On Mon, 2008-05-26 at 12:49 +0200, Jo Vermeulen wrote:
I have a XMPP version working, but had some problems finding my way around a few features. I don't know how to get a list of contacts, or initiatiate a group chat.
There is no such abstraction in Twisted for XMPP, yet. I've worked on a framework for implementing XMPP's 'subprotocols' in the Wokkel library [1] and this framework has been contributed back into Twisted recently, and has been part of the Twisted 8.0.1 release. On top of that there are several of such subprotocols implemented in Wokkel, among them the protocol implementations for dealing with rosters (client and server side). All of those should eventually go back in Twisted when I get around to it.
As far as I know, there is no implementation for the client side of the multi-user chat (MUC) protocol yet built on Twisted, although there is a MUC service called Palaver. Its authors are considering rewriting the protocol handling part to match the subprotocol abstraction I mentioned above.
Even if I succeed in doing this, would it be possible to generalize this for both XMPP and MSN?
Sure. No one has stepped up to make that happen, recently. Personally, I have very little interest in supporting closed protocols like MSN's. However, there is the concept of XMPP gateways to other IM networks that might be useful for you. It would allow you to create a bot that talks using one protocol (XMPP).
Finally, I was wondering how mature Twisted words is. It seems to work well for XMPP, but how mature is the MSN support? Are there other libraries I could consider, or is it possible to generalize other libraries within Twisted?
I would say that the XMPP and IRC parts of Words have seen the most activity recently. The XMPP stuff works well, supports a fair number of projects, but is a bit spartan. I'm working hard to address the latter, though.
I cannot comment much on the other parts, although I know there has been work on Twisted based XMPP gateways to AIM and ICQ, that have more mature implementations of those than what is currently in Words. So far there hasn't been much progress to move those improvements back into Words [2].
[1] http://wokkel.ik.nu/ [2] http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/1081