[JDEV] Mass communication

[Doug Claar]

I have a couple of questions about Jabber; sorry if this isn't exactly the 
right forum.

I see that I can add conferencing to jabber, and that it can be set up as 
"public" or "private", but I'm not real sure what the difference is. Is the 
only difference that people can see the public conferences from their client, 
but have to know about the private ones?

Also, when I start a jabber client, I get a welcome message from jabberd. With 
at least one client, this comes up as a chat window, and I can even "talk" to 
the server (although it never answers:-). Is this just the form that the client 
has chosen to display the welcome message in, or can I use that window to 
somehow control the server? (What I'd really like it to do is, when someone 
types in this window, it would go to all of the people signed up for the 
server. Ideally, if they are away, it would queue up the messages). Is this
just a "small matter of programming?" Or is the capability buried in there 
somewhere...

Thanks,
==Doug Claar