Perl Chat - Server and Client / News: Recent posts

Though I am at school now and development has been slowed I thought I would give everyone a little update. Our phone line is scheduled to be tested for DSL capabilities September 9th. So hopefully we will once again be connected and then I won't have to make the hike to campus to use the computer lab. Also, it will be alot easier for me to work on the project, and thus will speed development. So until the 9th, stay well!... read more

This is the first Alpha release of Perl Chat.
All of the known bugs that caused Perl Chat to function utterly and absolutly wrong have been fixed. The end result is this program that suffers only from a performace problem. (Due to the fact that a timer is used to get messages from the server, and this timer takes too long. But this will be fixed soon I hope). Though it has not yet been tested this program should run anywhere perl will run and since there are no longer any Threads this program should run on default installs of Perl. (This means you win32 users should be able to use this very easily).... read more

the long awaited (well at least for me) ;) alpha release of Perl Chat has finally been released. Though it has a few bugs left in it and performance right now is very poor, its out there!

Of the things that have changed the greatest is that the client no longer uses threads. Thats right kids, no more threads. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction. The first thing you will notice though is a performance loss in the way the GUI interacts with the user. This is because I am using a timer which takes control away from the user every 5 seconds and checks for new messages from the server. Though control is only lost for about a second, you can definately tell. I am going to work on this and try to make the impact of this less noticeable. ... read more

0.0.8 is out! however, by the looks of it, no one has tried 0.0.5 - 0.0.7 so noone is going to notice all the changes. First of all, there are alot more popups that relay error information and output to the user. So using 0.0.8 should be alot easier to use. Secondly, there are more options now. Unique user information is now being stored on the server (stuff like real name, email address, etc.) so other users can query this information. Also preferances can now be saved to disk for use at other times as well as an option to auto connect/login. (no more manually connecting, and then logging in... yippee). On the down side, I still dont have info on how the win32 users can use this. I need to provide either a link to a version of perl that will work, or possibly use one of those perl to exe programs that every one hates including me. (Sorry, at lease a slow version of Perl Chat is better than no version of Perl Chat).... read more

See the changelog for the most detailed info, but this release makes some things more user friendly and adds global messaging support. I also trimmed down the size of the tarballs so the download will be faster. If anyone needs the older sourcecode or the test programs that came with prior version you have to get them from CVS as that is where they will be from now on.

Torrance
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Oh and if anyone wants to look at my code and devise a strategy that would allow me to not use threads yet keep the same functionality this would allow the code to run on regular versions of Perl.... read more

After a really hectic weekend I bring to you 0.0.6. It doesnt really look much different from 0.0.5, but it does have a little better messaging. The messages now display into the left_frame text box as well as com eup in a pop_up (which will be changed sooner or later). I also added a few screen shots of 0.0.6 to the home page http://perlchat.sourceforge.net/screenshots/ so go and check them out if you are curious. ... read more

Well what do you know, version 0.0.5 has just hit
the ftp site boys and girls! In this release you will find BIG HUGE changes. The client has been totally re-vamped to use the Tk module as an interface instead of that nasty old console. It is pretty functional now and it is into the stage where a programmer could really start to add some "fun" functions to it. *cough* *cough* *developers wanted* *cough* *cough* Anyways, this release probably is the last of the 0.0.x series. Hopefully the next release will be a 0.1 release. I hope to have messaging look more like AIM, and to generally smoothen things out. There are also a few little kinks with getting both threads to exit properly under all conditions and some more documentation is needed. Oh and I added a copy of the GPL to the tarball, so now there is both a reference and a copy to the license under which this project is protected.... read more

Big changes in 0.0.4, structuraly the client is now in a better situation to handle message passing between the client and the server. Also the new changes help to organize things in a better way so that future modifications to the program will be alot easier.

However there is some bad news. The client i snow multithreaded. This means that you need to have perl compiled with threads. This means that the program is no longer compatible with default installations of perl. This is too bad, but hopefully threads will be totally incorporated into perl soon.

Organization has been improved upon, and I have decided that the functionality of the program is going to be developed before making the server DOS proof. This means that currently a client can login multiple times (as many as he/she wants to) and can register as many usernames as he/she wants to. Also a there is not yet a restriction on the number of connections from any designated host. Once the functionality of the program is there, I will work on these current shortcomings.... read more

First release of Perl Chat has just been uploaded. Take a look around, and if anyone is interested in learning perl sockets or helping out, send me an email.