Elvin presence spec draft - request for comments

[Klaus Alexander Seistrup]

  G'day mates,

With keen interest I've been flipping through Matthew Phillips' neat
PowerPoint slides, "Awareness in Tickerland", from the Ticker2001
workshop.

I've also been snooping a bit on Sticker 2's ELVIN_ONLINE_STATUS*
emissions and was just about to implement something similar in my
roll-your-own tickertape client written in python when I stumbled
upon the Elvin Presence RFC on the web.

I assume that the ELVIN_ONLINE_STATUS_REQUEST from the slides equals
the Presence-Request from the RFC, and that the ELVIN_ONLINE_STATUS
corresponds to the Presence-Info -- in spirit, not in word -- and I
have a question about the implementation.

The way I read it -- and feel free to correct me -- the presence
protocol would not be very useful for me the way Tickerland looks
these days: there's a bunch of guys (and a few gals) Down Under, and
then there's me and my shadow at the other end of the world.  When
I start my ticker client it is interesting for me to know who's
online in Australia since they are my only company in Tickerland
(oh, the other day a Danish company, probably mistakenly, popped
up on my tickertape and said something about a fax or a printer,
but I haven't seen them since...).

Now, Sticker2 seems to make two subscriptions [for me] on startup:

<pre>
require(ELVIN_ONLINE_STATUS) && DOMAIN == "zigzag" && USER != "kas"
require(ELVIN_ONLINE_STATUS_REQUEST) && DOMAIN == "zigzag"
</pre>

i.e., it asks for presence info from anybody in my own domain, and
since I'm the only one in my domain who uses Elvin messaging (well,
probably in Denmark, or even the entire Europe) there will never be
any answers to the status requests, will there? :-(

I suppose I could make a different implementation in my own ticker
client, but I still see it as a problem  -- and now I'm getting to
the point -- that the proposed presence protocol is domain focused.

I am usually elvining as kas at zigzag.  Then there's j at laptop (or
@lerkim or @monash, or whatever).  And d at monash, etc., etc.  How,
and where, am I gonna catch those boys if my client only wants to
subscribe to presence info from my own lonesome domain?

Perhaps it's beyond the scope of the presence protocol, and so
perhaps I should rather be using ICQ for this, but when I start up
my ticker I would like to be able to see who's online "globally" --
that e.g. Julian, Bill, David and Martin are online Down Under,
even if they're on separate domains, doing different things.
I admit that if Elvin ever gets as accepted worldwide as ICQ is
now, then we'll end up with an amazing buddy list, but I am
looking at the situation and my requirements here and now.

Assuming clients are ~/.ticker/ aware, would it make sense to have,
e.g., a ~/.ticker/buddies file, perhaps along the lines of

<pre>
# Name		Usually seen as
Julian		j@(laptop|lerkim|monash)
Christopher	cmlp@(dstc|home)
# eof
</pre>

and then have your client make specific presence requests for all
user at domain entities mentioned in that file?  Or is there a more
efficient way to accomplish what I want?

Or have I misunderstood the whole thing?


Cheers,

  // Klaus

-- 
A man, just one -
also a fly, just one -
in the huge drawing room.