Decibel project status

service architecture for multi-media based communication

The project is approaching the final phase; it is expected that the work is completed at the end of July.

During this project phase, continuous progress is made in the implementation of Decibel. The goal of this phase was to establish a full telephony stack for testing and demonstration. Further goals were to strengthen the KDE community interaction and the integration of the software into the KDE project.

In order to reach out for more recognition, documentation and community communication got more attention.

The deliverables of this phase are:

• rework website project description to be better understandable and more appealing;
• API reference manual (also on website);
• presentation at the akademy conference;
• Mini CTI stack consisting of:
  • simple Qt GUI for phone use using the new Decibel client library
  • Decibel + Tapioca + Telepathy
  • CTI connection manager for SNOM hardware VoIP phone
• release of Decibel.

Furthermore, the KDE developers decided to move Decibel into the `playground' directory of KDE's SVN server. Software in this directory get much more developer attention than in the branches where Decibel was hosted before.

The next step in development is to port the application KCall to Decibel, so that it can function as a Decibel front-end to users. It is intended to push Decibel into the codebase of KDE becoming an integral part of the KDE 4.1 release.

As a result of the discussion with the Telepathy team, the Decibel specification was extended to include more telephone specific CTI functionality. In the next project phase this functionality will be integrated into Tapioca and Decibel as well as made available from the client GUIs.

The website of the project has seen a relaunch with an improved structure. Documentation and HowTos were added in order to ease the application of Decibel. The restructured web site with added reference documentation on the provided APIs make Decibel better understandable to new developers and users. The intension is to make it easier for contributors and other interested parties to see the benefit in Decibel and what it can be used for. For the next phases of the project, plans are to add a whitepaper on the Decibel technology and to further improve the public documentation.

The project results will be exhibited at the SYSTEMS 2007 fair, in the Open Source park between other free software projects. The project team of basysKom GmbH will join KDE with its booth and demonstrate Decibel to a business audience.