Re: FYI: notes for a GNUstep VoIP app

[Marcin Zajączkowski]

Hi all,

Andreas Schik wrote:
> On 2006-01-07 04:42:57 +0100 Christopher Armstrong
> <address@ishidden.com> wrote:
>
> > Okay, temptation given into...I have johnnytalker and johnnyclient 
> > compiling as a tool and a native-library with gnustep-make
> > respectively (no python or sconns or whatever it is). Now just need
> > to devise an interproccess communication mechanism for a client
> > application. This

I'm not sure I understood you correctly, but if you already have
compiled johnnyclient library (.so or .a), you can simply link to it
final program without Scons, Python and whatever :)
Only linker is required (you can use Make or Scons to make call simpler).

> Isn't the IPC mechanism given by the server's interface? My 
> understanding of the whole thing was that you "only" write your own
> client with the help of the lib (johnnyclient). johnnyclient than
> will do all the communication with the server for you. However, I
> just a look at the website, yet and not at the code. Hence, you might
> know better than me.

You are right. It was a main goal to make writing of a VoIP application 
as simple as possible. JohnnyClient (a client library) wraps all needed
commands into it interface, to separate developer of a final application
from communication with server.
It's (in my opinion) very useful. Developer is for from low level
communication and even if protocol was internally changed client library
would take it over transparently to the client application.

> > might be interesting. Don't know if I'll follow through though. I
> > need Objective-C++, so it won't be useful unless you have one of
> > the gcc snapshots lying around and the latest version of
> > gnustep-make...
>
> How about doing the communication to the server without johnnyclient,
>  i.e. on the low level?

Sure, you can write your own client library (in Python, Ruby, Java,
...), but protocol specification could change (and probably will
change), so it would be needed to modify that library.
As I mentioned on project's website current version was released as a
technology preview to hear opinions from people who would like to use it
in the future in order to better match project with its expectations.

I believe it's possible to write wrapper in C, to allow calls from C
application. Library in C opens abilities to write binding in many other
languages.

If you have further questions about Johnny Talker please ask here or on
Johnny-devel mailing list (http://johnny.wit.edu.pl/support.php#devel).

Regards
Marcin