definate

A really good feature would be the development of an announce script feature/plugin that announced new files when they are hashed. For instance, I am regularly getting new downloads put into several different folders, when new downloads go into them, I either need to tell people in the server chats or private messages that I now have new stuff, or they need to go and check in these folders for new files. It would be good to have the ability to announce it to several channels or similar, and perhaps have a RSS feed which could trigger downloads. (Just brain storming here) The only problem I see would be in ensuring that when hashing a new share, these are not announced, else you are likely to flood the channel. I am getting these ideas from the large communities around FTP sites and Torrent sites. These sites help people mass share new things by informing people of new things, and making it easy to automate transfers. The more this could be done on DC the more DC would become a de facto standard for sharing. Either way, it would really help for the few small communities I participate in, and I'm sure many other people would find this really handy. What does everyone think?

As far as I know, hub's are not sent information on files that have been hashed. They merely allow communication between 2 peers, and facilitate regulating the sharing. That means a feature such as this could not be implemented on the hub side. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this, as if the hub does know about all files hashed, this would be a much easier implementation method) This sentence "A Hubowner does not necessarily want that "normal" user can post things on his hub without his acknowledgement." makes no sense. Are you talking about hub owners not necessarily wanting normal users sending messages on his hub without his acknowledgement? If so, he can regulate this using the restrictions on creating a channel, or restrictions on who can message to the channel, and more advanced hubs could even regulate what is said by kicking them based on incorrect information. Or are you talking about hub owners not necessarily wanting normal users sharing files on his hub without his acknowledgement? If so, this goes against everything that the DC is setup for, so I don't think ANY hub owner would want this. Since these are the only two things either of these plugins would be doing (though the RSS plugin would be purely peer 2 peer communication). The RSS feed would be using either the direct connect protocol to send and recieve an xml file with the data, which is interpreted, or it could use http to be backwards compatible with other aggregators. Either way, it would be a good idea. Having it built into Apex DC++ through a plugin, like Azureus, uTorrent, and all the popular torrent clients. However, I believe the announce script would be easier as it only requires Apex DC++ and could probably be done in a plugin. This way it could be developed quickly and put into circulation so people can start benefitting from it.

The automatic system is still voluntary, so it requires you to turn it on. Additionally, most people download to a few specific directories, sometimes just 1 specific directory. This means that "newly shared files" can be limited to files that have entered this directory. When a file is moved, it is easy to find, by searching for its name or by rifling through the hierarchy, so this information need not be announced. To reduce the flood of traffic, the information could be specified to be announced to a #annouce (for instance) channel, where only this information is passed on. This makes it quite easy to either ignore the information, or passively monitor it. Additionally, it allows new files to move faster throughout the network, which can help people race for quota and similar. This feature could greatly improve the efficiency of DC as a sharing medium of 0sec / 0day files.

Okay, this would be an optional plugin or setting, so if you don't want it, don't use it. What this feature(s) would be doing is emulating the extremely popular features of people who run proper FTP sites and Torrent sites. In a rather big hub you do like they do on rather big sites, and you have a channel dedicated to announce scripts only. This way that window has all of the announce information, and you can track it easily, without interrupting conversation. Or, as I said before, you turn it off. No, we don't want Apex to cook our dinner, although they might be good at it. What I was referring to was elevating DC to the more professional file sharing level. This will generate a lot wider adoption of the protocol. The DC community needs to keep innovating servers and clients to make them easier, more efficient, and competitive with the features of other solutions. Thanks.