What additional features or improvements would you like to see added to WinMX?

[GhostShip]

The current protocol specifies a maximum of 65535 files which is plenty for most folks any change to that number would mean breaking compatibility with older clients as the field size is set in stone. The browse function is artificially limited to approximately 5000 files for a primary client and 3000 for a secondary client and increasing that may seem like a great idea at first but would have negative security impications for those holding the files and could be used to add extra burden to the network by an attacker so tbh whilst it may seem great its actually a liability and thus I wouldnt wish to increase its potential scope, there has even been some talk of blocking the browse function however as this is done at the primary client level thats not an option at this time but in the future we could implement a browse blocking feature for those that want to limit their exposure to data miners whislt still sharing files in general.

The 2 gig file limit was as I recall put in place to facillitate usage with the win98 file system and similarly is set in stone for older clients, part of the current projects aims are to increase that limit in the future and to secure the currently "plain text" file transfer system in usage, both of those plans will involve breaking compatibility with the current client and for a pretty good reason  so whislt the aim is to primarily build ourselves a clone our eye is also on the future and the security concerns it brings with it.

[wonderer]

There is a max that can be seen.
The max for a secundairy client is 3000 and for a primary client 5000
There is no max of files to be shared.

[White Stripes]

The 2 gig file limit was as I recall put in place to facillitate usage with the win98 file system

win95 actually... win95 revision 'A' (retail) was FAT16 capable only... which is hard limited to 2GB even tho it was "win32" and ran winmx... later versions... win95 revision 'B' aka 'OSR2' (OEM only... i think...) as well as the relatively rare revision 'c',  and of course win98 and its incarnations, supported FAT32 which has a 4GB hard limit... EXT2/3/4 Reiser and NTFS dont have these limits but winmx is old as dirt.. not cross platform... and most at the time it was 'new' were running a flavor of win9x....

[achilles]

Ok, i wasn't aware that WinMX had the capability to share 65535 files which makes since since that you have 65536 ports on your computer.  That is including port 0.  Well, there is definitely no need to raise that number.  Browsing is limited to roughly 3000 files per secondary connections, and 5000 per primary connection.  Though i would like to see those capabilities extended to a higher #  it would not be worth it if one had to pay at the price of a less secure client.  Security, and stability should always be the most top concern.   Sharing files larger than 2gb should definitely be raised.  Do you think it would be hard to show files you already have completed in your library highlighted so one does not waste time downloading duplicate files?  

[achilles]

Another great feature i believe would be a feature allowing the user to specify the minimum, and maximum file size when conducting searches.  E-mule Xtreme has this, and i have found it to be very handy.  I'm able to filter out a lot of search results that i don't want.  Also an option to filter out unwanted content like porn.

[Bluey_412]

or Albumart in Browses...

i dunno if i would wanna wait tho while a 10,000 file browse loads...

and i notice that a long running browse load often causes queues to collapse cos it lengthens the 'Waiting for Network Reply' refresh time, and those waits time out...

[Bieb]

or Albumart in Browses...

i dunno if i would wanna wait tho while a 10,000 file browse loads...

and i notice that a long running browse load often causes queues to collapse cos it lengthens the 'Waiting for Network Reply' refresh time, and those waits time out...

As most audio files to not have album art embedded into the files themselves a new client would have to have access to a large database of album art, these services usually have their own api and each user would need to register for their own api key. Or there would have to be our own album art server set up that would query and cache album art.

But as I see it Ghostship only wants to have a clone client without any new bells and whistles first. So really this thread is pointless atm. but maybe in the future....


And the time it takes to browse is artificially limited, so that could be sped up quite a bit too on a new client.

The reason for these limitations are the slow connections that we had back in the day WinMX was made. Now it's not really a problem.

[White Stripes]

I'm able to filter out a lot of search results that i don't want.  Also an option to filter out unwanted content like porn.

first box; search term you are looking for
second box; -things you dont want to show up

example;

first box; dallas (lets say its a band... there probably is a band by that name for all i know... theres one called alabama after all...)
second box; -debbie (we want the band after all not the porn..) the 'minus' is important....

want very a specific object?

first box; "very specific search" (the quotes are important... its 'exact phrase' matching...)


winmx acts just like google (before google added its cloned 'bing' look and dumbed down features) without the spell checking....

or Albumart in Browses...

you gotta be kidding me.... you would need to know how to parse the various metadata formats used in several audio file formats... the xiph codecs (commonly vorbis & flac) are the only ones i know of that actually have some sort of 'standard' in that regard (how many different ways can you think of to put a jpeg in an mp3 ... ive got 3 off the top of my head... mp3 was never ment to have metadata... it was a kludge added on in 1996 to a stream (mp3 is not a container format its a raw stream) format that was released in 1993)

65535 files which makes since since that you have 65536 ports on your computer.

65536 is just a 16 bit number (got a calculator? do 2 to the power of 16 tell me what number you get) ... it has nothing to do with portspace per say... but is an an interesting coincidence...



...sorry for the rather cynical post... ...im... having a long day...

[GhostShip]

Do you think it would be hard to show files you already have completed in your library highlighted so one does not waste time downloading duplicate files?  

I thought the current client actually does this already , however if it doesnt such a feature can be made to operate rather simply by checking the download directory and comparing an index of file hash results to the hashes obtained via a network search, perhaps by using a seperate "worker" thread to ensure no heavy burden is placed on the clients normal functions.

Stripes is aware of what the 65535 limit signifies I,m sure but to those of you who are wondering just whats special about this number thats simple its the biggest number that can fit into one of the set data sizes computers utlise, things like the ports and file amounts will fit into 2 hexadecimal digits (this is termed a" WORD") whereas items like an IP require double the size to fit into and thus the scope of potential  numbers is larger ( to store an IP you need to use another size of data storage called a "DWORD") , I hope this has cleared up the mystery for some of you and my apologies if this makes no sense at all, as long as WinMX knows the difference is all most of us care about  

As to what can be filtered, the answer is basically anything as all of the actual filtering is done locally by the winmx client itself and thus your settings are the arbitor of what actually appears in your search results window, adding a different filtering method from emule would likley be more than possible, winmx allows for some fields to be fine tuned to save network overhead but its well known you get a lot more results than you actually see and for the reason I mentioned above.

[Bluey_412]

the need to filter things like Albumart is in the browse, not the search window, and some sort of options or filter settings box IN the browse windows would do that..

Or mebbe an item in the WinMX settings sheet, where you can specify strings, like you do in certain functions in Moni

[Bieb]

Well all of the features pertaining to manipulating search results are possible as that is all done client side. Nothing would need to change in the core protocol for searches for those features to be added.

[achilles]

What language is the new client being written in?  C# or C++?

[achilles]

Does anyone recommend a good open source free compiler?  I'm trying to learn some basic programming in C#, and C++.  I looked at bloodshed dev in the past, but it seems the project is no longer being developed.  Is Bloodshed Dev still a good choice or should i go with something else?

[Zénar]

If you want to do programming in C#, you can always use Monodevelop but personally, I'm using Visual Studio 2008 for C# and C++.

[achilles]

What language is the new client being written in?

[White Stripes]

Does anyone recommend a good open source free compiler?

http://gcc.gnu.org/

..or bloodsheds compiler... microsofts C# is... not worth it IMO... and its not what the new client is being written in anyway...

[achilles]

Ghost Ship, what language is the new client being written in?

[GhostShip]

I apologise for not noticing your question Achilles  

What we are using is basically the most similar language to what it was written with in the first place namely MS MFC C++, the original WinMX client is coded using MFC but it makes use of special templates and is sort of an MFC variant, obviously Kevin had more skill that we can bring to the field but as we are not setting our sights above what we can deliver I,m confident folks will be happy with what they see when we do so, one good aspect of all this is that this program will run on wine with little or no modification, however I know that wont please everyone , what I have proposed to a few folks is that once we have something constructed they can then look over the code and port it to the platform of their choice, basically to use this as a client template, that does seem the most simple idea to me as there's little point us all wasting time doing the same operation and making the same mistakes in many different languages when with a working model its pretty much easier to recreate the same function, at least that's my belief  

[achilles]

Has anyone looked at Soulseek? The GUI resembles Winmx.  Would this be violating copyright?  If its open source maybe someone could look at the code for some ideals on the new client. I'm not sure what its coded in.  http://www.slsknet.org/

[p2p rules]

Soulseek is a closed source program.
Check out this link for some open source versions of soulseek clients & servers.