Shoutbox

It's an idea that i have for a long time but never thought to request it

i find it always hard to see how much the progress is of a file that i share with someone in a wlm conversation, i mean, when i share a file, the progress bar is in the conversation text and it goes up when you type more in the conversation, so that it's not visible anymore..

what if, on the bottom of the conversation window, there would be a list of files you share with that person and it's progress, wouldn't that be useful to see all your downloads so that you cant close the conversation when there are still downloads in progress, it can be placed above the conversation status data (the '** is typing' etc)

i made an image with an example of what i mean:

I was already working on something like this, but it is a lot harder than you'd imagine

I can understand that it's not so simple..
but actually it's just recognizing that piece of text and putting it in a common layout (i know a little programming but i never programmed any scripts for plus so i dont know)
but I really hope Patchou will put something like this in the 5.0 version

quote:

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Originally posted by FRD
actually it's just recognizing that piece of text and putting it in a common layout

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No, it's harder than that else we would have done it by now. The easiest way is to monitor protocol messages, but it doesn't work in all situations, there is no (definitive) documentation so it's all guesswork and displaying it in the chatwnd would require a childwnd, which don't seem to work right with chatwnds anyway.

i understand,

i'm not familiar with the MSNC protocol and with scripts but i think there IS a documentation of it (probably not official ):
http://msnpiki.msnfanatic.com/index.php/MSNC:File_Transfer
this site gives a good view of how the protocol works i guess (too bad the examples are 'under construction')
as i get it right, you should recognize the invitation message (to maybe open the download childwindow), (the handshaking is not important in this matter) and then read the 'offset' field and the 'data length' in the file data messages to make a good progress bar, and also beware if the message is split (to make a progress bar of the complete file and not only of a split piece). also recognize the bye request when a filetransfer is stopped before it was completed or something like that.

i know and i'm sure that it's not that easy as i say, but i think it makes a little an image of how it works i guess (if you didnt found it before offcourse), i also dont know how much of the protocol you can read with the scripts (if it's not possible with scripts, i would ask Patchou to help us or make an own download manager ), i want to look at it too but i dont have experience in making scripts for plus and now i defenitly dont have time (but normally i have time a few weeks later) but i do have experience in working with transfer protocols (TCP, UDP..)

for the layout, the screenshot was just an example, it would be also good if it was in a separate window like the standard download manager in firefox (not embedded in the chatwindow) or maybe at the right side of the chatwindow (because i thought it would be possible because the 'grouping conversations' tabs are also part of the chatwindow, at the left or top side of the window), but i dont know if thats possible with scripts either

Using xniff you can read all messages between client and server and between direct connections (if you find the correct port). I know about the offset and data length etc. The problem is that xniff doesn't seem to read the headers properly which means it has to all be put in a STRUCT so that the individual DWORDS can be read. That tells you how much as been downloaded.

Like I say, I've done this before and got it almost perfect on the download side of it. There are reasons I stopped development though; mainly there appears to be a new version of the MSNP.

If it is at all possible using the new protocol (The old ones are documented upto MSNP8 with notes on additions after that to version 15. "MSNP16" if that is it's name has no documentation as of yet which means there is a lot of guesswork to be done) then I will take another go at it...

that Xniff script looks VERY interesting, i didnt knew it before and i will definitely give it a try (when my work cools down and i have more spare time ), too bad xniff doesn't read the headers properly like you say
i also packetsniffed msn before with wireshark (ethereal) and saw interesting commands too (mainly about the statuses etc, i didnt searched for the transferprotocol then), but i didnt knew much how to integrating it into plus

in my opinion, microsoft wouldn't change the transferprotocol much in the new MSNP16, i guess the new addition is mainly the ability to sign in at 2 places at the same time with having chats replicated at all places, and the filetransfer worked good before so maybe they would let it be the same.  But you're right that there isn't much documentation for the new protocol at this time , and that makes it indeed harder to work

i hope you didnt threw away your code on the file transfer script, if you want to reopen the 'project', i'm definitely willing to help (with sniffing, searching solutions or maybe coding...), but first i will play a little with xniff

too bad (in my case) plus' scripting is a VB lookalike language (and i'm only used to c# and java) but i recognize much in the examples and maybe it's time to learn a new language

I think the main difference in FT in MSP16 would be that it tries to use direct connections rather than via servers. It's possible to find the right port etc though.

Xniff doesn't work in all situations, but it could work for greater than 50%

I don't have the code anymore, but when things calm down here too I may have another go at it and you're more than welcome  to try and help

The scripting is JS and really similar to Javascript Flash's ActionScript. I consider it really close to c# in terms of structure and syntax whereas wscript would be close to VB