messenger (change for mac?)

Okey, strange title.. anywais... We are 2 programmers and 1 artist who are currently planing and almost done planing too.. to make a messenger service.. The reason is because I got the "job" to make an intern messenger for the people who make "bugs the bug genie" at zegeniestudios. They are currently working on bugs2 and they wish a intern messenger that they can use. But later on I was thinkin of maybe connecting to msn, yahoo and so on... perhaps, but in that case, I was wondering if there is a big change in the source codes that would have to be made if this messenger is going to work on mac too.. the thing is... we will be using win32 api... so.... guessing that´s a problem...

-thondal-

I would look for a nice open-source client to base the messenger off, or else you're going to be starting from scratch.

I'd also recommend using jabber as a protocol, since it's already open source.

We are going to start from scratch anyways we are hoping to have a test messenger ready till february 07.. but time will show. If anyone has any good materials or tips or crits for that sake etc., then please, either post them here or mail me on [email protected]


-thondal-

I know it's fun an' all that, but why re-invent the wheel? Is there something you require that the Jabber protocol doesn't supply?

As to changes for mac, surely you will abstract the Win32 API calls so as the UI can be made to sit on pretty much any interface without huge modifications?

with messenger for mac, can you log in as usual and speak to those using messenger on windows?

well... not finished planing yet, so might use jabber protocol, but we have to look into it later on... as for how it supposed to communicate, firstly we are not trying to connect to msn and yahoo and other IM services, but have our own in the beginning. As for being able to speak between mac and windows we are hoping that it would be possible to accomplish that. The main reason for doing this from scratch is to learn. We have never done anything this "big".
We are mainly going to be using c++, but if we run into problem with connecting we might turn to using python for that, since the other programmer who is working on this allready knows how to do it in python.

-thondal-

Well if you're not trying to connect to other IM services (which is a pain apparently), I'd really go with Jabber. There are enough proprietary protocols in the IM space already, and even if this is mainly for the experience, you never know - it might take off...

If you think you're getting off easy by using an already existing protocol, why not try adding a few things?

Since this is a messaging system for a team of coders, add markup support. Or a mode to switch between conversation and coding? A collaborative editing/chatting mode if you will. (Check out SubEthaEdit for an idea of what I mean).

Let us know how it turns out at any rate

thanx... We are planning on starting this friday with it... so i´ll post here if all goes well then

Aptmunich, thanx for the help and ideas the type of messaging system you talked about will be taken into consideration but first we just need it to work.

-thondal-