GroupKit1.0 from the University of Calgary

Sometime in 1998, an attempt was made, for reasons of software archaelogical curiosity, to build GroupKit1.0 from the University of Calgary on top of ivtools. This version of GroupKit, from Mark Roseman and Saul Greenberg, was delivered on top of the third beta release of InterViews 3.1, published in 1990. Subsequent versions were written on top of Tcl/Tk.

GroupKit1.0 relied extensively on the Dispatch class library, and the use of binary iostreams for distributed communication. Subsequent evolutions to either the Dispatch library or the iostreams library (at least the libstdc++ version) seem to have disabled GroupKit1.0. The assumption that might be the problem was the technique of pushing bytes back onto an incoming binary socket stream as a way of managing distributed communication.

Because of the scientific free software ethic involved, all components are still available for investigation and/or fixing if anyone is so motivated. Alternates to the Dispatch library, like ACE from Doug Schmidt, now exist, but it is possible that this original approach attempted by programmers at the University of Calgary might still be viable if upgraded to the latest capability of iostreams. With it comes one pile of C++ software applicable to multi-media conferencing.

Here is the original GroupKit1.0.tar.Z

Here is the original README

Here is a patch which upgrades GroupKit1.0 to build on ivtools.

Here is the latest version of GroupKit