It has been suggested that TOC2_protocol be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

The TOC protocol, or Talk to OSCAR protocol, was a protocol used by some third-party AOL Instant Messenger clients and several clients that AOL produced itself. Sometime near August 19, 2005 AOL discontinued support for the protocol and no longer uses it in any of the instant messaging clients it actively maintains, such as its Windows and Mac clients for the AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ systems. However, it once did produce several of its own TOC clients, including TiK and TAC which are written in Tcl/Tk, TNT which is written in Emacs Lisp, all of which are open source, and a Java client originally called TIC which later became the Quick Buddy web applet. AOL also provided the TOC protocol specification openly to developers in the hopes that they will use it instead of the proprietary OSCAR protocol they use themselves. The TOC2 protocol is still supported. Image File history File links Please see the file description page for further information. ... The factual accuracy of this section is disputed. ... To suggest a relevant news story for the main page, refer to the criteria then add your suggestion at the candidates page. ... In computing, a protocol is a convention or standard that controls or enables the connection, communication, and data transfer between two computing endpoints. ... In a two-party system a third party is a party other than the two dominant ones. ... The AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is an ad-supported instant messaging and presence computer program, published by AOL in October of 1997, which uses the OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol. ... In computing, a client is a system that accesses a (remote) service on another computer by some kind of network. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... August 19 is the 231st day of the year (232nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The ICQ Logo ICQ is an instant messaging computer program, created by Mirabilis, an Israeli startup company based in Tel-Aviv. ... Tik, is the street name of methamphetamine used by a sharply increasing number of addicts in the Western Cape province of South Africa. ... TAC is an open source instant messaging and chat client program written by AOL which uses the TOC protocol used by the AOL Instant Messenger system. ... // Tcl (originally from Tool Command Language, but nonetheless conventionally rendered as Tcl rather than TCL; and pronounced like tickle) is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. ... In computing, Tk is an open source, cross-platform widget toolkit, that is, a library of basic elements for building a graphical user interface (GUI). ... TNT is an open source instant messaging client which is designed to use AIM and uses AOLs TOC Protocol. ... This article is about the text editor. ... Lisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully-parenthesized syntax. ... Proprietary indicates that a party exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties. ... OSCAR is AOLs instant messaging and presence information protocol standing for Open System for CommunicAtion in Realtime. ... The factual accuracy of this section is disputed. ...

TOC was an ASCII-based protocol, while OSCAR is a binary protocol. In addition, TOC contained fewer features than its OSCAR counterpart. OSCAR provides such functionality as buddy icons, file transfer, and advertising. A buddy icon is a small image associated with an Instant messaging (IM) account. ... Generally speaking, advertising is the promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, usually by an identified sponsor. ...

How it works

TOC acted as a wrapper for the OSCAR protocol. In the grand scheme of things, the TOC server was nothing but an OSCAR client that happened to listen on a socket, translating messages between the two protocols. Upon login, the TOC client specified an OSCAR login server (presumably either login.oscar.aol.com or login.icq.com) that the TOC server used on behalf of the client. A wrapper can refer to several things: In computer science: a wrapper pattern (such as a driver wrapper) is a design pattern where a piece of code allows classes to work together that normally could not because of incompatible interfaces. ... A socket generally designates a cavity or region used for fitting and connecting some specific device. ...

TOC used FLAP to encapsulate its messages just as OSCAR does, however, FLAP has been hacked in such a way that it can be implemented on the same port as an HTTP server. By default, the TOC server operated in HTTP mode, indistinguishable from a typical web server. If a connecting client, in place of an HTTP request, writes the string "FLAPON" followed by two CRLFs, TOC would switch gears and start reading FLAP messages. Upon getting a user's profile, the client was expected to re-connect to TOC and use it as an HTTP server, which would host the user's profile in HTML. HTTP (for HyperText Transfer Protocol) is the primary method used to convey information on the World Wide Web. ... CRLF is a sequence of control characters consisting of a carriage return (CR) and a line feed (LF). ... A piece of HTML code with syntax highlighting In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser. ...

Once connected, two basic message formats for communications inside of FLAP existed. Client-to-server messages were sent in a format resembling a Unix-style command line: commands with whitespace-separated arguments, quoting and backslash escape sequences. Server-to-client messages were much simpler: they were sent as colon-separated ASCII strings, in a manner similar to many Unix config files. Thus, it was pretty easy to write a client, as the incoming messages were very easy to parse, and outgoing commands were easy to generate. Wikibooks has more about this subject: Guide to Unix Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... For information on the programming language Whitespace, see Whitespace programming language. ... A quotation is a fragment of a human expression that has been inserted into another human expression. ... First introduced in 1960 by Bob Bemer, the backslash, , is a typographical mark (glyph) used chiefly in computing. ... An escape sequence is a series of characters used to trigger some sort of command state in computers and their attached peripherals. ... A colon is a punctuation mark, with one dot above another, e. ... For other uses, see ASCII (disambiguation). ... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Guide to Unix Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...

This is in contrast to OSCAR, which due to the binary representation of data can be more difficult to understand.

External links

• TOC1 Protocol specification
• TOC2 Protocol specification
• History of AIM, OSCAR and TOC

Implementations

May be erroneous:

• Py-TOC (python)
• Net::AIM (perl)
• PHPTocLib (php)
• BlueTOC (php)
• Tik (Tcl/Tk)
• TNT (Emacs Lisp)
• TAC (Tcl, non-GUI)
• AOL Quick Buddy Applet (TIC) (Java Applet)
• naim (ncurses, non-GUI)