Re: [Iaxclient-devel] What are people thinking of/ planning to use iaxclient for?

[John T. <jt...@lo...>]

Well, since you asked, I'll give you the list of things that would be 
ultimately useful.  Some of these probably are not envisioned for 
IAXclient, and some are quite complex to implement.  However, from an 
end-user perspective, here's what see as the list:

Basic requirements:
   - MacOSX and Windows clients (though I am very excited about the 
*BSD ports; OpenBSD interface would be excellent.)
   - easy configuration of user ID and password (preferably store-able 
in the Keychain for MacOS)
   - conference ability
   - ability to select codecs on a per host and then (optionally) per call
   - live call quality statistics of some type
   - speed-dial buttons (with IAX specifications, as well, if required)
   - multiple logins to multiple servers at once
   - ring tones
   - the ability to launch other programs with customizable command 
line upon ring (/usr/local/bin/say "You are getting a call from 
${CALLERID}")
   - ability for dial requests to be handed in from other applications 
(like double-clicking on a URL from a browser)
   - playback of touch tone sequences when keys pressed (at least keyclicks)
   - different GUI hints to allow for dialed number input via "keypad" 
(not being able to dial a number from the big fat keys at the top of 
the screen is somewhat odd)


Pie-in-the-sky requirements:
   - video support (H.263 dumping into quicktime - avoids nasty SIP 
firewall nightmares)
   - selectable trivial answering machine (I know this should be done 
on the server, but sometimes it's easier to just press a button on 
the client and record an "I'm away" message, a la AIM's "away" 
preference button)
   - distributed directory feature of some sort (LDAP?  XML?)
   - TAPI interface for TAPI-compliant software
   - full debug and configuration and history output, in text, 
available with a single click (this is for customer cut-and-paste 
into email for the remote technician who has to debug configs; better 
than stepping the customer through a million windows and scrollbars 
to see what is set to what, and what the last call did, etc.)




Goal:
I'd like to see something I can hand out to someone who has never 
used a VoIP service before.  I should be able to hand them a 
compressed file, and they uncompress it.  A very obvious 
"Preferences" area allows them to enter in their username and 
password, and a hostname of a remote server.  Then, without too much 
difficulty, they should be able to make calls as long as I've got the 
correct user account data in my Asterisk server.  I want my mother to 
be able to figure it out (even though I'd never give her anything 
other than a phone that looked like a phone.  :)

This requirement list is not much different than that of a SIP UA, 
such as the Xten or Pingtel.  I'm not planning anything in particular 
with this system right now, but I see a growing number of my clients 
who keep asking me for soft clients.  One that works natively with 
Asterisk would be very powerful.


JT

>Hey list,
>
>There's now 36 people on the iaxclient-devel mailing list, and I 
>figured now would be a good time to get an idea from people of what 
>they're using or planning on using iaxclient for, what they'd like 
>to see in there, and what they'd like to work on.
>
>Obviously, nobody needs to tell us what they're doing, but I think 
>that if I know, or other people know what others are thinking, it 
>can help people work together better.
>
>I know there's a crew out there planning on using the library 
>itself, in some MS-Windows applications.  There's the people who 
>have helpfully contributed already (and they've been noted in the 
>README).  I guess I'm curious as to who's doing this as a hobby, 
>who's planning on using this as part of larger projects, etc.
>
>Feel free to reply to the list, or just to me if you don't want to 
>make things public, or not at all if you don't want to either..
>
>I think it's pretty clear what I'm planning for my own needs; I just 
>need what's more or less already described on the website, which is 
>a very small, very simple, cross-platform graphical client which 
>really just supports making a single outbound call, to a destination 
>specified on the command-line.  The important things for us are call 
>quality, reliable operation, and some audio options.  At this point, 
>I think that I'll be basing my client on "wx", and using wxwindows 
>for development because it's worked out pretty well, but I might end 
>up making separate native Win32 and MacOSX UIs to it.
>
>Some things that we still need that haven't been discussed here yet 
>are some really good echo cancellation, so we can have full-duplex 
>calls for users without headsets (i.e. using standard speakers and 
>microphones).  Right now, that's pretty unusable on laptops because 
>of echo, and not very pleasant unless you have a good directional 
>microphone, and keep the speakers low.
>
>Thanks.
>
>-SteveK
>
>--
>   Steve Kann - Chief Engineer - 520 8th Ave #2300 NY 10018 -  (212) 533-1775
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