[jdev] An old pseudo standard, but is it still good?

[Daniel Henninger]

Hi folk,

Today I was having a discussion with another developer about one of  
the 'standards' that's been in place for a little while and it got me  
waffling back and forth as to whether it's a "good" standard or not.   
I'll get right to the point:

MSN username: fakeuser at ninja.com
Jabber MSN translated JID: fakeuser%ninja.com at msn.jabber.fake.org

So where did this use of % come from?  It seems to work out well, and  
has been used in many places, but I don't see it in any XEPs or  
anything like that (nothing formal).  By the same token, if you look  
at XEP-0106, it seems like what -should- have happened is:

Jabber MSN translated JID: fakeuser\40ninja.com at msn.jabber.fake.org

Now if a client 'renders' that, it looks like  
fakeuser at ninja.com@msn.jabber.fake.org, which is a tad confusing  
looking in it's own right.  Also, if you are typing a jid on the  
command line, assuming you had a command line client, that would be a  
pain to type.  The argument there as that the client should handle  
the translation before sending it off to an XMPP server.. ie I would  
actually type fakeuser at ninja.com@msn.jabber.fake.org.  Such things  
are a little confusing to look at, and possibly to parse, but which  
is "better"?  Obviously \40 appears to be the formal way as it's in  
an actual XEP.

So should those of us in the transport developing world begin the  
process of moving from % to \40?
Where did % come from?  Why is it a pseudo standard to date?

I'm quite interested to hear other's thoughts on this.  =)

Daniel

-- 
"The most addictive drug in the world is music."
      - The Lost Boyz