All my Humanware feedback channels seem to have gone quiet, or dead, or both. So I'm posting here, in the hope that it (a) helps somebody and encourages others and (b) eventually makes it to Humanware.
First of all, yes, I concur with the general feeling here that putting out a chat client for KeySoft that nobody can actually use to achieve their objective of communication with the vast majority of their contacts is a bit shameful. Well, I couldn't do it, anyway. While I can hardly blame them for choosing an open standard (remember that they're developing a complete interface, not a screen reader or wrapper) and while my Open Source and Open Standards love isn't going away any time soon, it is very much the case that MSN and other networks are used, and that Jabber/XMPP is by far a minority. Still, everybody here has a good reason to encourage others to use an XMPP provider (Google Talk, Mobile Me, jabber.org, etc, etc) and there are real technical advantages to doing so. In the meantime, I want to report that with a personally configured jabber server and transports to gateway XMPP to the other networks, my BrailleNote is now happily engaged on the MSN, IRC, Jabber and email notifications networks. (Email notifications means I get XMPP messages stating the arrival of new mail.) For people motivated enough, or for somebody wishing to do everybody a favour (or, indeed, make a few quick bucks) this is by far the most wonderful opportunity to exploit the benefits of Open Standards - to use an unpaid, royalty-free standard to achieve the goal to stay in communication with other users on other networks whose users are unaware of or unmotivated to use open alternatives. Jabber was wise to include this feature in the core protocol. Unfortunately, BrailleNote's KeyChat is a highly "Crippled" Jabber/XMPP client - it lacks the features required to get both transport discovery and registration. With these features, the BrailleNote could beat "The competition" hands down, since with no work whatsoever it could be more connected than any other, proprietary client. Humanware must implement Jabber Service Discovery and In-Band Registration in order to allow willing server operators (without consulting) to make these gateways available to BrailleNote users. Quite a few of them are publicly available, and for free (quality not under consideration). Otherwise, it is a tricky business that only people with third-party Jabber clients, or in charge of Jabber servers, can configure and make work. If you want to reach me privately, you can do it by hitting reply. You can also use Jabber or MSN (same as the email address, [email protected] ). If anybody is in a position to get these notes to Humanware, I'd be obliged if they did. Cheers, Sabahattin ___ Replies to this message will go directly to the sender. If your reply would be useful to the list, please send a copy to the list as well. To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [email protected] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote
