Set a flag in scfg to remote paging which enables the remote paging/chat server (JSON?). The sysop then runs a client program that will connect to the server and wait until there is a page. When the pager goes off it plays a configurable sound and asks the sysop if he wishes to answer and times out after a configurable amount of time. When the client is shutdown and/or connection is lost, the server will mark the sysop unavailable.
I have this idea and I don't have the knowledge of programming to do it.
I'm thinking about a remote paging/chat client/server for those of us who have synch running on remote servers (in my case a vps). Here's how it
would work.
Set a flag in scfg to remote paging which enables the remote paging/chat server (JSON?). The sysop then runs a client program that will connect to the server and wait until there is a page. When the pager goes off it plays a configurable sound and asks the sysop if he wishes to answer and times
out after a configurable amount of time. When the client is shutdown and/or connection is lost, the server will mark the sysop unavailable.
It would also be good for traveling sysops. What do y'all think?
Fireball
I have this idea and I don't have the knowledge of programming to do it.
I'm thinking about a remote paging/chat client/server for those of us who have synch running on remote servers (in my case a vps). Here's how it
would work.
I have this idea and I don't have the knowledge of programming to do it. I'm thinking about a remote paging/chat client/server for those of us who have synch running on remote servers (in my case a vps). Here's how it would work.
Set a flag in scfg to remote paging which enables the remote paging/chat server (JSON?). The sysop then runs a client program that will connect to the server and wait until there is a page. When the pager goes off it plays a configurable sound and asks the sysop if he wishes to answer and
It might be best overall if the "page the sysop" function on the BBS side were just a simple client that could connect to an instant messaging service (Google Talk, etc.)
Re: I have an Idea
By: Fireball to All on Thu Feb 07 2013 03:02:03
Set a flag in scfg to remote paging which enables the remote paging/chat server (JSON?). The sysop then runs a client program that will connect to the server and wait until there is a page. When the pager goes off it plays a configurable sound and asks the sysop if he wishes to answer and times out after a configurable amount of time. When the client is shutdown and/or connection is lost, the server will mark the sysop unavailable.
It might be best overall if the "page the sysop" function on the BBS side were just a simple client that could connect to an instant messaging
service (Google Talk, etc.) Wherever you are, you're likely to have an IM client on your phone or laptop or whatever, so you'd get the "page" message and choose whether or not to respond to it. No need for a custom notification system or anything like that, just a Jabber client for Synchronet - which might already be kludgeable via stuff that's already out there.
Re: I have an Idea
By: Fireball to All on Thu Feb 07 2013 03:02 am
I have this idea and I don't have the knowledge of programming to do it. I'm thinking about a remote paging/chat client/server for those of us
who have synch running on remote servers (in my case a vps). Here's how it would work.
Set a flag in scfg to remote paging which enables the remote paging/chat server (JSON?). The sysop then runs a client program that will connect to the server and wait until there is a page. When the pager goes off it plays a configurable sound and asks the sysop if he wishes to answer and times out after a configurable amount of time. When the client is shutdown and/or connection is lost, the server will mark the sysop unavailable.
It would also be good for traveling sysops. What do y'all think?
Fireball
An Icechat clone would be nice. :-)
$ The Millionaire $
Park Avenue Place
Surrey, B.C., Canada Û Û
It would be interesting to replace or supplant the IRC code with jabber federating between BBSes.
Very good point! There is a javascript jabber library already out there; https://github.com/sstrigler.
The problem I see with a client/client is there needs to be a server somewhere in there. Connecting directly to google's servers requires a google account for each bbs user. Now if one could figure out how to setup a jabber server with google talk access (not hard to do really), and import the users from sbbs so they could each use it to connect to the service via user@bbs.com, that'd be cool. Then the paging could be bidirectional.
There's actually a defined internet standard for this. I was actually thinking of it today (funny coincidence that -- you logged onto my board today, I happen to be thinking about it, and you write it later on :P).
Anyhow, it's called the Talk Daemon. It used to be pretty popular on Unix systems, and has been ported to several other operating systems. Since people stopped using unix shells for the most part, it's probably not even maintained anymore.
I was thinking about bringing it up myself, but I've been looking for something to cut my teeth on anyhow. It would require each participating system to be running a javacript server. The client would initiate a talk request, and wait. The receiver would get a telegram, indicating user@bbs would like to talk, press ctrl-whatever. If the initiator quit out, they would then get a telegram, etc, etc.
The original talk program that I used was a nice split screen realtime
chat. I think it'd mesh very nicely with Synchronet. And, the source is already out there. Not sure what license it has... I know there was talk, then later on ytalk, maybe some others. I'm sure at least one is open source, and only needs to be ported.
I had this idea myself, and actually implemented a pair of apps (client and server) a few years ago that I'd use for remote paging. Since my BBS is on a separate computer, I wanted to be notified when a user paged me on my
main computer. It was fairly simple though in that would just play a sound when
a user paged me. When I heard the sound, I'd then remote desktop onto my BBS machine to talk to the user.
I wrote my client & server apps in C++ to use traditional socket networking though, and the drawback to that was that if my server app wasn't running (i.e., when my main PC was turned off), the client would take a while (several moments) to "page" me because it couldn't connect to the server
app - It would wait and eventually time out. I didn't really like that,
but it worked well when my main PC was turned on and the server app was running. I eventually stopped using it due to that issue though..
Nightfox
Re: I have an Idea
By: echicken to Fireball on Wed Feb 06 2013 08:55 pm
It might be best overall if the "page the sysop" function on the BBS side were just a simple client that could connect to an instant messaging service (Google Talk, etc.)
THAT WOULD ROCK.
It would be interesting to replace or supplant the IRC code with jabber federating between BBSes.
Re: Re: I have an Idea
By: Fireball to echicken on Thu Feb 07 2013 18:09:38
Very good point! There is a javascript jabber library already out there; https://github.com/sstrigler.
I'll take a look at that. Depending on what it was written for, it may or may not translate well for our purposes.
The problem I see with a client/client is there needs to be a server somewhere in there. Connecting directly to google's servers requires a google account for each bbs user. Now if one could figure out how to setup a jabber server with google talk access (not hard to do really), and import the users from sbbs so they could each use it to connect to the service via user@bbs.com, that'd be cool. Then the paging could be bidirectional.
There are a few possibilities:
Create a Jabber server for Synchronet, with the ability to federate with other (including Synchronet) Jabber servers. Your various IM clients could connect to this server. It would just use your existing user DB. There could maybe be some sort of interBBS contact list population.
Just use Google Talk, with one account for your BBS. When a user "pages" you on the BBS, this account logs in and sends you a message, eg. "<username> is paging you for chat." You'd just need to read that message to know who is using your BBS' Jabber account at a given time. Granted if more than one person paged you at once, this could get confusing.
Some sort of magical gating between your BBS' existing IRC server and your IM protocol of choice.
For direct user to user interBBS paging, there are other possibilities and the whole Jabber thing isn't entirely necessary, not that it wouldn't work. MCMLXXIX and I have some JSON-service stuff in place on our systems for this, and it works nicely.
I read that since JSON doesn't support namespaces, the XMPP protocol would be pretty complex, if not impossible, to implement for it. Another option
would be to make a plugin for something like ejabberd to hit the sbbs user database for authentication.
There is already a interBBS IM chat, just not a paging system. Could it be
possible to modify the existing service to a) allow for an external client to connect and wait for pages b) allow for an initiation of text chat via that client?
I know a little about python (it's been a long time since I messed with it) and almost nothing about javascript. It would be nice to see some support for python in sbbs as well (even if via a 'shim'). It's not near as hard to learn and also very powerful. :)
It would be interesting to replace or supplant the IRC code with jabber federating between BBSes.
We kind of already have this in sbbs. Chat between bbs systems is built-in now. The thing is, I'd like a full out paging system. My server is linux
and my normal everyday use computer is windows, so I'd need a
cross-platform solution for that.
Well, I wouldn't want the IRC stuff to go away - it does what it does quite nicely. XMPP is just something to consider, depending on what people might want to do with it. Could be fun.
Definitely not replace -- that was incorrect. There are social aspects to IRC that XMPP doesn't offer, and IRC is a whole 'nother world of networking.
Re: I have an Idea
By: Poindexter Fortran to echicken on Fri Feb 08 2013 14:06:33
Definitely not replace -- that was incorrect. There are social aspects to IRC that XMPP doesn't offer, and IRC is a whole 'nother world of networking.
Well, it seems like XMPP would be a bit more of a headache to implement
than I'm willing to deal with right now anyway. E4X, which brought native XML parsing to Javascript, has been discontinued in favour of DOM based parsers which won't help us here.
echicken
electronic chicken bbs - bbs.electronicchicken.com - 416-273-7230
Re: Re: I have an Idea
By: Fireball to Dreamer on Thu Feb 07 2013 06:18 pm
We kind of already have this in sbbs. Chat between bbs systems is built-in now. The thing is, I'd like a full out paging system. My server is linux and my normal everyday use computer is windows, so I'd need a cross-platform solution for that.
Yeah, but our options are IRC or telegrams. I was talking about a private split screen real time chat. IRC is near realtime, using one or more servers in between and only transmits a line at a time. Telegrams are good for short messages, but then, so is email, and email is more reliable in my opinion.
Talk and talkd are pretty awesome as it's fully live, character by character. One of the later versions, ytalk I think it was, apparently even had the ability to have more than two splitscreened users (I guess up to four), plus you could open a shell that others could see (the original online whiteboard?).
I would need a talk client that would have the (non-standard) ability to take a signal and play a sound. Then give an option to open a chat window.
I would think either a java or python client (for cross platform) and console/split screen style would be preferred if this is the way to go. :)
Well, it seems like XMPP would be a bit more of a headache to implement
than I'm willing to deal with right now anyway. E4X, which brought native XML parsing to Javascript, has been discontinued in favour of DOM based parsers which won't help us here.
Re: Re: I have an Idea
By: Fireball to echicken on Thu Feb 07 2013 21:34:10
I know a little about python (it's been a long time since I messed
with it) and almost nothing about javascript. It would be nice to see some support for python in sbbs as well (even if via a 'shim'). It's not near as hard to learn and also very powerful. :)
I don't know. "Hard to learn" is totally subjective. I know a little bit of Python and I wouldn't really say it's easier (or harder) to pick up than JS - just different.
JS - with the objects and classes provided by Synchronet - is actually
quite powerful, and we've been able to do a lot with it. I'd rather see
one well-supported native scripting language in a project like this than a handful of options, many of which would be under-used and not fully implemented. Any new scripting environment would not benefit from the huge amount of JS stuff available for Synchronet already.
Of course, for your "shim" one could conceivably write an API in JS to expose all kinds of data from Synchronet, then interact with it from stuff written in their programming language of choice.
If Python really is your thing, there is somebody working on a Python-based BBS: http://1984.ws/. On the other hand, there's no need to change
software just because you don't want to learn JS - Synchronet already has
an alternative by the name of Baja. :D
with a little reading and tutorial. I have yet to see a good tutorial on JS, and I haven't found a good guide to command line JS operation either.
I understand where you're coming from. I'm sure JS has it's advantages, but then so does Python. Both are mature OOP languages. One was made for
but then so does Python. Both are mature OOP languages. One was made for web environments while the other was made for other uses. I think my
biggest issue is, even with all the sbbs JS examples I've been over in the last few days, I still can't figure out how it works.
One could conceivably make a python methods available to a program by including the Python.h. Alternatively, using python ctypes and creating/importing the synchronet definitions as a library could provide a lot of useful information for making sbbs python scripts (doors and utilities).
I'm not looking to change completely. I like Synchronet and it's many features, just not real thrilled with the learning curve of JS.
I guess what I meant to say is it seems less readable and more complicated to me. For those that are familiar with with C++ or Java, it wouldn't be hard to pick up. I was able to start writing in python almost right away, with a little reading and tutorial. I have yet to see a good tutorial on
JS, and I haven't found a good guide to command line JS operation either.
One could conceivably make a python methods available to a program by including the Python.h. Alternatively, using python ctypes and creating/importing the synchronet definitions as a library could provide a lot of useful information for making sbbs python scripts (doors and utilities).
Re: Re: I have an Idea
I've actually thought that being able to write Python scripts for Synchronet would be nice.
I've actually thought that being able to write Python scripts for
Synchronet would be nice.
SOmething like this:
http://pyjs.org/Translator.html
I read that since JSON doesn't support namespaces, the XMPP protocol would be pretty complex, if not impossible, to implement for it. Another option would be to make a plugin for something like ejabberd to hit the sbbs user database for authentication.
El 08/02/13 00:34, Fireball escribió:
I read that since JSON doesn't support namespaces, the XMPP protocol
would be pretty complex, if not impossible, to implement for it. Another option would be to make a plugin for something like ejabberd to hit the sbbs user database for authentication.
i use ejabberd plugin to authenticate with the pop3 bbs service
---
þ Synchronet þ Dock Sud BBS TLD 24 HS - http://www.docksud.com.ar - telnet://bbs.docksud.com.ar
El 08/02/13 00:34, Fireball escribió:
I read that since JSON doesn't support namespaces, the XMPP protocol
would be pretty complex, if not impossible, to implement for it. Another option would be to make a plugin for something like ejabberd to hit the sbbs user database for authentication.
i use ejabberd plugin to authenticate with the pop3 bbs service
---
þ Synchronet þ Dock Sud BBS TLD 24 HS - http://www.docksud.com.ar - telnet://bbs.docksud.com.ar
| Sysop: | fluid |
|---|---|
| Location: | wickliffe, ohio |
| Users: | 5 |
| Nodes: | 10 (0 / 10) |
| Uptime: | 202:31:50 |
| Calls: | 50 |
| Files: | 15,838 |
| Messages: | 50,758 |