5 Dolda Connect is a peer-to-peer file sharing program, designed around
6 the Direct Connect protocol. It is written in a fashion that is
7 intended for flexibility and easy extension. It currently only
8 supports the normal Direct Connect protocol, but support is also
9 planned for the ADC protocol, and it can most likely be made to
10 support a great deal of other file sharing protocols as well.
14 Dolda Connect is built around a client-server model, in the way that
15 there is a server (daemon) program carrying out all the actual
16 file-sharing work, and a number of client programs that connect to the
17 server in order to command it and display its status. The interaction
18 between the client and server is carried out using a well-defined
19 protocol, making it fairly easy to write new clients for specialized
20 tasks. It is worthy of note that the default configuration file
21 disables running clients over the network, for convenience of
22 setup. See the INSTALL file for details and instructions on how to
23 enabled networked clients.
25 To make it easier to write new clients, a C library has been written
26 to make common functions easier, such as connecting, authenticating,
27 sending requests and parsing the responses. The C library also has a
28 wrapper module for GNU Guile, so that clients can be written in
29 Scheme. As of 0.3, there is also a Python module available seperately.
31 None of these are documented (yet), but there are a number of examples
32 scattered around the source tree, so it should not be awfully hard to
33 figure out how to do simple things. If in doubt, just contact the
38 So far, the following clients are distributed along with the source
41 * A Gtk2 based GUI, which loosely resembles a normal Direct Connect
43 * A GNOME panel applet for showing the status of current downloads in
45 * A Gaim/Pidgin chat plugin for chatting in hubs and writing private
46 messages (only for Gaim 2.0.0 and above).
47 * A command-line automatic downloader written in Scheme.
48 * A chat logger written in Scheme.
49 * A hub manager written in Scheme.
51 The GNOME applet and Gaim plugin are somewhat experimental. Both work
52 fairly well, but they do require special care during installation,
53 since neither GNOME nor Gaim/Pidgin usually look for applets/plugins
54 in the directories where Dolda Connect gets installed by default. See
55 the files doc/INSTALL.applet and doc/INSTALL.gaim for further details.
59 See the doc/INSTALL file.
63 Documentation is still rather weak, but it is getting better. Besides
64 the README and INSTALL* files, there are now manpages for the daemon
65 and its config file. For any information still not found, please do
66 not hesitate to contact the author. Any further documentation aside
67 from this README file is located in the `doc' directory.
71 Dolda Connect is primarily written by Fredrik Tolf. He can be reached
72 through the e-mail address <fredrik@dolda2000.com>. His homepage is
73 <http://www.dolda2000.com/~fredrik/>.
77 This document was last updated 2007-10-15, reflecting release 1.0 of