Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Is someone interested in the ACS 4.x Java Chat Module for openacs 3.2.x?

After reading the Jabber mailing lists for six months or more, I finally got an idea on what kind of software should be built into AOLserver to interface with a Jabber server. Instead of writing a client, as I did, and I guess Malte and his students have done, the thing that is needed is a Component. The most relevent link is http://docs.jabber.org/general/html/component-intro.html, but generally a component uses a slightly different protocol than the client protocol, but once authenticated to the server, it acts as a part of the server. My suggestion is to write an AOLserver C module very similar to my current module, but connecting as a component. My Jabber module is relatively simple: it simply passes a reference to each packet into the tcl api. It also wraps the most useful packet handling api functions in libjabber. The main downside of my module is that libjabber seems to be an abandoned library. I think there might be a more useful library somewhere, but I have not been able to find it. I did replace some of the libjabber implimentations to better support detecting server/client disconnect. Currently the software required to use this module are at http://zmbh.com/nsjabber/ I wish I had installed Malte's module for comparison, has anyone else compared the two?