README - joscar 0.9.3 AOL Instant Messenger protocol library for Java (C) 2002-2004 The Joust Project

ABOUT JOSCAR

joscar is an extensible low-level Java interface into AOL Instant Messenger's OSCAR protocol from both the client and the server side. The joscar library aims to provide implementations of individual commands as well as higher-level classes for easily managing data structures in the most common ways.

While joscar was designed mainly to be a client library, much of the functionality necessary to implement an AIM server is there. All commands and data structures can be both read in from and written out to a stream of bytes.

joscar depends heavily on features only available in the Java 1.4 class libraries, such as nio's Charset classes and regular expressions.

The joscar source code is released under a BSD-style license, which means you are free to do whatever you please with it as long as you don't hold the Joust Project accountable. For legal details, please see the LICENSE file included with this distribution.

ABOUT THE JOUST PROJECT

The Joust Project is a set of three subprojects aiming to provide a Java interface to AOL Instant Messenger's Oscar protocol on three levels:

• as an end user of AOL's (or another party's) instant messaging services
• as a client developer for the above
• for other more low-level purposes (developing an Oscar server, etc.)

Three separate components are planned for these three purposes:

• Joust, a fully featured AIM client, building upon
• jouscar, a high-level client interface to AIM, building upon
• joscar, a low-level library for managing the raw data structures involved in an Oscar connection.

For more information regarding the status of these sub-projects, or to download releases, please visit the Joust Project web site (http://joust.kano.net/).

OBTAINING JOSCAR

You can obtain the latest joscar release, as well as previous versions of the library, from the Joust Project web site (http://joust.kano.net/), or from the Joust Project SourceForge project page (http://sf.net/projects/joustim).

If you like working with bleeding-edge code, you may sync with the joscar CVS trunk hosted on SourceForge. For instructions, please see the UPDATING file included with this distribution.

CONTACTING THE JOUST PROJECT

For any questions or general technical support issues, or if you're interested in becoming a developer for the Joust Project, please send mail to [email protected].

For the latest development and release news, please visit the Joust Project's web site (http://joust.kano.net/). There, you can find information about the various sub-projects, download releases, browse the CVS tree, read the developers' weblog, and discuss the Joust Project with other developers. Of particular interest is the developers' weblog, which is an invaluable resource for anyone tracking Joust development (http://joust.kano.net/weblog/).

Bug reports, suggestions, and code contributions are appreciated and may be submitted by way of SourceForge (http://sf.net/projects/joustim/). Use the Tracker tool to post bugs and suggestions, and use the Patches system to submit code.

FURTHER READING

You should have received the following files with your joscar distribution. If not, you may download an official joscar release from the Joust Project web site (http://joust.kano.net/).

• README: This file, which gives some general information about joscar and the Joust Project.

• RELNOTES: The release notes, showing what's new and different in this joscar release, as well as what's changed in prior releases.

• LICENSE: The Joust Project license, describing the ways in which you may use joscar and the joscar source code.

• UPDATING: Instructions on getting the latest joscar source code from the SourceForge CVS repository.

• BUILDING: A quick guide to building joscar binaries and documentation using the Apache Project's ant tool (http://ant.apache.org/).

• USING: A quick guide to using the joscar library and the bundled JoscarTester program.

Additionally, your joscar distribution may include the Javadoc API reference in the docs/api/ directory. The latest copy of this documentation is available on the Joust Project web site (http://joust.kano.net/joscar/docs/api/). If you are using joscar in your projects, you should read this documentation, as it contains important development information.

Your joscar distribution may also include the howto guide in the docs/howto/ directory. The latest copy of this documentation is available on the Joust Project web site (http://joust.kano.net/joscar/docs/howto/). The howto is a brief overview of the Oscar login process, and will have larger scope and far more depth in future iterations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Joust Project would like to thank Mark Doliner and Sean Egan of the Gaim Project (http://gaim.sf.net/) for their assistance in explaining parts of the Oscar protocol.

Huge thanks to Sam Stephenson for designing and hosting the website, writing various materials distributed with joscar, and for lots of help debugging and other things like that.

Thanks go to Ka-Hing Cheung for help with setting up the project's CVS repository on SourceForge.

Thanks to Elias Ross for some neat performance enhancements and various other rather important bug reports.

Thanks to David Walluck of daim (http://daim.dev.java.net) for help with implementing the rate-limiting algorithm as well as with figuring out Trillian's Secure IM protocol.

Thanks to Doug Lea for the several classes from his concurrency package used in joscar and lots of miscellaneous Java help.

Thanks to Ludovic LANGE for his rather indirect, but still important help in figuring out Trillian's Secure IM protocol.

Thanks to David Hook of BouncyCastle (http://bouncycastle.org) for a great deal of help in figuring out the format of AIM's encrypted IM data block and for promptly fixing the problems the joscar demo was having with BouncyCastle.

Thanks to Stephen Flynn for help implementing functionality to join chat rooms to which one had been invited.

Thanks to Tim Dierks for a great deal of help figuring out and understanding the encrypted IM/file transfer/direct IM/chat rooms protocols.

Thanks to Tal Liron for submitting a bunch of joscar-as-server fixes.

If you have contributed to joscar and are not listed here, please forgive our oversight and send mail to [email protected].