14 Mar
2026
14 Mar
'26
9:06 a.m.
On Sat, 14 Mar 2026 13:14:34 +0100
Philipp Hörist <philipp(a)hoerist.com> wrote:
Hi,
This whole discussion about stripping characters is not relevant for
interop. You can make a recommendation, but its clear that nobody
will feel bound to it, as it is irrelevant for interop and this
feature to work.
If the XEP makes a recommendation, it should have a sound rational.
What would that be? Why is it important to you what different
communities, clients or bridged networks choose as plaintext
representation of a mention?
Well, my rationale for including the characters in the range is for
consistency across clients. If I receive a mention, I want to be
generally sure that all text related to the mention, including the
user's name and any extra processing characters, are contained solely
within the mention's range, and that I don't have to touch any other
part of the body to work with the mention. It won't break anything at a
protocol-level if ignored, sure, but making the receiver's life easier
still sounds like interop to me.
As for the recommendation to strip characters before sending, that's
mainly for interop with clients which still rely on implicit mentions.
Sending "@user" might interfere with a client which only expects
"user", and thus not notify a user that otherwise should've been.
Should I make these reasons more clear in the draft?