[JDEV] General Jabber Questions

[Michael Brown]

A few general questions that I have been wondering about for a while.
If this is documented somewhere and I have missed it, feel free to point me in the right direction...

1) Is there any support in the Jabber protocol to do a "Who is watching me" query?  This would return a list of users who are receiving your presence online (or who have subscribed to your presence, even if they are not line at the time).  I think this would be a great security feature, and something that ICQ has always been lacking.

2) Is there any way in the process of adding someone to your roster/requesting a subscription to find out what their nickname is?  I know there is a nickname field in the vCard, but for most of the clients I have seen you have to make up a nickname when you are adding someone.  Is there an elegant way to handle this?

3) Has anyone come up with a standard client-to-client encryption standard that is recommended for each client to support?  I believe encryption is left up to the client, but I am very worried that unless this is coordinated it will result in the same insecure incompatible mess that we currently have with email encryption systems.  I seem to remember (from years ago) that the original vCard spec included a field for a public key of some sort.  If we could use this to implement a PGP (style) encryption method that would be very nice.  Maybe someone could point us to some standard Win32 libraries so that we are all using the same method.

4) Is it possible to implement an "Invisible" mode like ICQ's?  Maybe I am doing something wrong, but if I connect and just don't send an Available to the server, I can still send messages fine but I don't seem to receive any until I go back Available again.  Presumably the server holds onto the message until it thinks you are ready to read it...

Thanks,

Michael.
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