[JDEV] ICQ and AIM

[qbradley at csc.UVic.CA]

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

>   Welcome to jabber.server.org!
>   Available transports: Jabber AIM ICQ SMTP IRC...
>     Do you wish to use the ICQ transport? y
>     Do you have an ICQ account? n
>     Would you like the ICQ transport to establish one for you now? y
>     Do you want the ICQ transport to generate a password? n
>     Please enter a new password for this account:
>     Reenter password:
>      * contacting ICQ transport
>      * ICQ transport replies: You are 'userdude' with a UIN of '8321110'
> 
>     Do you wish to use the SMTP transport?

Looks wonderful :-)  It could even be a form on a web page were you apply
for an account on a jabber server.  I guess it would be up to the people
hosting the server how exactly they get the above information.

> > But there is also
> > another ICQ server, which my jabber account is configured to use, which
> > will never, ever, create an ICQ number.
> 
> Do you mean 'another ICQ transport'?

Yes, thank you.  That is precisely what I meant :-)

> I'm not understanding this other transport.  Does it have a single UIN 
> for its own purposes, to query the ICQ server about ICQ accounts?
> Perhaps to send anonymous messages?

No.  Although that is an interesting idea.  My dream ICQ transport doesn't
do anything until I give it my ICQ name and password (in an EXT tag or
whatever).  Then it connects to ICQ on my behalf, forwarding jabber
packets to ICQ and ICQ packets to Jabber.  It sounded like you were
proposing something exactly the same except that as soon as you connected
with Jabber, it would create an ICQ number for you if you didn't already
have one (or perhaps it creates an ICQ number the first time you try to
send a message to an ICQ number).

However, it makes perfect sense for each Jabber server to have an ICQ
transport configured with its own ICQ number.  Jabber messages to ICQ
numbers from people who have not yet logged in would be sent through this
number.

The problem with this is how does the Jabber ICQ transport know who to
send messages back to recieved from ICQ to this "anonymous" ICQ number?  I
don't know the ICQ protocol, but it seems like it would need to support a
way of sending an identifier of some kind in the message that was
guaranteed to be sent back on the reply.  I doubt this is possible, so
anonymous ICQ probably could only be one direction.

Rant, rant, rant.. :-) :-)

Quetzalcoatl Bradley
qbradley at csc.uvic.ca