Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to chat module for OpenACS 4.5

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Posted by Reuven Lerner on
David, this is definitely a useful start.  Thanks for the summary.

Truth be told, this particular client has extremely simple needs: The chat client has to work on Windows (although other platforms would be nice), we need moderation of some sort, and the conversations must be stored in a database for later perusal and research.  (The site is to promote communication among Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, and the research associated with this chat requires logging.)

I really like the idea of using Jabber on the back end.  But based on reviewing the thread on that subject, it seems like there's a long way to go before that'll happen.  Using AIM is somewhat attractive, except for the fact that the logs won't be available to us.  And there are some legal issues associated with schoolchildren on the Internet that we don't want to deal with.  (Already, my modifications to OpenACS 3.x ensure that no one's last name ever appears outside of  administrative screens.)

Whatever Berklee comes up with will undoubtedly be fine for my needs -- but the notices from those folks seemed pretty ambiguous, and I'm not sure if I can wait until August 1st.

The most intriguing and realistic solution appears to be the Java applet.  To be honest, I thought that the "Java chat" that everyone referred to was from ACS 4.x in Java, rather than a Java applet that communicates with the server.  I just tested the applet, and it certainly appears to work well enough for my purposes.

Rocael, would it be possible to use your Java applet, turning it into an OpenACS 4.x package?  Is it available for download and modification from anywhere?  I'll gladly upload the resulting package to openacs.org; I don't particularly care if it's not part of the main release, but I do need it sooner rather than later.