It's been a long time since I've written anything. I've worked some 50 to 60 hours on my thesis this week. I've gotten a decent handle on java, built the first two drafts of the Client interface and applications, and started working on the server.
With the current system design, it doesn't make any sense to use RMI since I'm not really doing any object calling across the network. Instead I'm going to switch to regular socket programming as RMI entails a lot of overhead that I don't think is appropriate since I'm not utilizing RMI functionality. Also, using sockets simplifies the object model immensely.
I've done some work with the application aspect of this project. Now I've got two applications: the chat application, and then the classroom application--but i have to call it a blackboard because class is a reserved word in java.
I've gotten the naming schemes of things down and the client object hierarchy finally makes sense. Though I'm wondering what would be involved in adding new applications to the system. At some point I may have the applications dynamically loaded according to some initialization file, or maybe downloaded from the server....
We'll see....