[JDEV] libjabber, libxode, Jabber standards, etc.

[Jim Seymour]

Hi All,
 
I need some guidance :).
 
The Gaim project has been using what I understand to be libjabber for
its Jabber bits.  Libjabber would appear to include libxode, a bit of
expat (? from the Mozilla project) and even an snprintf.c from the
Apache project.
 
Several issues have arisen of late.
 
In an earlier post to this mailing list (Subject: [JDEV] libjabber
maintainers?) I asked whom is responsible for libjabber maintenance
and development, that I might request a slight change.  No answer.
Looking about (Google, etc.) I find "libjabber" stashed in
directories named things like "archive(s)," "old," etc.  Is libjabber
dead?  I suppose that would explain why I received no answer.  (The
folks listed in AUTHORS.libjabber didn't reply to my query, either.)
 
The original reason for the above question is that I want to use
jid.c:jid_safe() and, unlike the other functions in jid.c, it's not
declared in lib.h.
 
If libjabber lives, where is its official source distribution?  Who
is taking care of it?
 
Next it came to our attention that somebody has split-out the libxode
bits and created an independent libxode (Ref:
http://libxode.sourceforge.net/).  Assuming that libjabber lives, do
its maintainers plan to re-do it to use the new, independent libxode?
Or will there continue to be two of these?  Duplicated effort?
 
The above issues become important for many reasons, not the least of
which is the Gaim project is looking to re-doing config files, etc.
in XML.  So we're looking to move the XML bits of libjabber from the
Jabber plugin part of the source tree into the main-line code parts.
 
Then I discovered there's a disparity between jid.c:jid_safe() and
the Jabber IETF specs.  jid_safe() limits the "username" part of a
JID to alpha-num, ".", "-" and "_", whereas the IETF Draft document
says that "node identifiers" can consist of anything *but*
double-quote, "&", single-quote, ":", "<", ">" and "@".  (Ref:
http://www.jabber.org/ietf/draft-miller-jabber-00.html#entity-node)
 
Quite a difference.  Which is it to be?
 
The issue just above reared its ugly head when it came to my
attention that the Sametime transport uses "#" in the "username" part
of a JID.  (It seems Sametime has IDs like
"foo at bar.baz@host.some.dom", believe it or not.  Go figure.  Near as
I can tell, the Sametime transport converts that first "@" to "#"
[and presumably back again, going the other way].)
 
Any insights, recommendations, etc. regarding all this would be
gratefully appreciated.


Thanks,
Jim
-- 
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