cocoaforge

I know there are plans on attempting to add Video and Audio chat support in later updates, but are there any plans on incorporating iChat's screen sharing service?

I love Adium, and it's currently my default messenger, but I use iChat frequently due to the Screen Share, as my friend or father seem to always need help.

Just thought it would be nice to exclusively use Adium, and never even have to open iChat. If Screen Share is exclusive to Apple, that's perfectly understandable. lol

I don't know of any way we could do this at the moment. Not really my area of expertise though.

I believe screen sharing is simply VNC repackaged with some features that don't come with the default vnc setup (like encryption). Technically no chat session is required for screen sharing use (Finder can start them with vnc://hostname:port/), however adding the ability to do so via iChat is a huge usability improvement that makes things extremely simple.

I see no reason Adium couldn't incorporate something similar. It may be as simple as getting the remote hosts global ip address and using a call to finder to start the screen sharing session.

I initially thought that as well, but some people more informed than myself have said there's more to it than that.

I believe that iChat also does NAT negotiation, most likely using the same mechanisms it uses for video chat NAT negotiation.