[JDEV] Privacy mode

[Max Horn]

At 9:58 Uhr -0700 22.04.2001, Jens Alfke wrote:
>wil at home <wil at dready.org> wrote:
>
>>  From my interpretation of the docs it seems that the server / protocol does
>>  not provide such facility.  Am I right?
>
>No, I believe it's supported. I can't remember now whether I've tried it out
>while experimenting with presence support in my client. I'll give it a try
>Monday.

Depends on what you mean with "support". There is no 
type="invisible", although a long time ago there was a bug in a TCL 
client (forgot the name of it): it had an option to send presence of 
type="invisible", but this of course didn't do anyhting ;)



>  > The only way to do it that I know of, is to send a
>>  "<presence type=unavailable to='X'/>" (for X in each (@roster)).
>
>Not necessary; you should _never_ manually send such presence packets
>directly to other users. Simply use type=unavailable when sending the
>_server_ your presence, just as you would normally use the default type
>(available) or "dnd" or whatever.

I disagree! E.g. you might not want to be invisible to everyone, but 
rather show up for a few of your friends. To accomplish this, you 
would first broadcast an invisbile presence, then send a visible 
prence to your choosen buddies.



>Max Horn wrote:
>
>>  first of, using <presence type=unavailable'/> will make you completly
>>  invisible. OTOH, it will make you "blind", too.
>
>Hmm, do you have evidence that you'll go blind, or is this just something
>you heard on the street? ;-) If so, that's kind of a glitch in the protocol.
>I guess the problem would be that other Jabber servers would get the
>presence info and would think you were offline, so they wouldn't send you
>presence updates for your buddies on those servers. Oog.

I am certain on this. Of course I can be wrong, but then, I know the 
protocol pretty well and long (working with Jabber for well over a 
year now, and if you look at the top of the JPG, you'll see my name 
listed <g>).

If this is a design flaw or not is a matter one can be of different 
opinion... after all, it is presence type="unavailable", and yes 
indeed, it sort of works like going offline, though you will still 
receive messages. But you will not receive presence updates.

For true invisbility, a type="invisible" might be interesting. This 
was discussed several times before IIRC. I am not so sure what 
actually where the reasons it was not done. Jer, Temas, anybody, 
comments?



>  > 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...
>
>I think there are valid reasons for wanting to view others' presence without
>currently revealing your own. Several of the people I work with were
>reluctant to use IM at all until I assured them that the client [AIM at the
>time] supported such a mode.
>
>I think the "spying", to people, feels like it's the other way: some people
>seem to find the idea of broadcasting their presence potentially disturbing,
>and want to know that there's a way to turn it off at least temporarily,
>while still being able to send IMs to their friends.

You never broadcast your presence to everybody; you broadcast it to 
everybody on your roster... but of course, you might have some ppl on 
your roster you don't want to talk to. Hence, you can send a 
different presence to everbody.



Another neat idea for a Jabber extension: being able to set presence 
roster group based. ;)


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

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