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

[roland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

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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