NineChime forum

Neither PaintBBS or ShiPainter is being actively maintained, as far as I know.  They have not seen updates in over two years, and the author is nowhere to be found.

It is fairly easy to reverse engineer the applets, and I do have copies of the "decompiled" sources without comments and context.  But, this is a violation of the license, so I don't care to modify the applets unless they both simply stop working completely.  I've run into that sort of issue when people had the SocketPermission() errors, but those were resolved with a new version of Java.

Well, that depends what modifications you'd like to make.  "Abandonware" does not exist, so my feeling is that modifying the applets to add features isn't really acceptable.  It's the responsibility of the programmer involved to make a new project, rather than patch up someone else's project without permission.

I tend to focus on improving compatibility and fixing bugs, so there aren't many things I'd like to changes in the applets.  Above all else, multipart encoding would be a major improvement, because then, it would be possible to "legally" import cookies without requiring any hacks or headers.  That  alone makes coding the applets, and using them as modules on forum software, a major problem.  Part of the reason why oekaki mods don't exist for forums like phpBB or vBulletin is because the applets are simply not compatible with the authorization systems used by modern forum software.  Wacintaki gets by using custom authorization code.  That would not be possible on other boards that use the $_COOKIE superglobal.  OekakiBBS, in particular, is impossible to use correctly.  Technically, it should not even work at all!  Modern web browsers find ways to "fix" the applet's behavior, but this will not work once XHTML becomes more widespread.

The other thing would be nice to fix is the pixel drag delta in ShiPainter.  That is, when you click, the applet won't draw the pixel.  You have to click, hold, and move the mouse cursor to the adjacent pixel to get the applet to draw anything.  Photoshop has a similar problem with its brushes and the way it handles interpolation with the pencil and pen tools.  It's a major pain for pixel artists like me.

The major obstacle for me is that I don't know Java that well.  Practically every change I made to the code made the Java compiler throw a tantrum, so I had to get myself an IDE.  I stopped working on the code when I found out the SocketPermission() issue wasn't the fault of the applet, and the trial period for my IDE ran out.