[JDEV] ICQ and AIM

[qbradley at csc.UVic.CA]

On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, jswink at softcom.net wrote:

> I don't see the problem, unless you object to ICQ users seeing your
> nick appear under two UINs.  The jabber ICQ transport will have a
> nick associated with its UIN, which would be the same as your nick.

Ok, I see your point.  You want Jabber users who don't have ICQ numbers to
be able to talk to ICQ users without getting an ICQ number first, right?

Unfortunately what is good for some people is bad for me, because I will
accidently create a bunch of ICQ numbers I don't know about, and miss
messages, and spend my life getting numbers re-authorized or whatever.

Fortunately, I think everyone can be happy!  Here is an idea for server
writers to think about.

We have these moduler transparts, including an ICQ transport.  When an
account is added to a Jabber server, it would be really really nice if a
list of transports could be specified for that user.  That way I could run
a server, and the default ICQ transport creates an ICQ number if it
doesn't already have one and you send something to ICQ.  But there is also
another ICQ server, which my jabber account is configured to use, which
will never, ever, create an ICQ number.

Maybe it is the same ICQ Transport but it has some kind of config
information for each user?  But I think it would also be interesting or
nice if I could tell the server to never route me to or from some
transports.  This would be useful in a lot of cases.  If I wanted to use
an ICQ transport that was so divergent from another one that it couldn't
be just configuration options, but the other one was what everyone else
wanted to use, and we wanted to use the same server, it would be no
problem.  Another scenario would be if I had some prejudice against
another IM system, and didn't want my messages going across it, even by
accident (perhaps because of percieved security issues or whatever).

Agh, this is getting too long.  Sorry for ranting.

Quetzalcoatl Bradley
qbradley at csc.uvic.ca