[JDEV] Binary XML useful for Jabber? [inflamatory]

[Adam Fritzler]

On Tue, 22 May 2001, Jens Alfke wrote:

> One has to assume that the WAP people considered general compression vs. 
> tokenization, and that they went with the latter because it offered 
> better compression.

IMHO, WXML was created as a further ego-booster for the WAP Forum, and to
complete their uselessly redesigned suite of unoriginal protocols.

But that aside, IIRC, if you read the WAP documentation you'll see that it
specially states that WXML cannot be streamed.  Because you must
negoitiate the token table prior to transmission of the XML (and I don't
remember there being any way to define tokens mid-document), streaming is
impossible.

But I'm referring to the WAP specs.  A link was given to w3c, so maybe
someone is improving it and putting into a less proprietary standards
track.

In any case, the utility of widely available, long-used _generic_
compression schemes should not be discounted.  Only design/use custom
schemes where they provide a fundamental improvement in performance (not
just because some wannabe standards body creates them and gives them an
acronym).

On another note, something that pushes jabber away from wireless devices
is its dependence (at least what I see as a dependence) on a stream
transport.  Most wireless transports do not provide reliable, ordered,
stream delivery.  

This is why I will probably have AIM on my RIM/Mobitex handheld before I
have jabber [1].  Because AIM has strictly defined packet boundries.  
(Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous that such a minor point could make it
many times easier to implement on a wireless medium.  But its true.)

af.  (self-proclaimed implementor and hater of WAP)

[1] Yes. Well.  I also know AIM fairly well... :)