Subject: [Simple] Chat sessions

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 08:44:47 +0200

Hi:

I would like to draw your attention to a draft that Aki and me submitted a few days ago. We are addressing those missing components in a multiparty session based messaging (aka chat room). The draft is:

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-niemi-simple-chat-00.txt

We are focusing on two aspects at the moment: setting and displaying a nickname; and sending private messages to a subset of the participants (sidebar messaging conferences).

We have defined a convention to transport nicknames in message/cpim. Messages can be addressed to the whole chat room or just a subset of the participants. We have also provided an XML document that allows a participant to set her nickname and the chat room server to accept it.

Comments are welcome.

/Miguel
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Miguel A. Garcia           tel:+358-50-4804586    
Nokia Research Center      Helsinki, Finland

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From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:58:42 -0500

Its good to think about things like this. But I think the goal should 
not be to introduce special features for chat conferences. It should be 
to learn what features users of chat conferences expect, and ensure that 
comparable features are available via our conference framework, and 
available with any media when that makes sense. So I think some of these 
ideas need to flow back into the conference framework.

More specific comments:

-----------

    .... Each message needs
    to carry in it an identifier of the sender of the message.

    This is accomplished using the 'message/cpim' MIME type, as defined
    in [7]. The conference focus MUST insist on using the 'message/cpim'
    as the top-level wrapper type in the SDP, as defined in [12].

I think this is a little harsh. But as long as cpim support is 
*required* of msrp implementations I guess it is ok. All that is needed 
to enforce it is for the focus to refuse any other format for containers.

However it is relatively trivial to be more accomodating, adding and 
removing cpim wrappers according to the desires of the individual endpoints.

---------

    If the message is a addressed to the whole conference, the To
    header of the CPIM message contains the conference URI.

That works. But it would be convenient by default if messages containing 
no To are addressed to the conference as a whole.

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Nickname management is problematic. It seems as though nicknames will 
need to be authenticated and authorized. But it isn't at all clear that 
the focus is the right entity to do so. (The scope is wrong.)

I think this would be better served by using real, routable im: or sip: 
uris. As needed, service providers can exist to host nicknames and 
forward requests addressed to them to other addresses.

Then, a conference server would only need to authenticate endpoints when 
they are connected to the focus, and verify that the From field of an 
incoming cpim message matches the known identity of the source.

The roster is then available via the conference event package, or via CPCP.

(However there would be serious problems with federated foci.)

	Paul

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From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:58:42 -0500

More specific comments:

-----------

    .... Each message needs

---------

----------

	Paul