Hello.
I use aMSN and i want to write a plugin to hear and to share Emotisounds.
Emotisound are stored on an online database.
There is some sounds in soundpacks that we can download in a simple way.

I want to know is there some license restriction?
Are there infos how to interact with emotisound database?
When we create a sound who is the owner? is there an owner?

Anyway emotisound features could be expended to all instant messaging clients and all protocols.
Keep up the good work!!!

Have a nice day.

Sorry for my English.

Hello,

I'm sorry to tell you that you simply cannot do such plugin for another software. One of the reasons is that the bandwidth used by the emotionsound feature costs me a lot of money every month (really) so I want to keep the features for my own users.

Thank you for your understanding,
Patchou

I understand.

I want to talk about that, because on amsn forum an user wrote a way to download some emotisounds... and then there are many msn clients and many people simply doesn't use windows.
I repeat i want only to talk to find an answer for the users that ask on amsn forum emotisound feature. Anyway default emotisounds is simply text there shouldn't be problems to write a plugin that send a text! I hope...

Anyway why don't you send emotisounds through voiceclip?

Thanks.

Square87

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quote:

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Originally posted by square87

Anyway why don't you send emotisounds through voiceclip?

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Hello MeEtc.

Be quite. I am not desperate for this feature (this is not an AI software...), if you can read i wrote:
"I repeat i want only to talk to find an answer for the users that ask on amsn forum emotisound feature"

About voiceclip: the question wasn't "Is there a plugin that sends emotisound through voiceclip?" but "Anyway why don't you send emotisounds through voiceclip?"

I asked also others things, but i don't want to repeat.
This is not a my problem.

Good day

quote:

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Originally posted by square87
"I repeat i want only to talk to find an answer for the users that ask on amsn forum emotisound feature"

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Hi,

This is KaKaRoTo from the aMSN team. Square87 sent me this link.

First, I'd like to say that I know Patchou a little as I've read many of his posts on different forums, and I'd like to say that you're a nice guy But I also think that the way 'MeEtc' and 'Jesus' answered was rather rude. Although I can understand you getting annoyed by some user's posts, I think that you could be a little more patient before breaking loose your rudeness.

About this emotisounds issue, I fully understand the problem Patchou described, and I can understand why he wouldn't like us to access the database (I actually didn't know anything about the database).
The thing that square87 asked is whether we *can* with Patchou's permission use those emotisounds, and you should be thankful for him asking such a question, because as far as I know, it's all about sending text and there's no copyright in that.
It does cost you a lot and you don't want non-plus! users to access the DB but it also costs a lot to Microsoft to maintain their MSN servers and they probably don't want any third party client to access their server either, but as far as I know, nothing can prevent us from doing so.

That said, I'm glad square87 pointed me here, so now I know that there is a sound database, that the server is owned by Patchou, that it costs him money and that he doesn't give us permission to use that database, and knowing that, I can promise you that I will not authorize any aMSN plugin to access your database, and that is a decision I take, entirely based on the respect I have for you and for your work.

Now, to continue with what square87 asked, is there a way to make this work, I'm talking here about a compromise, something to make aMSN interact with Messenger Plus! as this will be an added bonus for both of us. As you may know, aMSN has had over 12.5 millions of downloads over the last 5 years and is currently holding up with more than 400 000 downloads a day, it's a pretty popular client. And as we know, Messenger Plus! is a 'must have' plugin for MSN, I don't know the stats, but I'm sure you also have impressive stats. If we can work together to find a solution that would be profitable to both of us, making aMSN interoperable with Messenger Plus! would be a great thing.
We could developer our own plugin with our own system, and we'd have no interoperability with Messenger Plus! and we won't bother Patchou's database, and everyone will be happy, but I think that's it's such a waste not to share our efforts into one standard solution.

Please, do not understand this as being a "please, please, grant us permission to use your database so we'd be compatible", on the contrary, I think that the idea of a central repository of sounds is good, but that it's a bad move because of all this bandwidth issue (+if server goes down, users are affected, etc...). I have no idea how much money you get from Messenger Plus! and I do not need to know as this is none of my business, but if you say that it costs you a lot, I think that it would be wise to change your implementation.
To benefit you, I wouldn't accept it even if you agreed to let us use the database because I think that it's not the optimal solution. If you want my help, please say so, and I would be glad to share my mind with you in order to brainstorm and engineer a solution that would be not only profitable to your users (or our users) but also profitable to you, allowing you to minimize or remove any of that bandwidth use for emotisounds.

I'm thinking of a protocol similar to the one used by MSN itself (I don't know if you're aware of the protocol specifics since you hook the original client itself, you don't need to reimplement the protocol lib). we could use an MSNP2P to send the sound. Square87 talked about sending it through a voice clip, and he suggested it to make it not use your bandwidth, I think it's a good starting point, but we should try to make something more 'hidden' than a voice clip. You could send either messages with a Content-Type of x-msmsgs-plus-plugin or something, those will be ignored by MSN, so they won't affect the chat, but maybe you can grab those messages and parse them yourself and extract the info you want, like maybe sending the sound encoded with the voice clip codec (siren7, I implemented an open source version of it, compression ratio is 16:1). You can also send it through a datacast message (used to notify of voice clips and nudges, etc...) with special datacast ID and Data fields.
You could keep your central sound repository for when users want to download new sounds to their PC but when sending a sound from one user to another, let the user downloading the sound download it directly from his contact than from your server, this will probably lower the bandwidth a lot for you. Of course, this would use a system to cache the sounds, etc...

Anyways, if you're interested, tell me, and we'll talk about it.

Take care,
KaKaRoTo

OK, after reading that I have two suggestions for you:
1. Encourage the users who have Plus, and are communicating with users of aMSN to use the script posted above, which sends Plus sounds as a voiceclip.

2. Develop a feature that allows your client to import .plsc soundpack files. These are basically zip files that contain a collection of .dat files, which are really mp3 files. These dat files ironically have the same filename as the sound id number. In this way, a user could play sounds that are sent that already exist on the users' computer. It provides no way of automatically collecting sound files, but can play them if the person already has the file.


I apologize if I sounded rude in the previous post, I was merely trying to reinforce Patchou's post.

Hi MeEtc,
Thanks for your message, apologies accepted it's all in the past now.
A quick comment about your two suggestions :
1 - good, but it would become a hassle for users, you install a plugin which all it does is send an automatic message "install the script here : http://..." + considering the huge proportion of n00bs using PCs nowadays, I don't think it would be an efficient solution

2 - first, that wouldn't help you, if a user imported a soundpack file, then it means he had to download it first from your site which means he used the bandwidth again, so it's not at your advantage. Also, we wouldn't really be helping each other out here, I'd like to help the Messenger Plus! team if possible. But if we go for a workaround, I think your idea is excellent.
A comment though, I just went to www.mpsounds.net and downloaded a few packs, it's a .plp file, not .plsc, and the file isn't a zip file, it has a file header : "PLUS_SND_PACK" as the first bytes of the file (as opposite to "PZ" for zip files).

Going to sleep now, thanks for taking the time to read me.

KaKaRoTo

quote:

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Originally posted by kakaroto
I also think that the way 'MeEtc' and 'Jesus' answered was rather rude.

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quote:

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Originally posted by kakaroto
if a user imported a soundpack file, then it means he had to download it first from your site which means he used the bandwidth again

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quote:

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Originally posted by kakaroto
I just went to www.mpsounds.net and downloaded a few packs, it's a .plp file, not .plsc, and the file isn't a zip file, it has a file header : "PLUS_SND_PACK" as the first bytes of the file (as opposite to "PZ" for zip files).

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If you ask for my opinion, MeEtc's second solution isn't worth to be called as a solution.To listen an emotisound, people should have been installed that sound before, it doesn't make any sense, in my opinion.

Also why shall not Plus!'s emotisounds be the reason for people to switch to Live Messenger and Plus! Live? Or why do people from other chat clients insist on using Plus!'s emotisounds? Can't they setup their own sound database?

Edit: Also downloading sound directly from the contacts computer won't work when Offline Messaging, so it will limit Plus! users to send sounds only to Online Contacts?

quote:

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Originally posted by Jesus
I may have sounded rude, but that wasn't what I intended. All I tried to do was answering a question which was already answered a few times before. (I might have been a bit irritated at that time because of square87's "Be quite." [be quiet?], which IMO isn't the most polite way to reply to someone who is trying to help you...)

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quote:

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Originally posted by MeEtc
nope. plus does not host the sound pack files. A soundpack can be hosted anywhere, and there's even a community site made for this, created by Dempsey.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MeEtc
Oops! you're right. .plsc is a script.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ahmetgns
If you ask for my opinion, MeEtc's second solution isn't worth to be called as a solution.To listen an emotisound, people should have been installed that sound before, it doesn't make any sense, in my opinion.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ahmetgns
Also why shall not Plus!'s emotisounds be the reason for people to switch to Live Messenger and Plus! Live? Or why do people from other chat clients insist on using Plus!'s emotisounds? Can't they setup their own sound database?

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Right, I didn't know what aMSN is. I googled it and understood it.(And I accept that I was wrong with saying "why do people from other chat clients insist on using Plus!'s emotisounds". Such a interoperability would be nice. But it will take very long time to implement.

Hi,
is patchou ever going to read this thread anymore ? or is it that he answers once and then stops responding ? anyone can tell him to read this.. I don't want to start a new thread just to 'get his attention'.
Thanks,
KaKaRoTo

hi kakaroto,

Patchou will read this, and i'm glad to see you over here just to talk about things to make amsn cooperative with plus! i really would like the idea just like i posted it on the amsn forum.

But to come back to the patchou reading this thread, well he's a busy man and is not on the forum 24/7 sometimes he's not around for weeks give it time i think he will react.

Greetz,
(michel)
Simple me

ok, great, thanks for the answer!
No problem with that, I'll be patient, I just know that some admins read only 'new/unanswered' posts, so I thought maybe he does the same. In any case, I'll be patient, no problem!
Thanks,

KaKaRoTo

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Square87

Hi to all!

First of all I think that Messenger plus is really great app, but since it's not possible to use it in linux, I desided to write to this topic. I was just thinking that would it be possible to make plug-in to Messenger Plus, which would add more settings to emotisounds? Basicly that setting would be something like "send emotisound via voiceclip" or "send as typical emotisound".

With this settings it would be possible to send sound not only to amsn users, but allso to those who use normal WLM client. And since amsn allready has plugin for sending emotisounds via voiceclips those two clients would be able  to send emotisounds to both directions.

Offcource this plugin is more like temporarely solution, cause it's harder to add sounds you receive from another person, but still it's better than nothing. Would allso save your bandwitch from emotisound server. Maybe the right solution still would be to co-operate with amsn team which is used to work with protocol itself (you use ready made protocol if I got it right), so greating msnp2p protocol addon for Messenger plus and amsn would be solution which would make sounds available to everyone (except standard WLM) and would save your bandwitch.

I know that it won't happen a minute, if it even happens at all, but still that plugin for Messenger plus for sending via voice clips would be awesome!

PS. I'm not sure if I got it right from reading previous posts and is it possible to use msnp2p or similar, and I'm not knowledge to make even that plugin for Messenger Plus! Allso sorry for my bad english!


Just my 2cents.

As stated before in this thread, there is already a script which let people use voiceclips to send custom sounds, see one of the previous posts for the link.

As for letting aMSN accessing the sound database, that wont happen for several reasons. Bandwidth is one of the main reasons...

As for how the current system works: it is far from "just sending some text". The text itself which is sent does not contain any link. It only contains a sound ID. It is the program of Plus! itself which 'talks' to the server database, does some checks (is the sound banned? does the sound need to be downloaded? etc) and then downloads and/or plays the sound. It also already uses a local cache btw. This protocol between Plus! and the database isn't going to be made public.

As for changing the way custom sounds work in Plus!, so they are compatible with aMSN (eg: the msnp2p method talked about) that wont happen any time soon either. Mean reason would be compatibilty with previous Plus! versions and people using Plus! 3, etc... Also, Patchou never used and never will use the msn protocol to do stuff for his addon. At most, it just monitors the protocol for certain messages for a few of its features, it does not tamper with it. One reason being that 3rd party clients aren't suppose to (ab)use the protocol. Patchou has a very good trustworthy relationship with Microsoft and doing such a thing will compromise this for sure.

For every method you choose to distribute sounds there are benefits and drawbacks. The major benefit of heaving a central database is that sounds can be moderated and information about sounds can be updated/fixed. It also ensures that different people have the same sounds and that sounds are categorized properly.

Making something where sounds are directly send from user to user will quickly result in loss of information of the sounds, mangled up sounds and no moderation can be done.

The whole custom sound system in Plus! is based upon those things and as such it is not possible to do it in any other way without breaking every compatibility. In essence, a completely new way should be programmed. And for what? To make it compatible with aMSN? Don't get me wrong though, but if you had to choose between breaking compatibilty with your own addon in favor of an addon from someone else, I think you also wouldn't take that step.

So unfortunatly, it is not possible to make it interoperable with the current Plus! system and the system isn't going to change.

Though what can be done, from aMSN's POV, is as suggested before: making a system where the user can import Plus! sound packs. aMSN can also send the special text strings to Plus! users and Plus! users would be able to hear the sound (if it exists in the DB or if the user has it in its cache). And aMSN can also check the aMSN user's local sound cache (just like the one Plus! has) to search and play the sound sent by a Plus! user. That is the best you can get/do.

So, the only thing which wouldn't be possible for aMSN is to download a new sound from the DB in case the aMSN user recieves a sound string from a Plus! user with an unknown sound ID.

Whilst I think that it would be great for MsgPlus and aMSN to collaborate for mutual benefits now and possibly in the future, unfortunately Cookie makes a very good point about the reason why this can never be done with respect to Sounds...

The best case scenario given the facts is that (as MeEtc posted earlier) Patchou grants aMSN a license to use the database:

quote:

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Originally posted by MeEtc
and that probably won't be cheap, if he even agrees to that.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Volv
Whilst I think that it would be great for MsgPlus and aMSN to collaborate for mutual benefits

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quote:

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Originally posted by Volv
The best case scenario given the facts is that (as MeEtc posted earlier) Patchou grants aMSN a license to use the database

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I only want to say that aMSN people are talking about to find a solution, a possible collaboration. But there are others msn clients that want that feature and maybe they decoded Messenger Plus live sound system (search on google...).
I know that compatibility is a big thing... but sometimes it's necessary to break the compatibility.
We maybe can pay to use database, but also all others msn client will pay?

Most msn client have a plugin system so talking with devs can be not really useful. If a user write a plugin to share sounds with msn live plus. what will happen?

There are many solutions. For example as i understood sounds have an unique ID. So maybe a database can be useful to give an unique ID only when a new sound is created and stop. When we want to send a sound we can send at the user a message with ID, then a plugin check if we have that sound in our cache and send an answer that we (don't have OR have) the necessity to download it from the user.

I think that it is a good solution to save money and to get compatibility.

Sorry for my English.
Thanks, bye.

quote:

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Originally posted by square87
So maybe a database can be useful to give an unique ID only when a new sound is created and stop. When we want to send a sound we can send at the user a message with ID, then a plugin check if we have that sound in our cache and send an answer that we (don't have OR have) the necessity to download it from the user.

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No, it's not exactly what you described before and we already know those informations...
My solution change emotisound msn live plus system, yours no. So it's different and not "exactly" what you described before.

Thanks, bye.

Then please explain in great detail what you mean, because what you described here as an example to how it could be done IS exactly how it currently works in Plus! and what you already can program in aMSN without any restrictions (except for the access to the server DB itself).

Hello CookieRevised.

I try to be more explicit and i repeat what i already wrote:

So maybe a database can be useful to give an unique ID only when a new sound is created and stop. When we want to send a sound we can send at the user a message with ID, then a plugin check if we have that sound in our cache and send an answer that we (don't have OR have) the necessity to download it from the user.

Actually if a mlp user doesn't have an emotisound he downloads it from database. But we can use MSNP2P to send the emotisounds. So we will use database only to give an unique number at a new emotisound and stop. We never download/upload sounds from/to database.

Thanks, bye.

quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
Then please explain in great detail what you mean, because what you described here as an example to how it could be done IS exactly how it currently works in Plus! and what you already can program in aMSN without any restrictions (except for the access to the server DB itself).

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quote:

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Originally posted by CookieRevised
One reason being that 3rd party clients aren't suppose to (ab)use the protocol. Patchou has a very good trustworthy relationship with Microsoft and doing such a thing will compromise this for sure.

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Ah I see, thx Volv....

Anyways, I already explained here that such a thing is not a solution as it most likely will never happen because Patchou isn't going to abuse the protocol for something like this. Moreover, you are going to flood the MSN server without a doubt with something like this. Result: MS will take drastic steps and is for sure not going to tolerate it. And other tools and addons which currently use the protocol (but don't flood it) are going to be punished too...

The same thing for when you implement something for only between aMSN clients. Be be sure that if you are going to implement something like this between aMSN clients only (so that aMSN users can send sounds between them) using the MSN network that MS isn't going to tolerate it either. And that it is again quite possible that MS is going to take steps also and filtering out any protocol message which doesn't come from Messenger itself and/or even cancelling user's connections, etc...


Now, I can't speak in Patchou's name, but I'm 99,999...% certain he would say something very similar.

Hi Cookie, square, Volv.
First, thank you Cookie for such a great explanation, you made your point very explicit and understandable, and I appreciate your throughness in your explanation.
I understand better the reasons why you wouldn't want to use the MSNP2P protocol, mainly because of the trust Patchou has with Microsoft, and because of the possible (ab)use of the protocol. I understand that Microsoft wouldn't  want anyone to play with their protocol.

About the mangling of sounds and the corruptions or misuse of sounds (banned sounds for example), etc.. I understand that too, and that's a good point which I didn't think of earlier.

About the compatibility issues however, I don't think that would be a problem at all, for example, right now, you send a text like :
[EmotiSound] XXXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXX
(only in theory, I didn't check what the exact string is). Well, you could still send that text so the old versions of MLP still interpret those strings but you could also send a different message that only newer versions would understand.

Don't forget I'm just thinking as I'm writing, and I might be saying something stupid, so don't think that everything I say is written in stone and is the best solution I could offer. Without proper brainstorming, we can't find a good solution, but if we decide to go with the interoperability thing, I'm sure we'll end up with a solution that would be profitable to everyone.

Also note that if Patchou agrees to start designing a solution together, he could come up with a list of his own requirements, like for example, no DB access, not breaking interoperability, not abusing the protocol, etc... and we could spend some time brainstorming and find out a solution that would fill in all of his requirements, if we can't find one, then too bad, we can always drop the project, but at least we tried.

Now, I want to 'prove' to you that everything has a solution. For sound mangling, you could have a DB accessor that doesn't send the sound, but just sends the md5 hash of the sound, so for example, you get the emotisound string, you ask the server for the md5 (very small data), you download the sound from the user, and only play it if the md5 matches, this way, you're sure noone messed with the sound file. In the same way the database could say "this sound is not registered" or "this sound is banned" or whatever and the client would not download or play the file.

You're saying that you would choose to keep the current behavior since helping aMSN get interoperability is not really helping you, I can only answer you that if with our help, designing a new method of fetching sounds can help you drop the DB access from MLP users themselves (without even having aMSN interoperable, I'm just talking here about a new algorithm for optimizing MLP itself) then I'm sure you would be a winner here.

Oh and about the protocol issue for sending the sound, I agree that MSNP2P may not be the solution, but MSN allows plugins to send protocol stuff, they provide means to doing that, like the P4-Context field of a message that was designed for plugins to change the friendly name of a user (like an automessage plugin setting the P4-Context to 'Automessage' so the user would see "Automessage says :" ). In the same way, without even using the MSNP2P, we could send a datacast type message or any other type of message that only our clients understand, and it wouldn't be MSNP2P messages, but just plain MSG messages that WLM ignores and delegates to plugins. We could research that a bit more and see what microsoft thinks about that, but I'm sure they accept it since I remember reading somewhere that they allowed messages like that for plugins (like the text/x-clientcaps message type for example).

Also, don't forget that voice clips are sent through those datacast messages (only the id) and that they get downloaded with MSNP2P, but ink drawings for example are sent entirely through a custom type (image/gif) message so we could send a file (in base64 format) this way as long as it's not too big.
By the way, do you have any limitation on the sound size ? Maybe it's 15 seconds or something ?

Oh and about aMSN being open source (it is), and people could read the source and misuse Patchou's DB. I'm not too sure about that. First, because there is already a wiki somewhere with Patchou's protocol reverse-engineered, and secondly because this new method we would design would be open source itself, it would be so that other clients can use it and be interoperable. I'm not only asking for aMSN interoperability but also interoperability with everyone else since the protocol would become open. And I don't think it would bother Patchou here simply because this new method would be written from the start having in mind that anyone can use it without abusing Patchou's DB. What do you think is best ? having an algorithm open source that everyone can use without harming Patchou's bank account (DB access/bandwidth) or the current algorithm which has been reverse engineered and that anyone can already misuse ?

Anyways, I feel like I've written yet another huge message that bores people, so sorry about that.

One last thing, thanks Volv for 'translating' square's message, I also didn't understand what he meant

Thanks for taking the time to read me.
KaKaRoTo

Sorry for being so blind that I missed that plugin which allows to send via voice clip. Actually I read this thread earlier day than I registered, so I didnt start at beging of thread again. But anyway that's bad excuse (I should, so I wouldn't miss that). I'm gonna test that script on Windows machine now.


What comes other things on this topic, I didn't mean that others shoud have access to Patchous DB. But I shut my mouth for now and give KaKaRoTo be the one who speaks.