The frontends can be adapted to a particular use case, or platform.
Currently, there are a desktop frontend, a console frontend, a command-line frontend, and a web frontend. A Kde frontend is also planned.

The project is quite difficult to summarise, as it touch a lot of domains (it's not intended to be only an instant messaging software, but to explore deeply the power of XMPP): with it you have instant messaging, e-mail style heavy messaging, multi-user chat, microblogging, file sharing, games, etc.

Techical part

Salut à Toi (SàT) - which means « Hi to you » - is heavily based on the Twisted framework, and the XMPP library Wokkel, which is on top of it and should be integrated in Twisted in the future. The core backend concentrate only on the RFC, a couple of XEP, and the essential stuff to run. Most of the XEP and the advanced functionalities are put in plugins, that allow the code to be modular, and to choose which features you want (you can remove plugins to suppress features for e.g. a public station). SàT manage several profiles: you can use different profiles for different accounts on different servers.

The backend communicate with the frontends throught a "bridge", which is actually an IPC: so far, D-Bus is used, but it is possible to use an other one. All the frontends and the backend together make one client, that means that if you enter something in one frontend, it will appear in the other ones like if it was enterred there. It also means that the history of the conversations is shared, and that if you create one profile somewhere, it will be created globally.

As the backend is independent of the frontends, you can use SàT without graphical interface (i.d. without X running), or unplug a frontend while the backend is still running (e.g. to terminate a long file transfert).
As you can guess by seeing Twisted, SàT is made with Python, it is actually 100% Python, including browser side code (see below); but an other language can be used to make a frontend. Actually any language able to talk with D-Bus can work, and the planned Kde frontend will be made with C++.

Here is a global Diagram of the architecture:

The frontends

Wix: the desktop frontend

Wix is the reference frontend, it is used to test implementation of features. It is based on wxPython. It's intended to be a classical desktop frontend, which should work everywhere. In the future, it could be change its interface for a more experimental one.

Primitivus: the console interface

Primitivus is for console lovers. It is based on Urwid, and the interface is more worked. I had to make several widgets for this frontend, so I eventually put them in a separated library: urwid-satext (Urwid's SàT extensions), I hope they can be usefull for other projects.

JP: the command-line tool

JP is a swiss knife, it can be used in many ways. It can be use to easily send file: I spend most of my time in a shell, and it's often annoying to have to go in thousand dialogue boxes just to send a file, furthermore if I am already in the good directory. With jp, I can just type:
jp file mycontact@example.org
and I plan to use a more friendly interface like "jp file nickname".
In addition, jp can send a whole directory by compressing it, accept multiple files without having to accept each time, or send the output of an unix command. It can be used as a powerfull scripting tool, e.g. to notify you when something happen on your server.
In the future, it should gain lot of features like sending microblogs, or managing roster.

Libervia: the web frontend

I have waited to make this frontend to start the communication about SàT. Libervia is close to what the fashion wants to name "social network", but with a big emphasis on privacy and user respect; it clearly wants to be an alternative to the massively centralised commercial services. It's entirely made in Python, thanks to pyjamas, with is a Python port of GWT.
There are many thing to say about pyjamas: group centred right management, clear interface, use of widgets, unique input box, visual indicator to show who will be able to read your message, etc.
All of this is shown in a video (in French, but I'm pretty sure it's understandable without the sound, any help to make subtitles welcome):

This video is under Creative Common BY-SA

In addition, a technical demo is online: http://www.libervia.org . Please don't pay any attention to the ugly appearance, we are working on it and it should be really nice looking soon.

Libervia, as the whole SàT project in linked to a social contract, see below.

Some things you can do with SàT

Here are some stuff you can do with SàT:

• Use your e-mail client (MUA) to read and send your messages: XMPP manage "normal" type message, which are heavy messages pretty similar to e-mails (with a subject and a body). This messages are often managed really basically by XMPP clients, but this job could be done by feature-full stable and well-known e-mail softwares like KMail, Thunderbird, Mutt, Roundcube, etc. So, 3 extensions have been made: one to manage a Maildir box, one to manage an IMAP server, and one to manage a SMTP server. Theses extensions allow to connect most of e-mails clients to SàT, and use them to send message to your XMPP contacts, receive messages from them, or even send message to standard e-mail network throught an SMTP gateway. I think XMPP is an excellent candidate to be used as an alternative to e-mail.
• Microblogging: SàT manage microblogs (only in Libervia so far), not only in the popular classical public way, but also with access restriction through roster-based group access. For example, if you have all you family members in the group "family", you just have to enter "@family: Salut à toi la famille" in the input box, and only the member of your family will be able to read this message. If you want to publish this for everybody, just enter a double @, like this: "@@: my global public message". With this, not only all you contacts will be able to read your message, but even people you don't know as it is public (on the online demo, you can see them through http://www.libervia.org/blog/your_nick).
• receive multiple files from one contact without having to individually accept them: jp, the command-line tool, allow (among other things) to automatically accepts files, or to send a full directory at once by making a tarball with it.*
• Nothing to do with XMPP, but an extensions allow to send message to a Couchsurfing account. There is a way to make lightweight XML interfaces for plugins: that allow to make a plugin which will work with all frontends; the couchsurfing plugin was just an excuse to try it.
• Play French Tarot: I have made a French Tarot game (a card game extremely popular in France), which is playable on the desktop with Wix, in text-mode with Primitivus, or in a browser with Libervia. It was a test in the idea to make a general card game XEP, any people interested in cards games for XMPP can contact me.

Games

Games are an important part of SàT. The following stuff are planned:

• Generic card games engine: the Tarot Game was an implementation test of a card game. I'd like to take profit of this experience to make a generic XEP, wouldn't it be nice to play your favourite card game through your favourite XMPP client with your friends ? If you are too far to play on a real table of course :)
• I'd like to do the same think for board games, and a Xiangqi game is planned (Chinese chess)
• A quiz game is planned in the very short term, probably for next release
• on the long term, everything can be made, even maybe real-time games

Social contract

Maybe the most important point of all the project: a social contract has been made, and show the principles that SàT and people involved in it follow. It can be read here: http://www.libervia.org/contrat_social.html, but it's only available in French so far.

Licences

• The SàT backend, Wix, Primitivus and jp are under GPL v3+
• urwid-satex is under LGPL v3+
• Libervia in under AGPL v3+

What's next ?

I have reached the point I wanted to build the foundations of the project, and make it credible. Now I need to stabilise everything, clean and re-factor several parts of the code, remove all the ugly Q&D hacks, finish half-made things, etc.
It's the perfect time to give a hand :)

But new features are planned on the short time, mainly picture sharing and quizz game.

You want to help ?

All the tools needed for contributions is here (wiki, bug tracker, mailing list, mercurial repository).
The project use many really interesting stuff like Twisted, Wokkel, Urwid, Pyjamas, etc. It can be a good way to discover them and improve you skill, and I hope give them some contributions.

The help I need:

• developers ! The project begin to be too big for me alone. In particular, I need people to port SàT on other architectures (*BSD, Android, Mac OS X, Windows, etc.). Only portable technologies have been used, so it should ask a reasonable amount of work.
• tester: SàT should work with most browsers, most platforms, most XMPP server, etc.
• Graphic designers: many things to do: icons, design, etc. Somebody just started to help me on this point, that means that the aspect should improve quickly.
• CSS designers, Libervia should offer different kind of presentations
• translators
• donations: if the project succeed, would you make some donation ? Should I take some time to have a donation system ?
• ...

If you are interested, the first thing is to subscribe the mailing list: http://lists.goffi.org . I hope to have around 10 peoples to start to use it seriously.

Conclusion

This post is only an overview of Salut à Toi, and I think the potential is very big. I strongly believe in the community, and I hope I have interested you enough to have a hand :)

I finish with two videos showing the project (the third one is linked above), but they are in French. Any help to make subtitle for them welcome.

This video is under Creative Common BY-SA

This video is under Creative Common BY-SA