Why not just make a generic XMPP/Jabber client first and then extend it to support TLS. So you don't bite off so much at once.
Dunno why you would have to integrate anything with MacTCP... TLS wouldn't have anthing to do with the transport later other than sitting on top of it? Or perhaps I am missing something.
I'm thinking (HTTP -> TLS) -> TCP or does TLS require closer integration with TCP than I am thinking?
If you make your app GPL you may be able to just use MatrixSSL as its quite small. I'm not a GPL propoent per say I'm acutally lean MIT/BSD... but its there and might save you headache.
These are all really good ideas. You're right about TLS not requiring as close integration with TCP as I originally thought. Making my app GPL doesn't bother me too much, so I'll probably just use MatrixSSL to save myself the trouble. Some programmers enjoy implementing everything from scratch (which is perfectly fine), but I'm more concerned with the end result.
check this out also..
http://strophe.im/libstrophe/ Its a small C XMPP library.
I had intended to get it working on my sparcstation. I did get the demo working though ... its probably a good C code base to start from.
I've downloaded it and am looking through it now.
One thing that may be possible (maybe even a very good idea) if you're interested in learning programming/networking on the old system and on a new system is to do the core of the client on a modern system like Linux/BSD/OSX/Windows and then have that computer communicate (in completely clear text, possibly using something like the IRC protocol) to the 68k Mac.
The things I would look at for examples of this are bitlbee, which does literally this thing (it is an xmpp/aim/msnm client that runs an IRC server that you can connect to in plain text), but it actually acts as an IRC server and Quassel, which has the "core" and "client" aspects.
This gives you more horsepower for the network and encryption bits of your application while letting you create a native Mac ssw6/ssw7 graphical experience on the client end, and also prevents network traffic from needing to go to the 68k Mac directly.
This would certainly speed the program up, but relying on a modern computer for core, end-user application functionality kind of takes the fun out of the project for me. I want to do something that makes 68k Macs a little bit more practical on the modern Internet.
I do, however, plan on doing some development on a modern machine, until I have MatrixSSL/Strophe/Expat figured out. I also have to wait for my SCSI cable to arrive, so I can load MPW onto my SE/30.
The first step on the Mac end will be getting the libraries to build. After this I can implement a text-based generic XMPP client. We'll see where it goes from there.
