[JDEV] How to handle multiple clients

[Jeremie Miller]

> I have seen the discussion about multiple clients and how message are
> handled when they are sent to someone that is connected from multiple
> places. How about something similar to IMAP? Basically, if I am connected
> from 3 different clients, and I recieve a message, all three clients are
> notified about it. At that point, the message could either be sent
> entirely to each of the clients, what I think is better, it could simply
> be left on the server waiting to be retrieved by any of the clients. Once
> it is read on any of the clients(or maybe once it is specifically deleted)
> it would be erased off the server or all the clients would be told it was
> read. Obviously there are details in this scheme that need to be worked
> out, but I don't see a problem with it? Am I missing something obvious(or 
> not so obvious)? 

There's a few ways around this w/o creating some sort of fetching/waiting
setup.  As it is, the majority of the messages being passwd around are
going to be only a few hundred characters, just lines of chat.  

It would be pretty easy to just let the server copy an incoming message to
each of the users session if each of those sessions had an equal or
nonexistant priority.  It's also easy to allow a user to set "Away"
status(or have a client automatically set it after idle time) so that it
doesn't recieve messages.

I guess I just see this as something that the clients can have control
over, and if it does become a problem when it starts getting heavy use,
it's not too difficult to correct.

 > 
> One more thing, I know there is talk about some kind of SMTP interface.
> What exactly is the idea behind this? What should it acclomplish? The
> ability to send an email to an address and have it delivered to the
> person's jabber client? If someone could please explain this it would be
> great. I may even try to get something working. 

Yes, there are a few great things that could happen here.  It would be
nice to be able to link Jabber and SMTP, as transparently as possible. But
these are tender grounds since email is quite a bit more than Jabber and
mixing the two could cause some problems(MIME, attached files, etc).

First, it would be great for the server to be able to send messages on via
SMTP if there was no other way of direct delivery, so that you could enter
any Jabber or email address(since they are identically formatted
user at host) and it could be delivered normally either way.

Of course, if you can send an email via Jabber, you have to be able to
recieve it.  Here is a quick rundown on how I would see it all working:

 - User enters friend at host.com
 - Jabber transport can't deliver it since the friend isn't a Jabber user
 - Jabber transport optionally automatically reformats the address to the
   sendmail forwarding style: friend%host.com at EMAIL
 - The SMTP/EMAIL transport receives it and sends it via email
 - The return address is user at jabberserver.com
 - The SMTP transport can either listen directly for incoming email at
   jabberserver.com, or accept email forwarded from sendmail on that host
 - Incoming email is delivered to the Jabber transport on that host with a
   from address formatted like earlier: emailuser%emailserver.com at EMAIL

Hows that sound?  Please feel free to step up and start playing/coding
this SMTP transport :)

Jer