Subject: [xmpp] Fwd: Re: 3921bis-13: initial inbound presence?

From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:01:30 -0600

Sorry, I neglected to reply-to-all.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [xmpp] 3921bis-13: initial inbound presence?
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:00:34 -0600
From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
To: Alexander Holler <[email-masked]>

On 9/17/10 5:19 AM, Alexander Holler wrote:
> Am 17.09.2010 05:36, schrieb Peter Saint-Andre:
>> On 9/14/10 8:29 PM, Alexander Holler wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> reading/working through 3921bis-13, I would suggest to remove 4.2.3 and
>>> 4.2.4. In my humble opinion there is no way for the receiving server or
>>> client to differentiate between an initial presence and a subsequent
>>> presence, because the "initial" describes the state of the connection
>>> between the sending server (4.2.2) and his client (4.2.1). Or do I miss
>>> something?
>>> Maybe 4.2.4 describes what the client should do when he receives the
>>> first presence from a contact, but for me this is another meaning of
>>> initial and not what is explained in 4.2.1.
>>
>> Technically you're right, but no one else has ever complained about
>> this. To some extent, the text in 3921bis is narrative in that it walks
>> through the chronology of a presence session (Section 4) or the process
>> of establishing a bidirectional presence subscription (Section 3).
>> Changing all the text to be even more formal doesn't strike me as very
>> user-friendly -- and that's not even to mention that it would be a fair
>> amount of work to remove all of the narrative elements and restructure
>> the document.
> 
> Ah, thanks for the explanation. I seldom read RFCs topdown. ;)

Oh, but you're missing the thrill of the plot!

> Maybe I can suggest a sentence like "An inbound initial presence isn't
> distinguishable and is treated like any other inbound presence" in those
> two paragraphs. That would remove any doubts.

We already have text like that in Section 4.4.4 (on subsequent presence).

> Personally I would go so far and would remove the rest of the text and
> would forward the reader to another section (e.g. with "see below"), to
> avoid text duplication.

Here the protagonist is the user, not the contact (we're describing what
a presence session looks like), so IMHO it's appropriate to keep the
separate sections, and in any case doesn't cause harm. In any case there
is no text duplication, because Section 4.4.4 points back to 4.2.4.

Therefore I see no need for changes.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/