[Standards] Binary data over XMPP

[Robin Redeker]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2007 at 09:56:12AM -0800, Justin Karneges wrote:
> On Monday 05 November 2007 3:40 am, Dave Cridland wrote:
> > Now, we can't expect that the entire Internet will bend to our will
> > and instantly upgrade, so we need a sane fallback - probably to IBB,
> > or something fairly similar. The interesting question is whether we
> > choose to have this negotiated end to end (which means we'll need to
> > have each hop along the route tested), or whether we say that this
> > down-conversion happens within servers.
> 
> Binary over XMPP has been on my TODO for awhile now, and I have some notes 
> written up about it but nothing publicized.  I think a hop-by-hop approach is 
> best, if we want to have any hope for compatibility.
> 
> Comments on the two formatting approaches:
> 
>  1) XML element to indicate binary mode: this is probably the least 
> destructive approach.  Keep in mind that we already have an XML to binary 
> protocol change in XMPP: the TLS and SASL encryption layers.  Your XML parser 
> needs to be able to stop on a dime when it sees that final '>' character, so 
> asking for that in this discussion should not be a big deal.

Just keep in mind that we don't have a way to change "back".
The current change is a very drastic one, like "flush the whole
parser state and begin from start".


Robin