[JDEV] Jabber Transports - New Architecture

[Lake Clear]

Hello,

One of the cool Jabber ideas from Day One was the idea of using Jabber to
connect to all the different IM systems.  This never really worked out - the
remote IM transports are constantly up & down, or completely disconnected.
It seems Jabber has been getting away from this concept of IM
interoperability because it has other great things to offer.

I've been thinking of a solution to this IM interop problem and came up with
a solution - I want to run it by this group to see how viable it would be.
Or perhaps someone already had this idea and can point me to the right place
=)

First off, a central server will never work since AOL and others can shut
off the IP.  So it's up to the client to make the connections.  The problem
is that protocols are always changing, or being slightly modified to shut
down "unauthorized" users.

The solution would be to create an XML namespace to define protocols.  There
would be a small engine built into clients to process the latest XML file
for a given protocol.  If a protocol changes, the client automatically knows
to get the latest XML protocol file (via JabberUpdate or something).

For instance, an XML file would look something like this:

<PROTOCOL name="AIM" ip="1.2.3.4" port="1234" >
   <LOGIN   - info on how to login, including field lengths, values, etc...
>
   <ROSTER  - info on what the incoming roster looks like ...>
   <ADDBUDDY - info on how to assemble an "add buddy" packet  >
   <INCOMINGMSG - info on what an incoming message packet looks like  >
   etc....
</PROTOCOL>

The client would read this file to determine how to parse incoming packets
or streams, and how to write outgoing packets or streams.  If AOL decided to
alter the protocol a little to throw us off, someone would simply update
this XML protocol file, and it would be instantly available to all clients
accessing a Jabber server, via Jabber Update or some other automated
mechanism.

The client engine to parse this XML file and make remote connections would
be open source, as well as the format of this protocol definition XML file.
When new IM systems are released with new protocols, the client doesn't have
to be updated - it simply downloads the new protocol definition
automatically.

If something like this exists, let me know!  If not lets make it part of
Jabber.

Mark