whiteboard disappears, will not play nicely with itself

[james]

On Ubuntu 8.10, Athlon, Coccinella version 0.96.14.

This may be more of a "usability" request than a bug report, because I'm new to this, and don't know what "normal" looks like. Really, I would just like to get the whiteboard to work, and could not - or, I could not test it in a useful way. This may have to do with the XMPP protocol though.

Here is my naive thinking: The whiteboard should work between applications. Inkscape and Coccinella are the only things I know that do whiteboards. I should be able to make them talk to each other. Start Inkscape. Start Coccinella. Register onto jabber.org with different user names. Try to send some scribbles.

First thing, I can send "messages" back and forth, but Coccinella "chat" will not work. I can open the chat window, but I cannot type anything into the window.

Then, I open the whiteboard and try to send. I get a response "not online", which is clearly wrong, since I have an Inkscape chat window open to Coccinella. Maybe there is some arcane concept of "status" in XMPP that is not being set? I don't know.

Ok, I choose to send the message anyway, which is received by Inkscape in their "Pedro" window, but Inkscape doesn't do anything with the message. Well, it looks like Inkscape does not really have any whiteboard functionality - and, looking at the latest source code, it's not going to have any whiteboard in the next version 0.47 either.

How about I simply open two instances of Coccinella and test the whiteboard there? That doesn't work. I get an error message "Cannot start the internal HTTP server: Couldn't start server socket: couldn't open socket: address already in use."

Hmm - what if I change the port settings, and restart Coccinella. This generates another error message "Received a fatal error: Replaced by new connection - The connection is closed." That killed the connection on the first Coccinella window. I log in again. I try to send a message. Another error: "Cannot send messge to <me>@jabber.org. Error code: service-unavailable - Message: The server or recipient does not currently provide the requested service." Where was that from?

Then I send a message the other way. That works. I reply. That works. I open a chat window - and again, that does not work. I cannot type in the window. I open a chat window in the other direction - that doesn't work either. I can send messages, but I cannot chat.

I try the whiteboard. I get "not online" - which is wrong. I send anyway, and the whiteboard window crashes and disappears. I try in the other direction, and same thing, the whiteboard disappears.

Hmm - and I have these new messages shown in my Inbox. I click - and get an error message: "Error: invalid command name ".jwbinbox.fmain.fc.can". What's that about? Oh well...

So, overall, a bad experience. Whiteboard still does not work. Coccinella does not know how to play nicely with itself. The "chat" does not work. The whiteboard window crashes.

It's really quite a tease. The whiteboard feature looks really nice. I have been looking in on Coccinella since version 0.96.11, but I just can't get the whiteboard to work. So, maybe this is just a "status report" from a "want to be" user. I'm rooting for you!

James