Development Status
Matthew Wild
The Tessa project kind of fell silent recently (ok, not so recently).
Mostly to blame was my time being diverted to first Google Summer of
Code, and then other work since.
The project is FAR from dead however!
Some of you may/may not already know that we have a new developer,
Sander (sq89). Sander was originally developing a client of his own
from scratch, called Momple. Momple is Qt based, and will now be built
as an interface to Tessa's core. The basic code for Momple has been in
SVN for a while, and is quite simple to build, try it out :)
Momple and the original wxWidgets interface will be developed in
parallel, and we shall work on the core between us. To be clear,
plugins/scripts for Tessa will work in Momple, and vice-versa
(assuming the GUI actually supports the interfaces that the particular
plugin needs).
Sander has already done quite a bit of work on the core, with which
the wxWidgets GUI now needs to work.
Which brings me to the next topic... SVN structure.
Currently The wx GUI is at the top of the directory structure, and
Momple is in /momple-gui/, with its own copy of scripts/plugins. This
will eventually change, so that wx code will be in a subfolder also.
Build system
We are managing ok with scripts/IDEs at the moment, but I am not
opposed to someone creating something better. Discuss on this list any
possibilities. Also if anyone has experience of Debian packaging, some
discussion about that would be great.
wxWidgets GUI
...has a message window! Yep, that's right. It's pretty basic at the
moment, but my next step is linking it up with the event system. Watch
this space...
Logo
Ok, I'm thoroughly scared of mentioning this topic now :) Yes, if you
have a logo design, submit it to the list (upload to the files section
<http://groups.google.co.uk/group/tessa-dev/files> and announce it).
We will decide upon an official logo some day, but not for a while.
Windows
I'll set to making a Windows build as soon as the message window is
usable.
Miscellaneous
This page is currently the centre of Tessa's presence on the internet
(worth seeing the screenshots): http://matthewwild.co.uk/projects/tessa/
Unfortunately the wiki for user feedback is down, that will be sorted.
Until then, post things to this list.
Don't forget to join us in the Tessa chat at te...@conference.jaim.at
(Jabber, of course).
PS. This group seems something of a one-way communication system at
the moment. It doesn't have to be like that :)
Sander Dijkhuis
Here are some of my ideas for Momple's interface:
- http://momple.nl/gui-design
- http://groups.google.com/group/momple-devel/web/mockups
As I see it, Tessa's default wxWidgets interface will:
- be light but extensible;
- integrate well with the desktop (using the common GTK+/Win32/Cocoa look);
- use common GUI features like a main menu.
In contrast, Momple will:
- contain some plugins that I like by default;
- have its own, 'fun' look, like Windows Live Messenger and AIM have;
- have a compact interface like shown in the screenshots.
Momple uses Qt because of the great API, documentation and support for
theming through CSS.
Some effort will be duplicated by implementing a Tessa GUI twice, but
this way Tessa will target more users and (plugin) developers, which
will be good on the long term.
The coming weeks I probably won't commit any code by the way.
> Unfortunately the wiki for user feedback is down, that will be sorted.
How about using Google Groups' page feature instead? It's not as
advanced as most wikis, but it's nicely integrated with the discussion
group.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/tessa-dev/web
Paul-Sebastian Manole
I heard you and MattJ are making a great team now, please keep that up :).
I can't wait to use Tessa IM, nor can I wait till I start developing for it! :) -- unfortunately, I'm just an aspiring "n00b" at the moment, but I'll keep watching Tessa and its code.