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Re: [ecf-dev] Google Summer Of Code ideas

Hello!

Nice to get some reply, Roland.
Yes, I'm considering SIP implementation seriously, that's interesting one. So I think that I'll focus on this project :) Could you be a mentor for such SIP/VoIP project, Roland? I don't actually know how process of becoming mentor of GSoC at Eclipse looks like.

Again, did some research after your answer. I've found that JAIN-SIP (JSIP reference implementation) seems to be a working implementation, still popular and used. JSDP (SDP library) FAQ states that SDP part of JAIN-SIP is somehow outdated. I'm hoping (and investigating) that it is possible to send JSDP-generated SDP messages with JAIN-SIP. If so, it maybe enough stuff to do signaling part.

Coming back to real challenge part as you say... RTP/Media. I thought that Openfire is server doing something else. But ok, if you say it includes such implementation I will try to look at it. I'm just downloading source code and will search for. There is also Spark IM client from Jive that has some SIP plugin. I wonder what does it use internally.

Moritz, I've looked at your developer's log: http://wiki.eclipse.org/VoIP_in_ECF%2C_GSoC07_DevLog. It seems that you have used Smack API from Jive for XMMP/Jingle. Have you also used it for voice compression, coding, transport (with JMF plugged into Smack API), or am I wrong? I'll also download the code and look into.

As JMF looks to be orphaned by Sun, I've found some interesting replacement-project: http://fmj-sf.net/. Some important VoIP audio codecs are alredy supported [http://fmj-sf.net/fmj/supported_formats.php], there is some RTP implementation allowing sound stream to be plugged-in into RTP driver. What is important, project is active, so there is a hope for future. It is LGPL licensed. However, I'm not sure about RTP quality/status, as it seems to be one of a GSoC task for this project http://www.sip-communicator.org/index.php/GSOC2008/FmjMedia. One approach may be to use JMF and possibly later switch to FMJ as they use the same or similar API.


The problem is that these protocols/codecs implementations are all from different projects and there is no all-in-one library for doing all tasks. This can make the project somewhat harder.

In a meanwhile I'll try to look closer at mentioned projects/libraries.


Greetings,
Marek Zawirski

Hello Marek,

Your assumptions as far as the SIP implementation you mention is
concerned are correct. Implementing the SIP signaling should be
straight-forward but the real challenges lie with the RTP/Media
transport.
There were quite some challenges with the JMF approach we evaluated
with regards to portability and CODEC avialability... the JMF project
has been relatively dormant for quite a while and my guess is it will
not pick up momentum any time soon.

The guys at Jive provided a custom RTP/Media implementation with the
Openfire version 3.xx relase and we haven't yet been able to look at
the details of that implementation. It may/should be possible
to use their implementation (both from a licensing and code
standpoint) in conjunction with a suitable signaling implementation
to implement the ECF Telephony API (as a SIP provider plugin).

AFAIK, Moritz already used/tried out early versions of the Openfire
implementation within his ECF Telephony API jingle (signaling)
provider so maybe he could shed more light on that.
I am currently responsible for the IAX provider but currently taking
a different approach which involves wrapping native libraries that
provide both signaling and rtp media (a viable approach in the
absence of suitable java implementations).

The VOIP functionality within ECF is much demanded by the community
and I personally think it will be great to have a SOC project take on
the SIP implementation. We could certainly share more details if you
are seriously cosidering such an implementation.
Regards,
Roland.
Re: [ecf-dev] Google Summer Of Code ideas « »

Von Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (» Adressbuch)
An "Eclipse Communication Framework (ECF) developer mailing list."
<ecf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Moritz Post <moritzpost@xxxxxx>,
roland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, mik@xxxxxxxxxxx
Datum Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:02:32
Hi Marek,

[Moritz and Roland...please see below for questions about
SIP/codecs/Java media]

[Mik please see below for questions about Mylyn integration with ECF
as
a SOC project]

Marek Zawirski wrote:
1) Mylyn integration
I'm asking really nicely Remy, is it possible at all? :) If not
I'm
just leaving you list of some ideas (possibly stupid as I'm not
experienced user of Mylyn).

Major function implemented by Remy is sending tasks between users.
I've thought what could be added and my output is:

a) Chat/call with some user from issue-tracking system, such as
bug
reporter, possibly software client, or commenting developer. This
is
probably one of most obvious feature, but result in problem of
mapping Issue-Tracking System (let me name it ITS if you don't
mind)
users database to IM users list. First, I thought about heuristic
basing on usernames: cliking on username results in Menu "Chat
with..." and possible guesses in your buddy list, or manual user
selection. Such selection could be stored in some mapping,
possibly
locally or on ITS. However, I don't now is ITS a good place for
such
sensitive data?
When looking for solution, I've found
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=152415 which address
this problem and is related to Higgins framework(?). Do somebody
know
what's the current status of these issue? I guess it would require
changes in Mylyn itself possibly?

Some generalization of a) would be creating mutliuser
chat/conference
for a task. Similar problems I guess + additional issue: multiuser
chat support in ECF providers.

b) Also related to a). Make contacts/communication part of an
issue
context. ITS allows to define contacts of a task by providing:
reporter, assigned user (or users, depending on ITS), commenting
users. Is it enough?

This would require Monitoring API implementation or some manual
adding to context(?). As it may be hard to distinct whether such
chat
is related to this issue or is it "just" chat with friends during
work, coding same time ;)
However, when somebody is initiating shared editor session, it's
quite sure that this contact is related to this task.
Some contacts may be also extracted from @author tags of javadocs
possibly. That's however, more language and company
recommendations
specific, I'm afraid. It's just another way of creating
communication-context which might be seen as general problem.

Anyway, there are still some problems with contacts mapping, as
IMHO
it would be better to store them in ITS-usernames form in context
(more general form), and define mappings in other part (as users
may
use different IM for example).

Another problem is that creating communication/contacts context in
form of Mylyn context will make it unusable for non-Mylyn ITS
users.

c) When having some task-oriented chat with somebody, it mabye
useful
to add log from part of conversation to ITS, don't you think? This
may include extended problem recognition after interview with
reporter or implementation status details after chat with
developer.
However, it would be nice to do it easily, without too much manual
reformatting, so just selecting some fragment. That's mainly
copy-paste transformation support possibly. That's small feature
possibly.

d) Some fun and maybe not possible;) Real-time task
synchronization.
When >= 2 developers work on some task(s) simultaneously and want
online synchronization of their contexts without manual sync. I
don't
know Mylyn details yet, especially context model and
synchronization
model. So I'm not sure is it possible to create such
synchronization
session. This may be a complex one.


I also wonder how much part of implementation of a) - d) or others
require intervention in Mylyn code. Is it in fact ECF project, or
Mylyn project using ECF (is it a problem?)? Possibly not
everything
could be done as Mylyn Bridge as my first my guess.

I also wonder how much part of implementation of a) - d) or others
require intervention in Mylyn code. Is it in fact ECF project, or
Mylyn project using ECF (is it a problem?)?

It's not inherently a problem, but would require coordination with
Mylyn
team (if it in fact does require changes to Mylyn code as opposed to
additions via further plugins). I've copied Mik Kersten on this email
to get his input on some of the questions you raise.

Possibly not everything could be done as Mylyn Bridge as my first
my
guess.


2) VNC

Yes...this would be a terrific project IMHO. The reason we haven't
worked on this so far is captured in a single word: 'resources'.
We
just haven't had enough time/interested people to do it.
(possibly) resourcesNumber++ ;>

Sounds great.

What about realization?
I've read about proposed idea to create some interface for
application
sharing with VNC as one of implementation, or some existing
interfaces
may be used (e.g. ISharedObject?). This could be used for session
sharing possibly. VNC protocol need to be implemented or some
external
library used.

Yes. There are different approaches here...one would be to make a
localhost socket connection to a running VNC server/host, and
basically have the ECF host get screen sharing data from
localhost,
send it over the wire, and then display on remote clients.
I wonder what is a purpose of making ECF a proxy for real VNC
server.
Is it really needed? Do you mean better control or some tunneling
(with encryption?).

Compression, encryption, and/or tunneling certainly can/could be
done.
Also, using ECF can distribute the VNC server output to several/group
of
receivers.

In simple model VNC server could just listen/bind on * interface,
not
only localhost, being more standalone. All what is shared then is
some
URL and possibly some settings? This may have some drawbacks
maybe... (?)

This would be OK, but it would limit what you can/could do with ECF
(on
servers or clients). For example...if you are sending the VNC server
screen output and mouse/keyboard input over ECF provider, then you
can/could have some ways to do a) recording; b) have bots that
respond
to certain kinds of mouse/keyboard input...for example.


Some months ago I tried to contact the VNClipse folks to ask them
if
they would be interested in working together...and didn't hear
anything back. They may have been busy, or things may have
changed,
so it would probably be worthwhile to try to contact them again. I
can't immediately remember what the license was, but at that time
they were not making the source available.
I'll just write to them.

OK, great.

One other licensing issue is that the VNC source itself (including
the java clients) are GPL, so if we want to use/modify any of that
code the resulting code cannot be under the EPL (Eclipse license).
ECF has both EPL-based components (i.e. those hosted/distributed
at
dev.eclipse.org), and those *not* under EPL (the 'ECF Extras'
hosted
at ecf1.osuosl.org), so we can work around these issues for a SOC
project in any case.
Did you mean TightVNC GPL implementation?

Yes.


I've done some zoom in at its vncviewer code - VNC client. It
appears
to be not very very complicated, ~20classes / ~20KLOC. However,
implementation is sticked to AWT/SWING, so would require embedding
AWT
Canvas component or forking project and porting it to SWT. In the
latter case, things looks rather straight-forward.
BTW: interesting TightVNC feature is recording of session from
client.

Yes.

I personally do not, as I'm not an SWT expert. In other java-based
impls of VNC, we've used the native code impls of VNC and talked
to
them via a localhost socket connection as you suggest below (booo)
:). There may very well be ways to write a VNC server in java
using
SWT...and given SWT's native implementation it could be
sufficiently
performant on some/all platforms. I don't know.
But there are several people on the ECF committer list that are
very
good WRT SWT and UI: Boris Bokowski, Remy Suen, Chris Anisczyck
and
others. Hopefully we can pull them into the conversation
I'd appreciate your comments:) Things that I'm especially wondering
are they possible:
- is it possible to make SWT "secondary" output to some
user-provided
framebuffer class, register some redrawing listener for a whole
desktop, even when non-SWT window is focused?
- is it possible to grab mouse/keyboard input from other windows,
even
when non-SWT window is focused?

I doubt it (for both questions), but this is indeed something that
should be asked of SWT experts. Perhaps it would be a good idea to
pose
these questions in the SWT newsgroup(s)?

Still, some external native code could be started like with Skype,
but
AFAIK VNC servers are provided in different ways and under
different
licenses. Eventually it could be configured by user, but what are
Eclipse-embedding benefits then...

BTW What java-based impl did you mean, Scott? Some closed-source?

No, I meant the java client provided with realvnc (I think that's the
name).

3) SIP

4) SIP implementation, not yet made for ECF(?). I don't have much
experience (except user-side) with that protocol, just wondering
how
laborious this task may be...

This is a great question for our two VOIP committers: Moritz Post
(did the Jingle VOIP SOC project last year), and Roland Fru (has
worked quite a lot with SIP and Asterisk).

In either case I think a SIP provider (implementer of the ECF call
API) would be great.
Ok, again, I'm asking kindly for some comments:)
I've found JAIN SIP API and reference implementation of SIP and
SDP,
made as part of Java Specification Request. However, I've read it
is
bit outdated, on JSDP page - don't know how/why. JSDP is unofficial
(out of JSR) implementation od SDP. Basic signaling part of this
project may be not very hard. I'm expecting more problems with
interoperability and mainly - transport/RTP and codecs/audio
implementations.
Or do you have other experiences?

I'm forwarding this onto Moritz Post, who did the 2007 VOIP project
(Jingle). He ended up using Java Media codecs/audio implementations
to
do this, as I expect that's what the JAIN sip implementation does.
I've
noticed that the JAIN SIP implementation doesn't seem to be getting a
lot of new work recently, so I'm not sure of it's status. Moritz and
Roland please comment about existing SIP implementations that you
know
about.


The codecs, audio, RTP part may be already implemented as part of
Moritz Post GSoC work possibly(?). AFAIK jingle is just another
signaling protocol with similar role as SIP with SDP, so maybe
audio,
compression and streaming code may be shared?

That is very possible. I'll let Moritz and Roland answer your
questions
more directly.

Thanks,

Scott
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--
Marek Zawirski [zawir]
marek.zawirski@xxxxxxxxx


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