[JDEV] Thoughts on user at server.com name addressing

[Thomas Jerome Muldowney]

There has been some discussion on here about the fact that jabber uses the
user at server.com style addressing, and I just wanted to point out a few
items about this.
1)  It allows for a more distributed system.  If the system was based off
of a single name, or number, then every time you sent a message it would
have to be looked up what server to send the info to in the distributed
system.
2)  It's more exact.  What if some person had the name John, and some
elite guy had the name J0hn.  If you write those in all caps, JOHN or
J0HN, are both very similar.

Finally, wouldn't it be more of a client part to keep track of what
user at server.com goes with what Nick?  That way the client user could still
use the old AIM screennames, or ICQ nicks, or UINs and just let the client
swith the nicks into the user at server.com.

--Thomas Muldowney