Densou mockup

Almost all items will be editable with a single click on them and I want to all possible things to be skinnable.

I tried to keep things as simple as possible.

Click to view details.

Maybe not…

I don’t like aMSN developers…

They told they’ve no organization and are close-minded to me, I see how they answer to questions in forums.

Maybe I’ll switch to Telepathy, incorporating some of the functions of aMSN but rewriting them on my own. However I’ll have to write only the interface. Protocol part is handled by pymsn.

http://asabil.wordpress.com/

http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/Pymsn

MSN project codename Densou

I was very busy with university and
I’ll be in near future, but can have a little spare time to try making
this.
Now there are QT 4.3 that are very powerful:
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/qt4-intro.html
All graphic features requested will be feasible with it.
I tried to make a simple interface with QT designer and it’s very easy.
I’d want to use aMSN codebase for protocol stuff (without porting it,
http://cpptcl.sourceforge.net/) so features available will be all of
aMSN, but with gorgeous and powerful interface of QT. I can
incorporate functions in a temporarily way and then review the code
when the library msnlib (of aMSN2) will be complete.

Phase 1 – Requirements Analysis

The features that I want are:

• double avatar in chat window
• tabs
• emoticons
• inkdraw
• wink
• shows nickname and personal message
• contact list with groups
• button to add contact
• link to hotmail
• graphic tooltip with options
• properties of contact
• skinnable contact list and chat window

I’ll update this list incrementally.

Plans change

Ok, I don’t want to do things others already did.

Folks from aMSN are rewriting all the code to make a lib.

http://amsn.sourceforge.net/devwiki/tiki-index.php?page=aMSN+2+details

On the other hand there is this project called Telepathy that is very promising.

http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/

So, I must only write a very superb GUI for one of this libraries!

The idea

These are the facts: I like chatting with my friends so I made several profiles in several networks, but the fact is that the majority of people I met uses MSN protocol and Windowz. I use Linux and never thinked about using Microzoft MSN with Wine, I tried various opensource clients: it came out that the client which most fits my needs is aMSN.

http://amsn.sourceforge.net

BUT it has only a con: it’s slow, damn SLOW!!! And ugly unless you use Cameleon…so: base system is ok, great work, but gui has to be changed!!! Tcl/Tk is not the right choice to have a nice gui, so I thinked to rewrite ALL. It’s called reengineering.

I study Computer Science at University of Padua and a professor said to me: “Design is far more important than coding!!! You can’t write a program without prior find and write down his major features and design the structure!”. Maybe he is tedious, but he’s right. I will follow the rules of software engineering in my project. Moreover, testing units during coding, will assure higher quality.

The main phases of the software development cycle will be these:

1. requirement analysis
2. software design
3. computer programming
4. software testing

The technologies I will use are those that in my opinion are the fastest and powerful out there. Surely not the simplest to use.

As base language I believe I’ll choose C++ for its efficiency and object-oriented style. Why not Java? It’s a very good language and has nice newtorking features. But a JVM is still too slow on a Linux machine. Too RAM wasted. I’ll think on it.

As graphic libraries I strongly believe that QT is what we need. It’s multiplatform (Windows – open license now!, Linux, Mac). It’s VERY nice-looking and very customizable, especially from last version, 4.2: do you remember Winamp skins with strange shapes? You can do the same with QT!!! For those that are thinking: “Hey! But QT is written in C++! You can’t use Java within it!”, go here:

http://doc.trolltech.com/qtjambi-1.0/com/trolltech/qt/qtjambi-index.html

So, this project will take months if I run it with nobody other, my free time isn’t that much, but I hope in the power of the community! Let me know what do you think about it…