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[wip] fifo based tox client

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//_////_/ //// -- by sin and FRIGN

What is it?

ratox is a client implementation of the rather popular tox protocol[0]. Unlike other clients relying on GUIs as an interface to the user, ratox is developed with the UNIX-philosophy in mind and allows complete interaction through named pipes.

There's also a set of scripts[1] developed by various people that build on top of the FIFO interface.

Getting started

Get the latest version from the git-repository; build and install it. Run ratox in an empty directory and it will create a set of files and folders allowing you to control the client.

File structure

A typical filesystem structure is shown below along with some comments to help explain the semantics of the individual files.

. |-- .ratox.data # ratox save file | |-- 0A734CBA717CEB7883D.... # friend's ID excluding nospam + checksum | |-- call_in # 'arecord -r 48000 -c 1 -f S16_LE > call_in' to initiate a call | |-- call_out # 'aplay -r 48000 -c 1 -f S16_LE - < call_out' to answer a call | |-- call_state # (none, pending, active) | |-- file_in # 'cat foo > file_in' to send a file | |-- file_out # 'cat file_out > bar' to receive a file | |-- file_pending # contains filename if transfer pending, empty otherwise | |-- name # friend's nickname | |-- online # 1 if friend online, 0 otherwise | |-- remove # 'echo 1 > remove' to remove a friend | |-- state # friend's user state; could be any of {none,away,busy} | |-- status # friend's status message | |-- text_in # 'echo yo dude > text_in' to send a text to this friend | -- text_out # 'tail -f text_out' to dump to stdout any text received | |-- 00000000 | |-- members # list of people in the conference | |-- invite # 'echo 0A734CBA717CEB7883D.... >invite' to invite | |-- leave # 'echo 1 >leave' to leave the conference | |-- title_in # 'echo new-title >title_in' to update the conference title | |-- title_out # contains the current title | |-- text_in # 'echo blablahumbla >text_in' to message the other conference members | |-- text_out # contains the messages sent so far in the conference | |-- id # 'cat id' to show your own ID, you can give this to your friends | |-- conf # managing conferences | |-- err # conference related errors | |-- in # 'echo 't group title' >in' for creating a new text group | |-- out # 'echo 1 >out/ID_COOKIE' for joining a conference | |-- name # changing your nick | |-- err # nickname related errors | |-- in # 'echo my-new-nick > in' to change your name | -- out # 'cat out' to show your name | |-- nospam # changing your nospam | |-- err # nospam related errors | |-- in # 'echo AABBCCDD > in' to change your nospam | -- out # 'cat out' to show your nospam | |-- request # send and accept friend requests | |-- err # request related errors | |-- in # 'echo LONGASSID yo dude add me > in' to send a friend request | -- out # 'echo 1 > out/LONGASSID' to accept the friend request | |-- state # changing your user state | |-- err # user status related errors | |-- in # 'echo away > in' to change your user state; could be any of {none,away,busy} | -- out # 'cat out' to show your user state | -- status # changing your status message |-- err # status message related errors |-- in # 'cat I am bored to death > in' to change your status message `-- out # 'cat out' to show your status message

Features

1 v 1 messaging: Yes File transfer: Yes Group chat: Yes Audio: Yes Video: No DNS discovery: No Chat logs: Yes Proxy support: Yes Offline message: Yes Offline transfers: Yes Contact aliases: No Contact blocking: No Save file encryption: Yes Multilingual: No Multiprofile: Yes Typing notification: No Audio notifications: No Emoticons: No Spell check: No Desktop sharing: No Inline images: No File resuming: No Read receipts: No Message splitting: Yes Changing nospam: Yes toxi URI: No

NOTE: Some of these features are not intended to be developed in ratox itself but rather in external scripts[1] that are built upon ratox.

Group chats do not have audio yet.

Examples

SSH over TOX for the practical paranoid

On the sender side (the client):

  1. cd into the friend's directory (the server)
  2. nc -lv 1234 > file_in < file_out

On the receiver side (the server):

  1. cd into the friend's directory (the client)
  2. cat < file_out | nc localhost 22 > file_in

Now on the client run the following: ssh -o ProxyCommand="nc %h 1234" user@localhost

This can of course be more easily achieved by using tuntox.

Screencasting using ffmpeg and mplayer

On the sender side: ffmpeg -f x11grab -r 10 -s 1366x768 -i :0.0 -vcodec libx264
-pix_fmt yuv420p -preset fast -tune zerolatency -b:v 500k
-f flv pipe: > file_in

On the receiver side: mplayer -cache 1024 file_out

You may have to play about with the cache size.

Portability

Builds and works on *BSD and Linux. To build on OSX you need to apply a patch[2].

Contact

You can reach us through the freenode IRC network at #2f30 or through [email protected].

[0] https://tox.chat/ [1] https://git.2f30.org/ratox-nuggets/ [2] https://ratox.2f30.org/ratox-os_x.patch