BelleChat almost ready to publish.

BelleChat is finally just-about ready for publishing to the Nokia Store. With the help of Daniel Ferguson, I've been bug-fixing and tweaking, and got it into a fit state to publish. It's going to be available in the Nokia Store for the equivalent of €1 (that's £1, or US$0.99, I think). I think that's a reasonable amount. Of course, you could always fork the GitHub repository and compile it yourself if you really want...

I already have some ideas for the future. The channels list needs some sort of search facility. I tried adding parameters to the IRC LIST command, but this didn't give the results I wanted. I think I'm going to have to play about with ListModels. I'm also thinking about being able to store details for more than one server, and parsing the server INFO messages to improve the UI. More advanced features of IRC need looking at too. Suggestions are gratefully received...

QMLIrc is now BelleChat

Or it will be, when I get round to changing the name on the project. But it's beginning to come together. The feature set is fixed for version 1.0 as follows:

• Compatible with mIRC color codes. I've modified Communi to correctly parse the background colour, still have to sort out the user's input.
• Multiple channels open at once.
• Scrollable user list with Whois page, which can be automatically populated.
• Conforms to the Belle UI guidelines. It works in Anna, though. Orange UK haven't approved Belle yet! 

Here's a screenshot...

Pretty colours!

And apropos of nothing, here's a shot of fairycake cars in my street...

Steps forward and back

I've been working away on the car and QMLIrc. In both cases, I've made a little progress but some setbacks.

The car. I'm currently working on the LH rear sill - the bit between the rear wheelarch and the bumper, where the boot floor drops down to meet the rear wing. I've successfully patched the outer panel and I'm now working on the inner panel, which is a slightly complicated shape. See below...

Here, I'm trying to make a patch from sheet steel. The trouble I'm having is that the metal is a bit thin in places, so I'm blowing holes. I keep having to cut back. At the moment, I've cut right back, which will allow me to get inside the panel and clean up the metal a bit better.

On to QMLIrc. I have made some progress. I've created a IRC channel selection dialog, which shows channels and topics. This uses the QML ListModel system, and it worked surprisingly well. The QML UI code sends a signal to the C++ IRC code, which requests a list of channels from the IRC server. As channel list messages are received from the server, the C++ code creates a list of channels and their topics in a custom C++ class. When the list is complete, the C++ code registers it with the QML code and emits a signal. The QML code then responds to the signal by creating a SelectionDialog from the list.

The trouble I'm having with QMLIrc is that there's a bug which crashes on exit when there's been more than one channel tab open. It's annoying.

Introducing QMLIrc (yeah, it's a rubbish name...)

Behold. The first screenshot of QMLIrc, my IRC client for Symbian Anna and Belle smartphones. You'll see elements of Windows 7 in the background. This is because it's a screen capture of the program running un the Qt Simulator, as I haven't yet downloaded a screen capture program for my N8.

You'll notice the Belle-based user interface, mostly built on QT Quick Components. So what can it do right now? Well, it can connect to an IRC server, and join one or more channels. It can send output to the server, and receive input, which it can direct to the proper tab. And, thanks to the Communi library, it has pretty colours, too! If fact as it stands it's a usable, if extremely basic IRC client.

Here's the GitHub repository if you want to play...

Belle will go to the IRC ball!

My previous post requires some explanation

I've been hanging around in the chatrooms on UKChatterbox a lot recently. Mainly using the Java IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client on the website, but occasionally on my Nokia N8. There are a few IRC clients out there for Symbian phones, but all of them so far have one major failing: they can't use the split screen keyboard introduced in Symbian Anna. So you miss what people are saying as you're typing your reply. Therefore I'm writing my own.

I'm using QT Quick, which makes it easy to write code which conforms to the Symbian Belle look and feel. Belle isn't out yet on my N8, but the component set will run in Anna, and by the time it's ready, I may well be running Belle. Much of the heavy lifting - the posting and translation of IRC messages to the server - is being done by the excellent Communi library, written by JP Nurmi et al.

My plan, such as it is (I've never bothered with any Detailed Design Documents or any of the other overheads of software engineering as I work on my own: it's all in my head), is in three stages:

1. IRCBoilerplate. This is a simple Windows IRC client whose function is to allow me to get to grips with using the Communi library in a relatively comfortable environment. At the time of writing, it is perfectly usable as an IRC, client, if a little rough and ready. But then, it is boilerplate code. The GitHub repo for IRCBoilerplate is here. It's not the latest version, though.  It is. Why? See below...
2. SessionWrapper. This is two of the classes from IRCBoilerplate placed in a separate QT Library project, so that they can be shared between IRCBoilerplate and QMLIrc (the working name for the Symbian IRC client. Horrible, isn't it?). Their function is to further decouple the UI (written in QTQuick QML) from the Communi-based backend code. I'm planning to limit the interaction between the two to using Qt signals and slots. I haven't set up a repo for this yet. I have, but SessionWrapper as a separate library is defunct. The reason is that it's too difficult to set up multiple static libraries in Qt. As SessionWrapper is two files, it's easier just to put it in the main project. I've had to adapt it for QMLIrc anyway.
3. QMLIrc. This is the Qt Quick based IRC client for phones running Symbian Anna and later. All I've done so far is prototyped the UI. See above...

So there you have it. When it's finished, I'll probably end up putting it in the Nokia Store. It'll be free, though. I'm doing it for fun, not profit.