crude'n'dirty version of SSR plugin works

First beta version of SSR plugin is almost ready - looks ugly and there is still one bug I can't figure out (getting IQ's 501 error [not implemented] when sending second GenericSensorServiceRequest and I don't know why) but we are definitely on good way here. Right now I'm able to send Initiate request, receive it on the other end & prepare Acknowledge message, both Accept and Deny and send it back to the requestor. When the contents of request are modified, the modifications are indicated in the dialog.

I still have to figure out the proper way to set the size of the window and the way the subpanels are arranged inside. It turns out that making the GUI is not that easy... the fact that my artistic sense is missing somewhere is not helping either!

small upgrade to SALT plugin

SALT plugin should be more fool proof, as I've exchanged JTextField with time for JSpinner with date formatter - user cannot enter date with wrong syntax now. Also, Arnold reported weird behavior on his machine when user was trying to enter the coordinates into 'Enter coordinate' window, which was wrongly sized (the contents were too big and, in the effect, the insides of the frame got screwed up). From now the window should be sized dynamically (no setSize() call, I'm adding an empty border now and call pack() which should take care of it).

Also spent half of the day trying to get LC2IS to communicate with the other end, which was pretty dull (successful, though). We also managed to get the filetransfer working with George but I need to make some cosmetic changes to Send/Receive progress windows.

Google to support Jabber: updated

There are some rumours that upcoming IM client from Google is based on Jabber - if you read the /. article, some people already verified that telnetting to port 5222 on talk.google.com returns something that looks like XMPP stanza. This is a very good news for Jabber community and could mean that Jabber as an open source protocol for IM will get the proper boost (and so that we can expect lots of cool things coming up.

Google's privacy issues are different thing, though...

UPDATED: Google Talk is live.

using CSD via VPN to Canada

This is not exactly `development' but I think it should be noted that after (far too long) time we managed to get the VPN connection running between us and (very remote) site in Canada. The connection is rather shaky (with timeouts like 10 seconds!) but it works. I was able to use the CSD's search functionality and receive some data from there; image chipping is not working yet as is seems like the other CSD's FTP settings are misconfigured. George D should fix it soon.

The VPN link will also be used for database replication for LC2IS system. Thanks to Mark P for help.

Last but not least, I've installed Jive Messenger on our side so that we can communicate better (I hope) as now we have to call their cell phone and connection is very weak.
(We could test the file tranfer from JBother with it!!!)

more SALT stuff

Reiner found some "bugs" (I really would like to call them "features" but I can't) in SALT plugin. First of all, the syntax of date/time is not checked, so when a user malforms the data string (intentionally or not), plugin hangs. This needs to be fixed, too. After receiving a reply on my query on JBother forum, I think I'll give it a go and include my calendar widget. This should be easier for the user.

Other thing that we mentioned was possible "overflowing user with SALT messages" - and causing his machine to run out of resources, much in style of denial of service attack. Anyone could write a simple application for abusing SALT. The problem is, how to prevent this... installing filters, allowing only 5 SALTs/second or maybe something that would enable blocking SALTs from certain users?

We've found another bug right now: when SALT is send to the group, it is not send to everyone but n messages are sent to the first target. To be fixed.

SSR GUI improvements

Being quiet for some time does not mean no work has been done here! Almost all visual parts of the GUI is now ready, I still wrestle with myself what would be the best layout. Still almost whole part of the code responsible for getting & verifying the data from the textfields needs to be done. This is not going to be too easy, I'm afraid!

Reiner managed to send me the first SALT message from his CORBA application. Worked pretty good! It is nice to see that open standards are working all right.

I also found this information on amessage.de Jabber server about filetransfer. I think I should extend JBother's filetransfer code to use those SOCK5 proxies/relays as well (right now JBo is using very simple file transfer, with no SOCK5 proxies at all). This could make the JBother more popular (file transfer is something that we really need).