G'day everybody,

I have made a small plugin for fun which export the input/outputs of an Unix command to a contact. The principle is really simple: you enter a command (so far it's not implemented in the frontends, so you'll have to directly use the D-Bus API, throught e.g. D-Feet or qdbus), then the contacts allowed to communicate with it, with options if necessary, and voilà !

There are 2 mains advantages by doing this:

the first one is that you can give access to an interpreter to any of your contacts (I'm doing this with FTP in the video, I have also made tests with bc, ipython or zsh), without using heavy tools like ssh which need to create an access account, a client, an opened port, etc. Of course, it's not elaborated, it's not a terminal, but it can help out. The escape sequences (what bring colors and others things in your interpreter) are not managed yet, and it can scramble your output (I had the case with ipython). I'm thinking about catching them, and convert to color with XHTML-IM (well, a first step would be that SàT manage XHTML-IM :p ).

the second one is to help to write bots really quickly: you just have to make a script with read stdin and react to it. You can make a bot in a couple of minutes with any scripting language (sh, Python, Ruby, etc) or others. And you can directly debug it from a terminal, without the need of an XMPP server to test it. To show you how easy it is, I have made a little test in Python, here what it looks like:

#!/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()

The contact just have to enter !command [arguments] to make it do something (here !salut). To add a new command, you just have to create a new method named cmd_my_command, e.g. cmd_toto will add the command !toto. Easy isn't it ?

I have made a short video to show you this, it's in french but easy to understand even without sound, where I export a FTP server.

I have also made a small web widget for Libervia (it's not pushed on the repository yet). Of course it's limited (because of javascript security restrictions), but it allow to show whatever you want beside your conversations, and to enjoy Libervia's layout management (you'll can, for example, put 4 websites on a grid).

See you soon

As usual, to watch the video you can use a recent browser (the last Firefox/Iceweasel for example).
You can also use VLC (version >=1.1 only), by using the "Media/Open Netword Stream" menu and by entering this URL: http://www.goffi.org/videos/pr%c3%a9sentation_S%c3%a0T_6_export_commande.webm
Last but not least, you can use mplayer:: mplayer "http://www.goffi.org/videos/pr%c3%a9sentation_S%c3%a0T_6_export_commande.webm"

this video is licenced under 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

G'day,

a quick post for the opening of the new Salut à Toi's presentation website: http://sat.goffi.org. The goal was to have something more accessible than a wiki page: you should have quickly a global idea of what the project is with it. It's available in French and in English (any help to add a new language is welcome).

In addition, I was to Linux Software Meeting in Geneva (RMLL in French) in July, and I have had a talk about the project: http://video.rmll.info/videos/salut... . It's in French, I'm thinking about subtitling it soon (again, any help welcome). The meeting was good, I had a common booth with Romain from the friend project Weboob, and I have also seen again people from other project like MOVIM (we were neighbours), Jappix or Newebe.

People seemed interested by "Salut à Toi". More and more people know the project, at least by name. I hope next year the running version will be usable for everybody (not only developers)...

Other news: the project is now fully AGPL v3+ (before it was a mix between GPL v3+ and AGPL v3+) except the data which are Creative Common By-SA.
The Social Contract has been translated to English, thanks to a contribution from Matthieu Rakotojaona.

cheers
Goffi

Warning this post is technical

As you may know, "Salut à Toi" allow to do microbloging with groups access, that mean that you can send post to only a group of your roster (e.g. "family" or "friends"). This feature has been available for a year, but was using a dirty hack (which only works with OpenFire); that was mainly a proof of concept

We need a simple permissions system which can be used beyond microblogging, something generic, which can extend PubSub.
Rather than thinking about tons of pubsub nodes with different access model each time (e.g. a family node, an other one for friends, etc), we need a way to fine tune permissions, by items.

For this reason, I started a pubsub component to validate the concept, and which will be used by SàT to manage microblogging. If the idea proove to be working, I'll talk about it on one of the XSF mailing list, to propose it as a standard.

The way it works is simple: we use exactly the same syntax as for nodes access model (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0060.html#accessmodels), and we apply it to items.
The node access model is applied first, then the ones of items (that mean that an item with an open access model won't be available to somebody which is not in the right roster group if the node has a roster access).
The PubSub component parse the item stanza, apply access model, then save it (without the configuration part).
When somebody wants to get node's items, the pubsub component first check that he is granted to access node (by checking the "access model"), then send him only the items that he can access.

Imagine that Louise has a node with 3 items: 1 with an open access (A), 1 with a roster access, allowed for "family" group (B), and one with a roster access, allowed for "friends" and "coworkers" (C).
Pierre, who is a friend of Louise, will have access to items A and C. Louise's brother will access items A and B.

There a 2 main advantages: first this protocol stay standard compliant (with XEP-0060) - so there is no change to do for an XMPP client to get items -, and secondly the clients have only one node to check by entity that they want to follow.

Some words on test implementation: I use the "Idavoll" PubSub component as a basis, which was made by Ralph Meijer^*, and I have slightly modified it for my tests. The main difficuly is that currently components have a very limited access to server, and we can't access entities' roster.
To work around the issue, I use an experimental protocol which allow to access a remote roster. Unfortunately, this protocol only permit to access a part of the roster, so I have patched Prosody's implementation to get the full roster.
Finally, I used some simplifications by saying that node creator, owner and publisher are the same. This is often true for microblogging, but is very limiting when we think about XEP-0060's possibilities.

Anyway it works, but it still need works (and a standardisation) before being a proper way to do.

Below is a server dialog example. We have here Pierre and Louise which are friends, Louise being in "friends" group of Pierre. The later post a microblog as follow^**:

<iq from="pierre@example.net/SàT" type="set" id="H_77" to="sat-pubsub.example.net">
  <pubsub xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub">
    <publish node="urn:xmpp:groupblog:pierre@example.net">
      <item id="8f532cc8-be1d-11e1-b5d3-00c0ca4f1546">
        <entry xmlns="">
          <title>G'day my friends !</title>
          <id>8f532cc8-be1d-11e1-b5d3-00c0ca4f1546</id>
          <updated>2012-06-24T18:56:36+02:00</updated>
          <author><name>pierre@example.net</name></author>
        </entry>
        <x xmlns="jabber:x:data" type="submit">
          <field var="FORM_TYPE" type="hidden">
            <value>http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub#item-config</value>
          </field>
          <field var="pubsub#access_model">
            <value>roster</value>
          </field>
          <field var="pubsub#roster_groups_allowed">
            <value>friends</value>
          </field>
        </x>
      </item>
    </publish>
  </pubsub>
</iq>

After receiving this, the server parse configuration data (the "http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub#item-config" form^***), delete this part of the stanza, save the item with the right permissions (roster access, only for "friends" group), and only send a notification to group's members, so it send one to Louise.

The notification is sent like this:

<message to="louise@example.net" from="sat-pubsub.example.net">
  <event xmlns="http://jabber.org/protocol/pubsub#event">
    <items node="urn:xmpp:groupblog:pierre@example.net">
      <item id="8f532cc8-be1d-11e1-b5d3-00c0ca4f1546">
        <entry xmlns="">
          <title>G'day my friends !</title>
          <id>8f532cc8-be1d-11e1-b5d3-00c0ca4f1546</id>
          <updated>2012-06-24T18:56:36+02:00</updated>
          <author><name>pierre@example.net</name></author>
        </entry>
      </item>
    </items>
  </event>
</message>

There is no way to know on which group Louise is in Pierre's roster (this is a classical notification). Even is an XMPP client doesn't manage the per-item access model, it will receive the notifications and will be able to manage them as usual.

I have sub-licenced the component to AGPL V3, you will find the code in my repository (http://repos.goffi.org/sat_pubsub/). I invite XMPP community's members (authors of clients and servers, or others) to use the code, or to comment the idea

Fine permissions tuning are in my opinion a mandatory feature that XMPP really needs, and they will be more and more used by the "Salut à Toi" project. It was one of the last architecture point of SàT, a new release should follow quickly.

Stay connected :)
Goffi

* Ralph Meijer is also a contributor of Twisted and the author of "Wokkel" library, which are in the heart of SàT, in addition of being one of the authors of PubSub XEP. A huge thank to him for its valuable contributions.
** Normally, microbloging use PEP, but component limitation that I mentionned above forced me to use a custom protocol, which doesn't use PEP.
*** I have used a "jabber.org" namespace instead of "goffi.org", as I should have do for an experimental feature, because I need it so Wokkel's PubSub service could parse it.

G'day all,

jp --pipe-in louise | mplayer -

Which mean "I'm waiting for an incoming stream from louise". Louise correspond to the name Pierre gave to its contact louise@example.org, jp do the association.
He could also have used the full jid instead: louise@example.org/Noumea .

In the other side, Louise can pipe out the trailer to Pierre with the following command:

cat sintel_trailer-480p.ogv | jp --pipe-out pierre

jp -wg louise

jp -g sintel_trailer-480p.ogv pierre

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

G'day everybody,

As you may know, Libre Software Meeting (Rencontres mondiales du logiciel libre or RMLL in french) will take place on next july (from 9 to 14) in Strasbourg. You can have a look at the official website: http://2011.rmll.info/

We are planning to have a common stand for various projects around XMPP/Jabber, and I'm taking inventory of people interested.
To make organization easy, if you want to join us, please send me an email ( goffi@goffi.org ) with the following template:

subject: [RMLL] Stand XMPP

Body:

First name *:

Last Name:

Nickname*:

email address:

Phone number:

Project*:

Project website*:

Availability*:

The * mean that the field will be public (put on the wiki).

The nickname is not mandatory, it's just to make link with you if you are on XMPP MUC or forums.

the [RMLL] in the subject is mandatory as messages are filtered.

I will add people as one goes along on the wiki: http://wiki.goffi.org/wiki/RMLL_2011

Please note that I will always send a confirmation email (within 3 days), so please send me again an email if you have no confirmation and your name is not on the wiki.

Last but not least, if you haven't any project but you are interested in XMPP and want to be present on the stand, you are welcome (if the stand is not already too full)

You can contact me for any question on the email given above.