[JDEV] More on namespaces in jabberd

[Jeremie]

> It seems simply that jabberd is not namespace aware, hence it is
> not conformant with the standards it claims to use.

Not true, it's use is conformant with namespaces, it is only using a
subset of the specification in this case.  This is no different from the
use of XML, in that there is no support for entities, prologs, etc, and
only a subset of XML is actually being used.  Other than the namespaces
the server uses itself, all other uses (between clients, services, or any
software sending xml via jabber) may use namespaces in any way they
choose.

> Being stuck
> with UTF-8 is an acceptable constraint (ok with respect to the
> standard) but a so inaccurate support of namespaces is not.
>  Are there any plans to a) upgrade libxode or b) switch to a
> conformant parser (xerces in sax2 mode comes to mind) ?

There are no plans for this type of overhaul for the 1.4 codebase as most
of the server development effort is being put into jabelin. At this point
a server supporting namespaces in such a way would have to translate all
namespace usage into the current "flat" format for existing clients and
servers it delivers to, supporting the feature in this way would offer
no benefit to anyone other than the sender.

I do agree that it would be very nice and we should work towards a new rev
of the protocol specification in the future that encourages using
namespaces more broadly (after we get the current one well defined of
course).

Jer