Comment by click170
11 years ago
Can you go into detail about what features were lacking?
For what it's worth, a lot comes down to what features the server admin has activated. I've heard many complaints about XMPP but this is the first I've heard someone mention lack of features as a problem with it.
In addition to logging as mentioned, I find that file transfers (encrypted!) that Just Work between users regardless of the network/client/server used seems to be missing.
I really like XMPP, and the extensibility it has is brilliant, but at the same time leads to a crazy level of fragmentation for the instant messaging use case. You're basically guaranteed that you can chat to others and maintain a buddy list, but anything much beyond that is a toss up, depending on the server used, how it's configured, and what client each user has.
Server-side chat logfiles that are distributed to all connecting clients? I've never looked into the protocol, but I'm pretty sure that one is lacking.
If you're talking about Multi-User Chats, then on entering a room the server should send previous messages (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html#enter-history), with no requirements set in stone (except when the client specifies a maximum amoun to send).
When a client logs in, it is true that a server doesn't have to send messages back, but that's the goal of XEP-0313.
There was certain controversy about which protocol to use for sharing history between clients for both private chats and MUC, but now XEP0313 seems to be the future of it.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25982426/persistent-xmpp-...
There are implementations for servers, e.g https://code.google.com/p/prosody-modules/wiki/mod_mam_muc, but I have yet to see a client reliably supporting this.
I haven't heard of an extension that does that either, but I'm not sure that would scale well for busy long-running Multi User Chats.
But the benefit of XMPP is that a new extension can be proposed that does this if enough people want such a feature. Personally I would argue that a better approach would be to make Public MUC logs accessible and searchable via a web interface and to have the client log chats going forward from when they join (with offline messaging from the server so you don't have to be online the whole time).
The problem with XMPP MUC's is that it's modelled after IRC, as that's what the protocol hackers know and love. But (please forgive the hyperbole) normal people don't use IRC, they use Skype. And the Skype model is so foreign to the IRC / XMPP techies that they'll always dismiss any attempts to add these features, often with spurious technical doubts as you just did. Ignoring that Skype has these features since a decade and has taken over (some parts of) the world because it has them. (Skype alone today has about ten times more daily active users than all IRC networks together!)
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