CCF is a software system that supports collaborative, distributed, computer-based problem solving in the natural sciences, business, government, and in educational environments. The goal is to evolve a virtual environment for distributed computation that supports integrated human AV communication, high performance heterogeneous computing and distributed data management facilities. CCF is a research project at Emory University involving the Math/Computer Science and Chemistry departments.
This is alpha release 0.99 of CCF -- Collaborative Computing Frameworks.
This software is provided as is with no warranty expressed or implied. We hope you find it useful, but we won't be held responsible for any damage that may occur from reading, compiling, installing, using, or even thinking about it.
CCF is Copyright (C) 1996 by Emory University except for the code in directories GSM, LPC, LPC10 in the CCFaudio directory and is distributed under the terms of GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Library General Public License (LPGL). The files COPYING and COPYING.LIB in each directory will tell exact licensing restrictions.
This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the license, or (at your option) any later version.
CCF was created by Vaidy Sunderam, Injong Rhee, Alan Krantz, Shun Yan Cheung, Julie Sult, Soeren Olesen, Paul Gray, Phil Hutto, Sarah Chodrow, Michael Hirsch, Ted Goddard, Mic Grigni, N. Balaguru, Jim Nettles, Luigi Marzilli, Sue Onuschak, Scott Childs, Kevin Williams.
The CCF project is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation under the multidisciplinary challenges initiative.
CCF currently supports three platforms: IRIX-6.2, SunOS-5.6, and SunOS-5.5.1. The SunOS-5.6 version is the most thoroughly tested.
CCFchat is a text-based communications tool that can function either as an alternative to audio communication (e.g. when bandwidth is limited) or as a tool for taking and saving notes about the session. All messages appear in the same order for every member. Users that join late receive all conversation that occurred before they joined.
Popup windows don't move if the underlying window moves.
There are two input modes available: single-line and multi-line. To enter a message to the conversation, the user moves the mouse pointer inside the input window and begins typing. When the user is finished, press the send button. The text will appear in the Conversation History window. If the user is using the single line input option, pressing the return key will also send the message. If the user is using the multiline input option, pressing the control key and the return key at the same time will send the message.
CCFchat allows the user to cut text from another application and paste it in the input window. To paste a selection into the input window, the user should click the second or third button. Note: some selection methods are not supported yet. If you find a common selection method that is unsupported, please email us.
CCFchat allows the user to save a conversation to a file. If a file is not chosen using the "save as.." option in the File pulldown menu, the file is saved to /tmp/ccfchat-tmp.
CCFchat allows users to specify a color for their names to distinguish among messages in the conversation. This can be done by pressing the preferences button, choosing the color and pressing apply. Users can also change input type and font type and size using the preferences panel. Pressing the save button will save them as default parameters to the user's .ccfrc file. To see a list of CCFchat participants, press the Participants button. This will list the members of the session along with the color they are using for their name. To see more information about a particular participant (host, join time, and current status) press on the participant's name.
CCFchat users are notified of new text entries from other user aurally (i.e. a beep). If the option is on (denoted by a green musical note), a beep will sound if the user received a message from another participant. It will not beep if the message is received from the local user. Users can disable the bell option by pressing the note. The note will turn red when the bell option is off. To enable it, press the note again.
CCFchat can be run both within a CCSM-based session, and stand-alone. The stand-alone CCFchat displays a status bar that informs the user of users joining and leaving the chat session and changes in users preferences.
To run CCFchat standalone:
Determine which white page server you will use for cctl Either launch your own or find one that is running. Note: all users must link to the same cctlwp to communicate.
Set the CCTL_WP_HOST_NAME environment variable to the cctl server.
Enter:
ccfchat -session "sessionname" [-name "user-name"]
where sessionname is the name of the CCTL session, and
user-name is a nickname for the local user (this defaults to
the login name.)
CCFchat also runs inside CCSM (the CCF virtual desktop). One can initialize a session to run CCFchat at startup by setting the appropriate toggle in the tools menu and then launching the session. If a session is already running, one can use the same menu to start up CCFchat within the session. To open CCFchat inside CCSM, click on the chat tool icon (sheet of paper) on the CCSM toolbar.
