Docs/Scripts/Bots/Clients

[Cowboy]

I'm considering playing with creating a CF client, partly for some practice working with Gtk2-perl, and partly just because the existing one annoys me in alot of ways I can't
easily fix. (not to mention using your own client just makes you feel special

Are there any good references on the actual protocol, or bots/clients/scripts that would
be useful as an example? Ideally something other than the standard client, as I find
it quite difficult to understand.

[Casper]

I'm not an expert on the communications side of CF... although I'm sure enough (knowelegable) people will be more than willing to write you a detailed "networking with CF" howto. I think I'd be interested in seeing something like that myself!

As for GTK, are you sure you want to use that as your platform? There is an abandoned Java client you could pick up on, an abandoned SDL client that was at one point very promising, you could make a native Win32 client, or a Qt-based one. There is already a GTK-besed client, and although I'm only happy to see another client enter the world of CF I'm curios why GTK? Despite many of its shortcomings the existing GTK client is very usable most of the time, which is why it is mostly the client used.

Of course is you just want to play around with GTK and make something that maybe someone else will use, it's up to you! I'll give it a go when something gets released!

[Cowboy]

I'm not an expert on the communications side of CF... although I'm sure enough (knowelegable) people will be more than willing to write you a detailed "networking with CF" howto. I think I'd be interested in seeing something like that myself!

As for GTK, are you sure you want to use that as your platform? There is an abandoned Java client you could pick up on, an abandoned SDL client that was at one point very promising, you could make a native Win32 client, or a Qt-based one. There is already a GTK-besed client, and although I'm only happy to see another client enter the world of CF I'm curios why GTK? Despite many of its shortcomings the existing GTK client is very usable most of the time, which is why it is mostly the client used.

Of course is you just want to play around with GTK and make something that maybe someone else will use, it's up to you! I'll give it a go when something gets released!

The biggest issue is perl bindings (my language of preference).
From what I can see, the client doesn't require the type of performance that
C/C++ provide, so the ease of developing is perl is a big plus.

perl-sdl is decent, I've played with it some, but requires alot of more low-end work
than I'd like. (I'd like to get it to a usable state before I lose too much interest).
perl-qt seems very un-maintained, and I've never really been a fan of qt anyway,
for no particularly good reason.
java annoys the hell out of me with it's verbose syntax,
and win32 really doesn't interest me at all.
gtk and perl both work on win32, so if it runs on windows, great, if not, well,
maybe once it works someone can provide patches to fix it on windows.
(I don't have a machine that runs windows to even attempt this)

I've worked with Gtk in the past, and find it quite usable (irc client/other chat client),
although I havn't used Gtk2 yet, which is the reason for choosing that (being
happy with gtk1)

[Ryo]

Are there any good references on the actual protocol, or bots/clients/scripts that would
be useful as an example? Ideally something other than the standard client, as I find
it quite difficult to understand.

The client itself is split in different parts: the "low" part, handling dirty protocol issues. Then the graphical client itself, using this low level code to work. That's why there are different interfaces (GTK, XWindow from memory), for only one protocol / common base.