[Council] Message threads

[Kevin Smith]

On 10 Jan 2007, at 18:21, Ian Paterson wrote:
> Kevin Smith wrote:
>> Uniqueness:
>> I support the long-term uniqueness, as I want threads to be  
>> indefinitely lifetimed too. It creates a slightly strange  
>> situation though - "For messages of type 'groupchat', the value of  
>> the <thread/> element MUST be unique in the context of the multi- 
>> user chat room, as long as the room remains in existence" - how  
>> does a client that's just joined the chat know that a thread  
>> hasn't previously been used? This is also true between single  
>> entities, as they may be using different clients. For MUC, it is  
>> (later) said that there could be a method to ask for a unique  
>> thread, but that it's out of scope - we should probably give a  
>> reference to some place that it's in scope if we can.
>
> Yuck.

I'm more than happy for the uniqueness to be 'guaranteed' through  
GUIDs, rather than state code - what I was getting at was that we  
should ensure that the XEP leaves it clear that the thread IDs are  
for-life, rather than being throw-away, because clients will use them  
for long-term history management.

>> Handling:
>> Again, here I'd quite like to see it changed for equal emphasis on  
>> non-chat messages
> +1
>> Inclusion:
>> I'd like normal to be changed to RECOMMENDED if people don't  
>> vehemently object.
> Hmm, Message types "chat" and "groupchat" are the most important  
> targets of this spec. But I'm not entirely sure I understand what  
> you mean. Assuming I do, I'm not sure why you might want that.  
> Could you please elaborate?

Well, at the moment the XEP places emphasis on "chat" and  
"groupchat". I'd like to see that removed and for normal messages to  
receive equal emphasis. I see normal messages as somewhat akin to  
email, and so I'd like to have threads available there as well as for  
chat and gc. This is because, for me, the most important (potential)  
use of threads is in history management, where they would make quite  
a difference to all message types.

/K

-- 
Kevin Smith
Psi XMPP Client Project Leader (http://psi-im.org)