How to Access XMPP-Based Media Server

[Jon Kristensen <technology jonkristensen com>]

Hello people!

My name is Jon Kristensen and I am planning to create a XMPP-based media 
server called Pontarius. The typical use case of Pontarius would be to 
host all your media on a local server and have that server share it with 
your friends (with customizable permissions, of course). The server will 
make sure that any transmission is end-to-end encrypted. We will be 
making heavy use of the XMPP protocol.

Now, I would like to make some kind of "binding" so that GNOME and other 
free desktop environments can browse the contents of a Pontarius server 
(so that you can see your and your friends media). Do you have any 
advice on where I should start? We will be using Jingle and the 
Publish-Subscribe XMPP extensions to do this. What is the lowest level 
layer that I can/should work against here?

Basically, I want to be able to work with the remote files as if they 
were a local directory... Get file listings, download a file, upload a 
file, rename a file, etc.

Thank you so much for any advice on this!

Warm regards,
Jon Kristensen