MultiBit

[jim618]

Hi Slush,
Thanks for that. Must be some of my component sizing calcs are screwy.

Oh yes there is plenty to do on the BIP32 / piglet work that is for sure !
It is definitely more of a marathon than a sprint.

:-)

Edit: my rough list of work is:
+ Currency support - initial version done (some promising stuff from openexchangerate.org / XChange further down the pipe).
+ Change being spendable - will prob do this next.
+ Encrypted wallets (random key) - I have a set of review comments from Mike + add in wallet master key to do. Also some UI work (new wallet wizard screen) which also preps for BIP 32/ watch only wallets.
+ Speed up - I am hoping bloom filters will be available 'at some point'. I should not have to do too much to use this but there will be something I am sure
+ BIP 32 / HD wallets. These need to be coded up robustly - noone has started these in bitcoinj yet I don't think.
+ Piglet coding, including the wire protocol.

If there are any bitcoinj familiar Java devs who fancy starting the last two items now don't be shy !

[Mike Hearn]

Thanks for paying attention to these small UI details Jim. It really makes the difference. I hope at some point we can get an artist/designer to contribute and really make MultiBit look slick as hell.

What is Piglet, exactly?

Bloom filters are, as far as I know, pending on Matt syncing his Java branch with the latest C++ code. The decision was to use a more compact merkle-block encoding and that meant extra code and spec work.

[jim618]

Hi Mike,

Yes I must admit my GUI skills are fairly limited - if it ends up a bit boring but reliable I will be happy with that.

Sounds like bloom filters are step by step becoming reality - it was always going to be a bit of a long coordination job that task.

Piglet is the working term for the BIP 32 compliant hardware wallet Slush and Stick et al have been working on:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=122438.0

I plan to support it in MultiBit and Slush has an Electrum fork he is working on. Alan Reiner has been posting quite a bit on the BIP 32 / HD wallet structure on that thread too so I am pretty sure he will add support into Armory too. (as both Armory and Electrum are both python I imagine most of the code will be shared).

[wtfvanity]

Love multibit. Love the fact that it only takes 10 seconds to download the block chain not 10 hours. The saddest thing to me is no support for multiple output transactions. I'll continue to use the main client for that. However, I have two suggestions for the program after using it for a bit.

1. Can you trim the white space off of a BTC address? When I copy and paste an address and it tells me it's invalid- well it's annoying. If not, could you provide more information to the user why? Like an invalid character such as letters outside of the allowed or white space or incorrect length or something. That could possibly prevent some hair pulling for a new users.

2. Can you warn when coins are being sent to your own wallet? I don't know how I did it, but I completely messed up a copy and paste. The address was valid because it was mine. So I sent a transaction, wasted a fee and had to wait 10 extra minutes for the confirmation to have the next send be inserted into a block.

[jim618]

Hi wtfvanity,

Thanks for your feedback.

I recently added a trim of whitespace to the address. It is only in the most recent version (0.4.15). Was that the version you were using ? - If so then I will have to look at it again as maybe I have missed it or put it in the wrong branch.

As it seems a common request I will have a think about adding multiple transactions on a send. It does not fit very well with the current UI where the top panel and the bottom panel are dynamically linked and entails beefing up the fees algorithm which is why I have been a bit reluctant to do it. It is pretty useful though and saves money so I'll put it on the ToDo list.

A little note on the UI to highlight that the address you entered is in your own wallet is a good idea yes. Whilst not an 'illegal' thing to do it most likely is from a cut and paste error so would be worth highlighting.

[jim618]

1. Can you trim the white space off of a BTC address? When I copy and paste an address and it tells me it's invalid- well it's annoying. If not, could you provide more information to the user why? Like an invalid character such as letters outside of the allowed or white space or incorrect length or something. That could possibly prevent some hair pulling for a new users.

I just tested version 0.4.15 with an added space both before and after the address and it trims the space and happily sends to that address. If you update to the latest version on the website you'll get it.

[wtfvanity]

Hi wtfvanity,

Thanks for your feedback.

I recently added a trim of whitespace to the address. It is only in the most recent version (0.4.15). Was that the version you were using ? - If so then I will have to look at it again as maybe I have missed it or put it in the wrong branch.

As it seems a common request I will have a think about adding multiple transactions on a send. It does not fit very well with the current UI where the top panel and the bottom panel are dynamically linked and entails beefing up the fees algorithm which is why I have been a bit reluctant to do it. It is pretty useful though and saves money so I'll put it on the ToDo list.

A little note on the UI to highlight that the address you entered is in your own wallet is a good idea yes. Whilst not an 'illegal' thing to do it most likely is from a cut and paste error so would be worth highlighting.

I am using 0.4.15. A space does not work, nor a tab, or a line break /n clfr etc.
Space in front of the address does not work, nor in the middle of the address.

It doesn't look like it made it into this branch.

I agree that your existing UI, multiple outputs doesn't seem like there is a simple place to add it. In fact if you want to talk about UI, I thought the address book seemed confusing. I was testing it out and sent some coins and couldn't figure out how to "clear" it. Until I realized I was required to hit new or delete and start a new transaction. I'd love to see it but don't let that pull you off more important things. Again, that is an advanced feature. If someone is really using it then they may use the Satoshi client that is inherently more advanced.

If you just put some text under the address that said *This address is in your own wallet, or something like that I don't need a dialogue box, just an FYI in case I'm being stupid because just as you mentioned, it's not against the rules to send them to yourself. New users may even do that on purpose so that they can see a transaction put into the block chain.

[jim618]

I'll have a look at the spaces thing.

[Gabi]

Noob question: what about supporting the satoshi client wallets in Multibit? I don't know how hard this is to do, so if it's a noob question forgive me

[jim618]

It would be pretty expensive to do because:
1) it's a whole different format - you would spend ages doing compatibility testing.  
2) if the Satoshi client made a change you'd be forced to rework things
3) there are different versions of the MultiBit wallet that need extra code to read, having a whole new set of wallet formats (the Satoshi wallet versions) would just be one big continual headache.

I am hoping the HD wallets (BIP 32) to be functionally compatible between clients (ie type in your long passphrase into any compliant client and your wallet is there) which would be a big win.  The representation of the HD wallets on the disk would not be compatible I expect but in this case it would not matter.

[jim618]

I just added in support for testnet3 in.
In the multibit.properties file you add:

testOrProductionNetwork=testnet3

It seems to sync ok (39,455 blocks as of 07 Dec 2012 18:32).
If anyone has some testnet3 coins they don't need I would be grateful if you sent some to:

mfkrBmjdRXLNRcAQH7tfmVaBRknZxRrnV3

as I have zero testnet3 coin.

[slush]

Jim, I just sent you few spare coins...

[jim618]

Thanks!

[jim618]

There is a new test release of MultiBit at:

github.com

Version 0.5.6beta (Encrypted wallets)

Enhancements:
+ Everything from version 0.4.15 e.g currency support
+ Amount in BTC decimal aligned
+ testnet3 support
+ I think I have fixed the wallet panel being too wide in Linux (I never saw that bug so cannot be sure. Slush < could you try it out please ?).


Scan of release checklist

[slush]

+ I think I have fixed the wallet panel being too wide in Linux (I never saw that bug so cannot be sure. Slush < could you try it out please ?).

Fixed! Thanks :-)

[jim618]

Great - thanks for checking that out.

[freemoney458]

There is a new test release of MultiBit at:

github.com

Version 0.5.6beta (Encrypted wallets)

Enhancements:
+ Everything from version 0.4.15 e.g currency support
+ Amount in BTC decimal aligned
+ testnet3 support
+ I think I have fixed the wallet panel being too wide in Linux (I never saw that bug so cannot be sure. Slush < could you try it out please ?).


Scan of release checklist

Hi Jim,

just tried it out. Works fine on my Mac OS X 10.5.8, great work!

Small finding:
I found that in the transactions panel the BTC decimal alignment gives a weird result if you have amounts with decimals and without decimals. It seems that the decimal separator shifts amounts WITH decimal places a bit to the LEFT. The result is that the digits from amounts WITH decimals are not aligned with the corresponding digits of amounts WITHOUT decimals.

Thank you for this great client!

[jim618]

Hi Freemoney,

Yes I noticed that too - the decimal align is actually:
+ right align everything to the left of the decimal symbol
+ left align everything after the decimal sign

(the Java decimal align won't align on a comma so I had to do something more complicated).

I left it as if I change the number shown it then does not match exactly the number in the amount field on the send/ request which is more confusing. People get annoyed if they type '1' and it gets changed to '1,0'

I will have another go at tweaking the layout !

[jim618]

Fixed:



I will probably do another live release in the next couple of days as the decimal align is worth having in the live code. Much easier to read.

[jim618]

There is a new live release of MultiBit at:

multibit.org


Version 0.4.16

Improvements
+ User interface tidy ups e.g. decimal align on BTC amounts, amount sorting fixed, wallet panel width fixed.


Scan of release checklist