[JDEV] my interest -- a few questions

[Jeremie]

> hi.  yesterday i found the jabber.org site and i've been excited about the
> whole idea since then.  i think i'd like to help out with a lot of stuff -- i'm
> a perl junkie, however.  i saw the perl code included in the developer's distro
> and i'd like to contribute some.

Wonderful!  Perl can be a big boon to Jabber, and I just haven't had the
time to really work on it yet... although I know Thomas Charron has done
some.

> i've only had an hour or so to read the docs, but in thinking about the
> architecture i've had a few questions:
> 
> a] it seems like a user can't switch between jabber servers.  i wasn't sure how
> that would work -- if a user's favorite jabber server was down, would he be
> able to switch to a different one?  if all his info/config/etc is stored on
> that server, it would be hard to get that info to a different server if the one
> he usually uses is down.  or maybe you have been talking about that on this
> list?

It hasn't been talked about much yet, but at this point a user is really
tied to their server, similiar to how your email client is tied to your
email server.  On the same note, providing forwarding will definately be
added to one of the modules so that messages can be forwarded to your new
location like in email.

The other thing I've been mulling around, is that any of the common
settings for your user account(name/password/security/preferences/etc) 
could be expressed in a common XML structure, and could be saved by the
user or automatically sent from the old server to the new server, but that
is a discussion that will have to wait till we have something to really
test it with. 

> b] can modules / transports be written in perl?  i'd love to help out, and perl
> seems like a great language for writing socket transports, etc.  there are a
> ton of perl modules that do everything -- pgp, xml parsing, etc.

Absolutely, 100%, please yes!  The whole thing can be written in perl :)

My take:
 Modules:
	A mod_perl needs to be written to do this, similiar to Apache
 Clients:
	A perl module, maybe Net::Jabber could be written to make this
	insanely easy, use it and then any perl script would be Jabberized
 Transports:
	Another perl module, maybe Net::JabberTransport would provide the
	easy framework for building transports in perl

> c] if you want to use a, say, jabber--> AIM transport, would that be dependent
> on your jabber server having that transport?  or, if it wasn't on your server,
> could the message be forwarded to a different server that had that transport
> installed?

That's a configuration issue.  If you install a transport locally, you can
configure it to accept data from only local transports or from anywhere on
the net.  So yes, you can use someone elses AIM transport if they allow
it, *g*.

> d] uin's / id's / searching -- this might seem too simplistic, but, basically,
> how's the "search for a user" work?  the jabber distribution model seems to
> imply that no one server can know where every other jabber server is -- thus
> would there have to be a central jabber "directory server" that every jabber
> server would have to have a special module to connect to?

Couple of ideas here... I think I'll reply to the next message(since I'm
reading ahead ;) and touch on this topic...

> that's all i can think of right now.  i'm really interested in this project --
> sorry if you've already heard these questions over and over again from new
> entrants (put up a FAQ for new developers!).

An intro FAQ is an excellent idea, I'll whip one up soon here!

Any/all help is greatly appreciated!  There's a ton of power behind this
sucker, so the sooner we make it to the general market, the sooner it's
waves will be heard worldwide!  Fun!

>  .g$$g, c. chris erway         .g$$g, cce3 at cornell.edu
>  $$$$$$ cornell university     $$$$$$ class of 2002, a&s (undeclared)
>  `S$$S' protium web design co. `S$$S' http://www.protium.com 

Way cool sig, btw...

Thanks!

Jer