Progress with port on the Pocket PC

[Athanasios Karapantelakis]

Hello.

This is an update regarding the progress done in the pocket pc version 
of minisip (you can find it under the branches/ppcgui folder of the SVN 
repository. Because of the number of modifications made since the last 
commit, I will now delete the old ppcgui branch, then upload the new 
one. I have already talked with Erik about the large mails that might be 
generated reporting these changes, which will probably exceed the 
maximum threshold set, so they will not be forwarded to the list. This 
should be the last huge update in this branch, since I have now set up a 
local repository to synchronize with the minisip repository.

The most prominent change concerns the introduction of a new library, 
namely "libmconsole". As mentioned in a previous mail, this library 
contains a function which converts "char *" strings to "wchar_t *" 
(unicode), which is deemed necessary in case we want text output on the 
screen of the Ipaq. If the architecture is different from Windows CE, 
the function simply outputs the initial char * argument. This library 
also resolves an issue we have seen on the textui gui both on windows 32 
and on windows ce: interleaving text. This occurs when mutiple threads 
want to output text at the same time. The solution is to define a 
critical region enclosing the code that outputs the text on the standard 
output, ensuring that only one thread at a time can access that specific 
piece of code. Finally the library can be configured to send UDP text 
messages at run-time, instead of printing the text to screen. The 
recipient can then use a packet sniffer to capture the messages. This is 
useful when debugging the GUI, which lucks the informative text output 
of the console version. In contradiction with the gtk+ version of 
minisip in win32, it is impossible to have multiple windows visible at 
the same time. Instructions on how to utilize this functionality, is 
included under the "debugging" section of the documentation.

Unfortunately the problem of resolving domain names to IP addresses 
still exists, as I haven't yet found a library that can solve the issue 
(I searched for "libdns", all I could find with that name was a linux 
module). However, the client was successful in sending a register 
message and getting a positive reply from a SIP registar in our lab 
testbed (Sip Express Router v. 0.9.3), indicating that the solution to 
the synchronization issues referenced in a previous mail is on track. I 
will try and document this step in more detail in the following days.

Note that if you want to test the client yourself, you might want to use 
the "minisp.conf" file bundled with this release (located under the 
"resources" folder). This file is set to use the correct sound driver, 
letting you adjust it to your sip proxy settings.