I've been using Phex on my Linux box for the past 3 weeks with no complaints. I'm surprised Phex isn't more popular since there are no other open source gui clients for linux. Anyways, I was wondering what the (near) future holds for Phex. Are there any plans to implement any of the features that everyone is dying for? I realise that stability is probably a priority, but from what I have experienced, it doesn't seem to be an issue. Here are the two features I am wondering about.

1. Instant Messaging/Chat
(I'm not too fond of Gnucleus' or Defender's approach to this)

2. Segmented downloads from multiple hosts
(To my knowlege, only XoloX has implemented this and I haven't gotten a chance to try it out, not sure if it runs under Wine)

Any info would be great. Congrats/thanx are in order for Konrad and the Phex developers. Later.

The first step in creating Phex was to strip Furi (it´s predecessor) from all chat and IRC capabilietes. This improved performance a lot and not many people have been missing them. So it´s not very likely we will integrate them again. Phex is for downloading files and only downloading them. If you want to chat there´s a wealth of fatastic programs out there, so just grab one of them.

The segmented downloads is truly a feature requested by many users and I will start looking into it as soon as my work pressure gets a little less. At the moment I have to do research and programming on JMS, RMI, EJB, CORBA, IIOP, J2EE in general and similar things all day so I am happy not to see too many lines of java-code in the evenings. But this will change and I will come back with a whole lot of new coding experience and funny ideas.

I'm anxious to see segmented downloading applied. As for the chat feature, I agree that an IRC tie in is not the way to go. What would be great (and seems like an easy implementation) would be a 1 on 1 messaging system where you could send a message to one person who was on your upload/download/host list (who is also using Phex of course). There is no need for chat rooms, I agree. But sometimes when using the gnutella network, you want to warn people that a file they are downloading isn't great quality, or that you have to stop they're downloads while you reboot etc etc, and I think an implementation of a 1 on 1 instant messaging system would do the trick. Just my opinion of course

Hrmm, would it de difficult to make a separate messaging system that piggybacked on Phex??? Kinda like how AIMster piggybacked on AIM. Then (i'm assuming) it would not slow down the performance of phex and would be a separate entity for those who wanted it. If someone could tell me if it's possible, and how to do it...i just might start working on it.