[JDEV] Rich Text in Messages

[Todd Bradley]

Michael F Lin wrote:
> When you start talking about doubling and tripling the size 
> of a message,
> you are really just talking about a bandwidth issue. There should be
> nothing inherent in the Jabber server that hinders it from 
> processing a 300
> byte message as opposed to a 150 byte message. To send a 300 
> byte message
> should not require any database queries or other costly 
> operations that
> sending a 150 byte message would not require. 

I'll take you word for that, since I don't know much about the innards of
the server.  It just seemed to me that you'd also have twice as much XML
parsing to do (double your CPU horsepower) and twice as much XML to store in
memory (double your RAM).


> I therefore propose this anthithesis to your scenario: How 
> feasible is it
> to seriously detract from user experience, just because we 
> weren't willing
> to spend another couple bucks on bandwidth? 

If you can guarantee that this will only cost each Jabber server
administrator an extra USD$2.00, then it sounds like a good deal.  My
concern is that two dollars is several orders of magnitude (somewhere
between 4 and 8, depending on how many users you're serving) too low of an
estimate.

Say a typical Jabber implementation for internal corporate use is going to
cost $100,000 by the time you count for my time, a hefty server, extra
internal (and maybe external) bandwidth, training my users, and maintaining
the system.  Of that, the server and bandwidth are probably half.  Let's say
there's not a doubling of hardware required, but only a 50% increase.
That's still $25k.  I'd have a hard time getting another $25k from my boss
just so my users can send bold text to one another if they want to (and I
don't even know if they'd use the feature).

I'll admit here that I am biased against rich text messages, though.  I'm a
relative newcomer to IM, having only used 3 or 4 systems for about three
years (not counting Unix talk and IRC).  But even though almost all IM
systems I've used allowed it, I've never used rich text.  My feeling is that
if I'm spending time making my message pretty with colors and fonts and bold
and underlines, it's no longer an instant message.  When I'm concerned about
appearance and formatting, I'll use email.  But maybe I'm not a typical
user.  Anyone have any real statistics on what percent of the IM traffic in
the world uses rich text?


> I'm sure I'm going to get
> plenty of disagreement here, but I am totally focused on the user - I
> believe that's how great software gets made. Bandwidth problems can be
> solved with money, but deterring users because we compromised 
> features to
> pinch pennies can cause permanent and irreparable damage to 
> your mindshare.

Well, if rich text is so universally essential for a good user experience,
then why isn't it the default message format?  Shouldn't it be?


Todd.