[JDEV] Privacy mode

[Max Horn]

At 12:29 Uhr +0800 21.04.2001, wil at home wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>Some IM clients (eg. ICQ) has an "Invisible" mode, that the server will not
>notify others of your presence (unless you initiate a conversation of
>course).
>From my interpretation of the docs it seems that the server / protocol does
>not provide such facility.  Am I right?
>
>The only way to do it that I know of, is to send a
>"<presence type=unavailable to='X'/>" (for X in each (@roster)).
>
>I am in no position to say that "users should be honest about their
>presence", and have resorted to using that feature sometimes (due to obvious
>reasons).  So I think such a facility will definitely help Jabber become
>more friendly / attractive.


Well,


first of, using <presence type=unavailable'/> will make you completly 
invisible. OTOH, it will make you "blind", too. Actually, if I for 
the moment take the role of an IM user, that is good for me! If 
people don't want me to see them, I don't see any reason I should 
allow them to see me! Invisible mode in most IM clients is really a 
spy mode...


OTOH, several ICQ clients I know *do* show me invisible users... so 
maybe what you want is something like a new status in addition to 
"dnd", "xa", "away" and "chat" - "invisible". It would then be up to 
the clients to not show ppl with this flag.


Anyway, as I never really used the "invisible" mode (when I don't 
want to be disturb, I just use the "dnd" or "away" mode), I'd be 
interested to hear more about the motivations to use this mode. 
Honestly! I am sure people do have good reasons, and I think 
understanding those better will help me understand what could be done 
best about this issues. ("reasons" here means: "an aim they want to 
achieve, a purpose" <g>)



Max
-- 
-----------------------------------------------
Max Horn
C++/ObjC/Java Developer

email: <mailto:max at quendi.de>
phone: (+49) 6151-494890