[JDEV] Jabber - Scripting Language

[David Waite]

temas wrote:

> I know I'm jumping into this _WAY_ late, but I just wanted to point out
> that the server has the beginnings of server side "scripting", we just
> call it filters.  Take a look at the filter namespace and what it
> offers.  It needs a lot of work, and there have been a ton of ideas
> bounced around for it (most of what's being said here).  Any thoughts on
> enhancing this more since it has a base?
>
> --temas

Personally I dislike server-side filters as they are (something I'm sure
plenty of people know quite well ;-)). For some things they work well, but
for anything which isn't a bandwidth requirement, the filtering can be done
by a client. It is much more powerful to do this way.

Example: When I say 'block messages from people on my roster', it is pretty
obvious what I mean from a high-level. However, it would be nice in some
circumstances to get these (from people who decide to message me because
they saw my Jabber ID on my business cards, or just friends who are
starting with jabber and want to ask 'is that you?'). Did I want to stop
these people from talking to me altogether? Also, many other things (such
as subscribe requests, and even the 'resource' of a JabberID) can contain
textual messages - if I get a subscription request from "user at spam.com/Buy
prescription drugs now for a very low price at ripoff.spamco.com", isn't it
just as bad and probably more annoying than before? Should the server block
all subscription requests as well?

It may be my opinion, but filtering messages as above really should be a
client function. There are nonintrusive GUI ways to represent this
information which would make users happier than just having the messages
blocked or thrown away.

Another example would be 'send this message when I am away'. I have chewed
people out for setting this one - what they want is an autoresponse for
away messages. However, this isn't a one time thing - every message sent
will have a reply sent back. Lots of fun when someone forgets about this,
and is in a conference room.

This isn't to say that there shouldn't be server-side logic at all. Some
things are best served by that, such as 'when I am dnd, keep all messages
on the server', or 'block messages over 1k in size'. However, do not
confuse 'powerful scripting language' or 'versatile rule set' to be
something to empower users to get what they want - you might hit every user
need at 70%, rather than getting a few things right and making people
happy. Figure out what people really want to do and most importantly *why*,
and then begin to attack the problem.

-David Waite

>
> Todd Bradley wrote:
>
> >>Has there ever been any discussion of a client side scripting
> >>language for
> >>Jabber?  I'm thinking of something along the lines of mIRC's scripting
> >>language for the IRC protocol.
> >>
> >
> >That was the source of my original interest in the
> >Tcl client (zABBER).  My goal was to have a client
> >that had a scripting language interpreter so you
> >could write scripts to do special handling of events.
> >But, alas, it's not that advanced.
> >
> >To answer your question, I don't think there's been
> >serious discussion in the past year about a single
> >"official" Jabber client scripting language.  It
> >would probably be impossible to get everyone to
> >agree what that language should be.
> >
> >
> >Todd.
> >_______________________________________________
> >jdev mailing list
> >jdev at jabber.org
> >http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev
> >
>
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