We don’t permit the support nor endoning the use of another client, Spark works perfectly well, i’m very sorry that your system has some severe flaws and is misconfigured that seems to cause the JVM to crash. Thanks
Pushing people away from Spark isn’t what this community is about, so, please don’t do it.
Insulting people like jcarson and acting like you run this community or work for Jive isn’t what this community is about, so, please don’t do it.
Spark works perfectly well, i’m very sorry that your system has some severe flaws and is misconfigured that seems to cause the JVM to crash.
Thats great. Blame the users. Spark can not have any problems.
We have found Spark also to be buggy and have also moved away from it in our environment to Coccinella.
I’d like you to quote me on these points:
- That i work for jive, quote me on saying that
- That i own this community, quote me on saying that
I’m not insulting anyone and nor have i even said that spark has no issues, but you people seem to be constantly promoting other software in a “Spark” Support forum, do you see the issues here? another point is that this software is open source, no one is paid to do the work they are/have done on this program and to be constantly swamped with people who are saying that the software is essentially rubbish and are taking their business elsewhere with other software, how do you think that looks?
Oh, it’s a war I suggest everyone to chill out. I’m trying to understand both sides.
WinSrev is trying to improve Spark at a free will, spending his free time to do this. So you must understand that this must be annoing to constantly hear such talks. You must understand that Spark doesnt have a developer at this time. I mean real Jive Software developer working at full time on this project. So there is no way to estimate release or to tell if it will be released at all. Everyone is free to jump in, to submit patches, and some folks are doing this. SVN is updating quite often. Of course, WinSrev can push all unresolved bugs to next version and release 2.6.0 Final, but it won’t be stable. Releasing Beta 2, 3, 4? I won’t protest to that. But it’s up to WinSrev to decide wether he will have time for that.
As i’m kinda at the other side (using Spark, not developing), i can also understand Spark users. Someone maybe has deployed Spark in work environment and they have issues and can’t know when the new version will be released. Well you can only blame Jive Software itself for almost abandoning the project. But this is free software. I dont say this must be like that. But it happens. Priorities changed, they dont have time to invest in Spark development. But you didnt pay the money for it and there was no obligation to provide you support (apart these forums). The source is available, you a free to make your dream client.
Also you can blame Sun Microsystems Jive Software is using Java. Well, i still use Spark at home and at work, and i cant agree that it’s not working. Currently it’s a very nice client, with good set of features. And new features are being added (also some of my requests, that’s great). It’s slow and sluggish sometimes. This can be annoing. And on the forums i always suggest to try other clients if people are complaining about high resources usage or slow response. I’m not doing this to propagate other clients, i just dont believe Java can be real fast in GUI application in near future, especialy on low resources machines. Native windows client (for Windows) can be much faster i think.
Suggesting of other clients is not bad i think. Maybe just not in this thread and in such manner.
Well said wroot. Like you I can see both side of the argument. Spark is a good client and it is certainly at the top of the list when people ask me what client they should use but also encourage them to look at a variety of clients to see what is out there and what works best for them.
winsrev - I appreciate the time and energy that you put into Spark. Reading over the previous posts I think the statement you made of “We don’t permit the support nor endoning the use of another client” may to some people sound like you’re speaking for the community and by extension Jive.
Cheers,
Ryan
Also, about “When it’s done.”. Those who often visit forums and attend live chats know the situation. We even are making jokes, asking WinSrev "So when the new version? ". We know that he’s tired of that question. But for newcomer such answer can sound a bit rude, like you dont even want to answer. Maybe this could be changed to “There is no estimated date for the next release right now” or something like that. More officially
Yeah but, it’s a bit unfair on both the user and the developers if people are trying to get support and instead of getting the help they need they are referred to a different peiece of software, that’s not the aim of this “Spark Support” forum at all. The aim is to help people with their problems.
OK I keep getting all these replies in my email from this forum ever since my post and did not realize what kind of drama I would start with my one single post but …
ALL I WAS TRYING TO DO WAS HELP PEOPLE!!!
I think the community should move away from spark and that is my personal opinion and the basis for this is as follows.
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I have never received any help in these “spark forums” for spark performance issues or any issue for that matter and 99% of the employees at my company currently all have similar issues so it is most certainly a client issue (recently 100’s of issues have been resolved with the alternate client we are now replacing spark with which is Pidgin)
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We currently support spark for our employees and it has always been a big joke because spark has issues no matter what system you have. Including Quad Core CPU’s with 2GB+ RAM (recently I was told in these forums to use another client if I was unhappy with spark so I decided to do so)
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The community of jabber/xmpp client developers/users should all collaborate their efforts and pick one client that works best for the majority of users and build on that client so that one xmpp/jabber client changes everything for the better future of xmpp/jabber clients.
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I used to love spark and still wish that sparks user friendly interface was combined with better performance and I used to always defend spark years back when we had issues with previous versions. (we used spark all the way back to version 2.0.8 and stuck with it till 2.5.8)
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I never expected superior support for spark since it is a free client and is an open source community developed client but used to think that one day it would all get better, now I see I was sadly mistaken.
All this being said I wish I could bring myself to apologize for my post but I cannot do that due to the fact that not a single response was intended to help me or anyone else but instead has probably pushed everyone further away from spark so again I say this…
Use Pidgin it works much better!
I suggest anyone who reads this and is looking for a better performing xmpp/jabber client to try Pidgin and would also encourage anyone who is part of the community of spark developers to join the Pidgin community and maybe combine efforts on developing plugins etc for that client instead. After my post yesterday and after the replies it has become abundantly clear that SPARK IS DEAD!!
Thank You all who defended my post and I hope that someone was helped by my suggestion to use Pidgin since it has helped many users at my company who had consistent spark issues and now use Pidgin in its place.
View convertion history window still wait wait wait and can’t see the history log.
java xml parser is slowww or bugy.
So you’re going to comment about the drama of the thread and then add to it? good job. I love it when people say projects are dead that aren’t dead, that’s really helpful.
Overall Pidgin has pretty lacking XMPP support (even after it’s big improvements recently) and a fairly ugly interface. Adium X actually takes Pidgin’s core and combines it with a pretty interface for OS X. There was also another windows client supposedly in the works that is based on libpurple that was supposed to do for Windows what Adium did for OS X. Course I’m always displeased with the XMPP support of multi-protocol clients. Psi is probably the best X overall XMPP client in my opinion in terms of support for everything, but it’s interface is not something that I’d ever want to use in a daily basis. There’s always been talk in the XMPP world about creating a “one true client” but as always, everyone wants to say that but no one wants to do the work.
Derek did a great job with Spark, but his career took him in another direction. I ended up taking over but was stretched too thin between too many projects and wasn’t able to put solid time in it. I was extremely pleased when winsrev offered to take the project over and he’s already done a ton of great work. Plus he asked me to build a new beta and I haven’t yet had time since I managed to blow up Openfire somehow. (sigh) So that should be coming soon.
I totally understand winsrev’s frustration. I understand everyone else’s as well. At the end of the day, if more folk would be willing to help contribute code and work on things they find important, things would get done quicker. =) It’s much easier to complain than actually fix. Especially when you are having trouble even reproducing things. Not claiming that everyone has the skills to contribute code to the project though. I used to get very frustrated when folk complained about features they wanted in the IM Gateway plugin that I didn’t have time to work on due to having a real job. =P Even now that I am working for Jive, I don’t have official work time to put into the plugin, so it’s all in my free time which is balanced with actually spending time with my family, god forbid.
No client is perfect. I love Spark’s UI, but it takes up a lot of resources. Frankly a LOT of things take up too many resources nowadays. Firefox is one of the few things I’ve seen take up less resources than before lately. (2 -> 3) My main development environment requires me to devote a freakin’ gig of memory to it. I’m half considering trying Eclipse 'cause it takes up less resources, but the extra resources of my main dev tool buys me a lot of great features, so it’s hard to think about giving up on it. Just like Spark, it was not easy for me to switch from Spark to iChat. I miss a lot of what Spark can do. Just when I have the ginormous IDE open I need to save all of the resources I can. When I’m not running it I tend to still use Spark. Everything’s a tradeoff. One random thought I just had, Derek mentioned that the “cool new theme” of Spark under Windows ended up causing high resource usage, and switching to “use system ui” or whatever under preferences made things go back to normal. It’s possible that was just a poor resource friendly choice. (the theme for windows that is) I actually use just about every client for different purposes. =) Spark, iChat, Psi, Adium X, Pidgin, Coccinella — but of course I’m probably an exception.
All in all, lets let this thread die off, it’s clear it’s not heading anywhere productive. I don’t want to close the thread officially, but I will if I have to. There’s no sense in bickering back and forth. Hell, winsrev’s time could be better spent working on Spark instead of watching this thread and repliying. ;D
Now, lets see if I can’t get a fixed Openfire released. Not a good day yesterday. Trying to give it positive vibes today. =)
kkimber wrote:
View convertion history window still wait wait wait and can’t see the history log.
java xml parser is slowww or bugy.
What? Really?? I thought I fixed that! I haven’t seen that happen in a long time! =(
Although pidgin may be an answer for you, and you are free to express you opinion, it is not for everyone. We use spark because in a corporate environment we ne the control we can get with spark. We can limit who has access to external gatways, etc. Furthermore it is designed to take advantage of advanced features in openfire. I would also like to point out that no software is perfect nor ever will be, and performance is as much based on your system software config as its hardware. We use fairly advanced settings and features with openfire and spark and have little ot no problems. So to say it does not work or that it is broken as a blanket statement is wrong.
My comment of when it is done was meant to be in jest. But since people seem so vocal on the issue I feel a need to comment. Spark is an incredibly complex peiece of code. The fact that WinSrev even attempts to improve it with no finacial compensation should be commended. There should be not expectation of rapid releases with only one part-time developer. If your or any other individual with coding expertise would like to contribut then by all means do so.
Lastly SPARK IS NOT DEAD! Look at the svn dates things are changing. There is no point to continue to put out revisions of spark beta with know issues though. If you want that then by all means compile th source, or get pidgen ( joking there). Instead of flaming a person attempting to contribute to the furture of the project try to support him.
I am not so certain that is a spark issue. My histories open very fast. Maybe something happened to your spark preference folder that corrupted the history logs. You could move it to your desktop after quitting spark. Then relaunch spark, have a few conversations and try to view the history. If you have the same proble could you open a new thread so we can try to fix your specific issue.
How big is the log file? I have a feeling that going 2/3 Megabytes might cause some slowness.
This beta (v2) is 2 years old! Does it seriously take that long to make it a stable release?
Thanks for re-activating this old thread. Currently Andrew is not really active in this forum so one may assume that he does not spend too much time with the development of Spark. The number of active developers is quite small.