[JDEV] Buddy Icon (Avatar) Proposal

[Sebastiaan 'CBAS' Deckers]

First I'd like to know what Avatar means. Is it the name of a Jabber client?

> Ok, talked with temas and a few others.
> I like 48x48, and temas said it wouldn't be a big deal if it were that
way.
> We're removing the type attribute, and the new list of supported formats
is
> gif|png|jpeg.

What color depths should be allowed?
Where's the bitmap support? You allow PNG but not BMP, doesn't seem right.
Why not use scalable graphics? Or if that's too much of a hassle, why not
have multiple sizes of the same icon available?
You dropped MNG support, but is it ok to use animated GIF's? AVI/MPEG
animations? (sounds? :-) )

> As for public XML storage, temas confirmed... there are still certain very
> important servers which don't support public XML... these being the same
> servers which don't support jabber:iq:browse. (Not that this annoys me or
> anything ;) )

We shouldn't be handling server problems in our clients or in the Jabber
protocol.
Imagine someone who just installed a few icon-packs. He checks out all the
icons but while he's doing that hunderds of users on his list are requesting
the icons. So much for dial-up.
Public server-side storage is obviously the way to go here.

Custom icons seem like a _very_ cool thing for instant messaging but it
could get _very_ tricky t make it work right. That's why we need a clear
spec, now! :-)

Bye,
Sebastiaan