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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE Jabber Library
From:       Tim Jansen <tim () tjansen ! de>
Date:       2002-08-03 13:29:15
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> It is not finished yet, but I am already quite proud of it.  The Psi Jabber
> My proposal is to rename the library to "kimp" (to stand for KDE Instant
> Messaging and Presence) and for it to be included and developed within
> kdelibs.  As a member of the Jabber Software Foundation (or JSF, see
> http://www.jabber.org/), I am involved very much with the Jabber
> development process and advocacy.  Many of us have wanted to
> "Jabber-enable" a desktop environment, and I think KDE would be a great
> place to begin.
> [..]
> By making Jabber so easily accessible from KDE, I think we'd see a lot more
> buzz and developer interest in both KDE and Jabber.  What do you think?

A few comments:
- I think that an IMP library is a very good idea and would offer a easier and 
more natural way to offer many services. As an example, I am working on 
Desktop Sharing(krfb), which would really benefit from a presence protocol to 
find persons and a messaging and signaling protocol that controls the 
connection between the users and would offer additional features like passing 
text messages, VoIP, video conferencing and file transfer. 

- I am not sure whether it is a good idea to offer a Jabber-specific library 
(or is KIMP protocol independent?). Maybe I just dont know Jabber/XMPP well 
enough, but I never found a way to use it as a signaling protocol for 
advanced media types (like the VNC protocol used by Desktop Sharing) and 
negotiating out-of-band data. Is there something like this for Jabber? 
Otherwise it would not make sense to have it in kdelibs, because the only 
apps that could use it are instant messengers. kdenetwork would be more 
appropiate then.

- My personal problem with Jabber as a foundation for IMP services in KDE is 
that it is server-centric, AFAIK. This makes it pretty useless in home and 
ad-hoc networks that don't have an internet connection. A P2P protocol like 
SIMPLE can, together with a service discovery protocol, very easily be used 
to find and display the presence of all users in the local LAN (or, with 
wireless LAN or Bluetooth, show all people who are within your reach). IMHO 
this is a very important use case which is ignored by all other IMP 
protocols.

bye...
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