catchat.sourceforge.netCatChat - A Fun Chatting Experience for Cat Lovers

| Project Home | ProjectRed - "#E06666" Blue - "#6F66E0"News: 8/8/2002 Holy smokes!!! This has not been updated for a while. I have been focusing on real life for the last month and have not been able to do any work on this site. But, I plan to do lots of work very soon!! Stay Tuned. . . 6/24/2002 I am back from my moving trip! We are working on a first version GUI and I am working towards implementing chat rooms. Hopefuly the first real release will attract chatters! I am working on the user list web script protocol. See it here . 6/14/2002 The stable prototype seems to be working well (after I fixed a few more bugs). That was an ordeal :) Anyway, I will be gone until 6/20, but should be able to check my mail at least once so do not hesitate to email me at the address below! 6/11/2002 I released the stable prototype. Now lets see if it really is stable! You can download the file from the link on the top right side of the page! 6/10/2002 I am working on a more stable prototype. Until I get that finished AliceBot will not be running. If you have problems connecting to the chat room come back later. . . 6/7/2002 AliceBot has been integrated with !!!!!!!!!! It took me a few hours, but I did it. The process turned out to be very easy and I had to make zero changes to my networking code! I will try to keep the bot up so that people can talk to it. To do so, I will have to eliminate users timing out on the web page cgi script. So that means that if you have trouble connecting or running the prototype version, you will have to wait until I clean up the server to get it working again. 6/4/2002 A version of the CatChat gui requirements has been uploaded in Word 2000 format. Here it is. 6/3/2002 The current protocol specification has been uploaded. Here it is. 5/31/2002 I am thinking about connecting an Alice Bot to CatChat. I think it would be cute to chat with when nobody is around . . . 5/30/2002 The project has been started! This web site is pretty bare so far! I uploaded the current Java source to CVS and released the prototype! Be warned: the code is not anywhere near production quality. Help Wanted: GUI designer/developer TCP/IP networking programmer Security "expert" (i.e. a chat hacker) Graphic artist Alpha Testers If you are interested in any of these areas (or any other that you can think of) please email me! What is this project? CatChat is a peer-to-peer chat application. This simply means that there is no central server in charge of hosting a chat room. Instead, everybody running CatChat would be connected to someone else that is chatting. This takes away the need for a large single server and brings the control down to the actual users. Features planned: Full color/style text chatting with support for: Images Sounds Online profiles Instant messages Actions (predefined and custom) Away messages/logging of messages received when away User list will support: private messages, ignoring, banning (via voting) Bots (pending further explorationplan to support Alice Chat Bot) Future version will support secure connection If you would like a feature added to the list, go here and fill out a feature request. What can CatChat do for me? Anybody can set up their own chat rooms without having to understand how to set up a chat server. Do not have to depend on a central server More community oriented More private/secure (a future version will support secure connections) You have more control Click Here for a more techincal explanation Click Here for the protocol specification Downloading Information Download the current release To install: Download CatChat.jar If you use Windows 98 or better, double click CatChat.jar If you use another platform make sure you have Java runtime version 1.3.1 and that you are in the directory you downloaded CatChat.jar Type: "java -jar CatChat.jar" at a shell or command prompt. ** you can get JRE 1.3.1 at: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/ Go to the Login menu, Enter a unique nickname and click Connect. Chat away! Information for developers This project will have a standard set of rules that must be followed before a file can be submitted. At the very least I want javadoc styled comments that follow the bare essential recommendations Sun made for documenting Java source. (I will provide a link later. . .) To make a long story short, my source does not meet my standard so if you look at what I have on CVS right now be warned! :P Essentially this means: Commented code See: Code Conventions for Java Programming Language See: How to write Javadoc Comments Peer code reviews of source additions/modifications Requirements documents before coding Regular meetings Carefully coded source that is clean and modular (i.e. separating the GUI from the networking) Since this project is new I need developers!!! If you would like to contribute here is a list of people that I need: somebody that is talented at Swing. someone who has ideas for chat rooms that would be willing to work with me to design the features that CatChat will have. an artist to create graphics for the home page and a really cool cat logo. someone interested in security to figure out what is insecure about the protocol. I know several things so far that make CatChat vulnerable to malicious chatters :) people willing to chat :) This site is under construction Email me for more info. Have nice day! Michael S. King - mking20@xmission.comDownload the current release See CatChat protocol version 0.1! See CatChat GUI requirements document version 0.1! Browse CVS Find out more about: The Gnutella protocol. Peer-to-peer networking. P2P Filesharing clients Limewire KaZaA...