As you can see from the subject line, I'm going way out on a limb here...
In brief, is anyone out there thinking about or working on using v4l and
code from the mentioned apps to hack together something resembling Yahoo
webcam support under Linux? Gaim, if you're not familiar, is an
excellent open source IM client, more info at gaim.sourceforge.net.
libyahoo2 is a work derived from the Yahoo protocol library from Gaim,
hosted at libyahoo2.sourceforge.net. The libyahoo2 library added webcam
support back in March, but I have yet to find a GUI IM client that
exploits that feature.
I posted a query about this in the Gaim forum on sf.net, but I thought
my idea might find a more apropos audience within the v4l mailing list.
What I'm wondering is if there's a v4l code jock out there who might be
willing to take a stab at cannibalizing XawTV code (or something more
simple, of course) into a plugin for Gaim that could receive images and
display them, as well as acquire images from a v4l device and send them.
The images used by Yahoo are JPEG-2000 code streaming syntax, about
which you can find more information at http://www.jpeg.org/JPEG2000.html
including--they claim--sample code. If you're a GPL purist, you might
want to take note of the line that says JPEG2000 is royalty and
license-fee free, but not patent-free, whatever that means. (ooh...
http://linuxj2k.free.fr/ has some sample code, too...)
Anyhow, I have three linux boxes, a gaggle of windows PCs and even an
old powermac, along with a variety of v4l supported devices. What I
don't have is the ability to write code, so I'm trying to spur some
interest and discussion in hopes that an offer to do some serious
testing and a promise of immeasurable gratitude and fame might motivate
someone with v4l coding experience to take a stab at this.
Then again, as cool as I think this idea is, I'd also be most grateful
if anyone out there knows of a program that can already do this... ;)
-p
