tvp -> joost

The Venice Project is now called joost.
I've got a few spare beta invites. Leave a comment if you want one. First come, first served!
Update: All invites taken! Sorry!

The Venice Project

xulrunner + zmk + SVG + <xul:sprite> + (lots of other things) = The Venice Project :-)

zap v0.2.2 is out

Binaries available here:

Linux: http://download.eu.isciade.org/zap/releases/zap-0.2.2-linux-x86.tar.gz

Windows: http://download.eu.isciade.org/zap/releases/zap-0.2.2-win.zip

Note: The profile data of this release is incompatible with earlier zap releases. If you are upgrading from a previous version please delete your zap profile directory before running version 0.2.2.
On Windows XP, the profile directory is usually located at C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Zap\Profiles\xxxxxx.default\ On Linux, the profile directory is usually located at ~/.mozilla/zap/xxxxxxxx.default/

Binaries for the previous release, version 0.2.1 are also still available at http://download.eu.isciade.org/zap/releases/

Main Changes

This release adds some support for RFC3265 (SIP Event Notifications) and RFC3856 (SIP Presence).

Contacts can now be associated with an identity under which they will be displayed in the sidebar. If an identity is configured to watch the presence of its associated contacts, zap will send a SUBSCRIBE event for each contact and change the color of the contact icons according to the basic presence status returned by NOTIFY requests: blue means the status of the contact is unknown, green means the contact is online, grey mean the contact is offline.

Also new in this version is the call UI:

Instead of dialling a number as soon as 'Go' is clicked in the toolbar, zap now opens a form where you can enter a Subject line and choose the audio codecs to be offered to the other party (or even let the other party make the media offer).

The UI is in somewhat of a transitionary phase and will change quite a bit in upcoming releases, e.g. to allow for other media types such as chat, etc.

Finally, there is now an option to switch between accessing the audio hardware 'synchronously' or 'asynchronously' (Sidebar > Configuration > Audio Settings). In the former mode, zap will read and write audio buffers from the same callback, while in the latter two separate callbacks are used.

In theory, the single callback mode should provide better synchronization between (microphone) input and soundcard output and hence better echo cancellation performance, but in practice it can lead to choppy audio (especially under Windows when other programs are also accessing the soundcard) which can only be countered with a much higher audio latency setting.

zap @ fosdem '06

FOSDEM 2006 is over and as always it was a great weekend packed with interesting talks both in the Mozilla room and other tracks (A VoIP track for the first time!).

From a zap point of view, FOSDEM was a little bit - urm - challanging. It's difficult to demo a SIP client when there's little network connectivity. At least I managed to place a call to 1-800-555-TELL during my talk (slides here).

peterv called me during the talk, but the FOSDEM router would have non of it. We really need better NAT traversal in zap, so this is what I am working on now (draft-ietf-mmusic-ice). Thanks for trying anyway Peter! At the next FOSDEM it *will* work.