wire_v0.7

• image transfer is GO!!!

You can drag an image into the chat (mac only for now) and it will pop up a window with the image in it. Click "send image" and it will be sent -as if by magic- to the other end of the±wire, where it will pop-up an identical window, image and all. I've been doing wee slide-shows for folks on my home LAN! heheh

This works on windoze too, but you have to drop the images directly into the image window itself (I'll add a control to pop that up manually). You can do it this way on a mac too, of course.

My plan was to support "wee files of any kind"

The code is pretty loose and shaky at the moment, but I just tried to transfer "calc32.exe" from my mac (in fact I was grabbing it from a peecee via samba! but it was on my mac, if you know what I mean) to a peecee via the±wire. It worked! crashed the±wire on the peecee, but calc32 calcs just fine at the other end! I feel like A.G.Bell!

In fact, you can transfer any old file like this, but non-image filetypes will likely crash the peecee image viewer (I'll look into this). no problem the other way, the peecee barely accepts dropped images let alone anything else. Amazingly I didn't even have to mess with endianess! (just wait til a classic mac user tries a transfer! - get an OS will ya!)

Currently, on a Mac, anything that quicktime supports, the±wire can display, PDF's, for instance (at least the first page) The peecee version can't support *viewing* of so many filetypes, but you'll *always still get the file*. Just use your regular viewer on it.

If you drop a PDF in at the peecee end, it will pop up just fine in a mac viewer, for instance. There's no way to stop it, in fact, so if one of your "mates" starts throwing random porn at you ... Well, I might do a ban-list thing, or post a "do you wish to receive file named 'anallypronged.jpg'?" dialog, or something.

I don't plan to support mac resource forks either, applications (and the like) are best archived before *any* transfer, over the±wire or elsewhere. I also don't plan to support image "clippings". Only real data files. (when will Apple wise-up about clippings, huh?)

the technical bit: when you "send" a file, you actually send a request to the receiving machine to connect back to YOU. This will allow us (at some future point in time) to present the receiver with an opportunity to deny the transfer, and as the receiver is connecting *to the sender*, who is effectively acting as a listening server. The security benefits of this architecture are apparent. Exactly how far into the future it will be before I actually implement the authorisation part is anyone's guess.

• oh, I forgot to mention, you can /ping a remote host at any time (like when you wonder if something maybe happened to the connexion). Their copy of the±wire will respond with a confirmation, along and their local timestamp. They don't smell your ping.

;o)