[ticker-dev] Re: Elvin presence spec draft - request for comments

[Martin at dstc]

I completeley agree with Klaus & Bill on this one.

The domain thing may be useful but not on its own
Perhaps it should be up to the client to group buddies .

eChatz did the buddy list thing by registering a buddy ID so it didnt matter
what display name the buddy used.
If he or she is online you get to know (unless they've disabled awareness).

On startup eChatz would send an online message that caused other clients to
respond with their online status,
but their name was not really used except for display purposes, what I used
instead was an ID that represents
that buddy and the client was only interested in the ID, regardless of what
the display name happened to be.

I see a problem in that not every client in the world should get the PING.
only my Buddies should get the PING or the PONG

I'm not sure how best to implement this ..
does the PONG contain my info - or only the info of the people I'm looking
for (pinging)

The latter makes the subscription a little less complicated but it means I
have to know before hand who I''m interested in.

Perhaps the protocol could/should be extended so a client must first request
your presence ID
ICQ does something like this .. ie "Foo Bar has requested to add you to
their buddy list, do you wish to be added to Foo Bar's buddy list ?"
This request _could_ be made to whatever display name the client is useing
at the time, so if you see a message in ticker
and you want to add that person to your buddy list you could send a request
that the other party listens to by looking for their
display name somewhere in the request notification (do we need a new field
for this??)
If the response is yes then it should contain my Display Name and my ID,
where the ID is constant.
Its a given that if I let someone add me to their buddy list that I have the
right to add them to mine.

Groups/domain may actually become irrelevant and clients could facilitate
their own grouping of "Buddies"

Over to the experts ....

Cheers,

Martin