Subject: [Simple] Appear Offline

From: Qian Sun <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:08:42 +0800

Hi All,
"Appear Offline" is very popular in current IM software. People sometimes want to hide themselves, i.e. appear “offline” when they are actually “online”, at the same time they can get their buddies’ presence information.

Can anybody tell me how to realize this feature in SIMPLE way?

Thanks in advance,
Qian Sun
Research & Standardization Dept.
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
 
E-mail:[email-masked]
Tel:+86-755-28979550
Fax:+86-755-28975471

_______________________________________________
Simple mailing list
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https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/simple

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From: "Vikas Tandon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:28:59 +0530

Dear Qian,
It can be processed as the note in the Presence tuple where status will be
online but the note will be appear offline. The Notifier should process
presence notification accordingly.
Would be interesting to hear any other way this can be done.

Regards,
Vikas Tandon

-----Original Message-----
From: Qian Sun [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 3:39 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Simple] Appear Offline

Hi All,
"Appear Offline" is very popular in current IM software. People sometimes
want to hide themselves, i.e. appear "offline" when they are actually
"online", at the same time they can get their buddies' presence information.

Thanks in advance,
Qian Sun

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:31:40 +0300

Hello, 

In my opinion, you are considered offline by other clients if they do
not get presence information for you. So "appear offline" can be
achieved when you do not publish your presence information, or you
publish it but you do not authorize other people to get it by default.

Regards, 
Silvestr

>From: Vikas Tandon [mailto:[email-masked]]
>Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 2:59 PM
>To: 'Qian Sun'; [email-masked]
>Subject: RE: [Simple] Appear Offline
>
>Dear Qian,

---

From: David Viamonte <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:17:24 +0200

Dear all,

Just my 2c:

To me, "offline" is not the same as "unknown".

IMMO, the latter (unknown) would apply if a Notifier or a Watcher is
not able to gather consistent Presence info about a Presentity.

The former (offline) would apply when the Notifier has got information
that the Presentity is actually "offline" or unavailable
(<status><basic>closed</basic></status> in PIDF
terms).

To appear "offline" when the Presentity is actually reachable could be
achieved by publishing Presence where status is actually marked as
"closed", while the actual communication with the service is not
dropped down. The fact that a Source publishes application X
availability as "closed" may not necessarily mean that the Presentity
is actually unreachable for that application. To my understanding, the
dialog maintained between a Presence Source and the Presence Server is
independent from the communications that are actually maintained
between any other SIP application residing in a client device, and the
corresponding Application Server that hosts that application. I am not
sure this could be considered BCP, but would see it as a potential way
of accomplishing the requested goal.

Additionally, the communication that a Presence Source establishes with
a Presence Server is independent of the SIP subscription that a Watcher
(possibly co-located with the Presence Source) establishes to receive
Presence info about other contacts (i.e.: nothing would prevent -in
theory- publishing my status as "offline", while still receiving
Presence information about my contacts).

I think the above comments apply well to application availability. When
it comes to general (global) availability this may be a bit harder to
achieve in some cases. As an example, I don't think it would be
wise/feasible to overrule the IMS registration status in 3GPP SIP
deployments (i.e.: it seems difficult to publish an "IMS unregistered"
status, and still try to be registered to the IMS).

To me,
relying on the "note" element is not a proper way to ensure that
implementations will interoperate smoothly. IMMO, <note> is
supposed to be understood by humans, so Notifiers are not supposed to
process it. In fact, RFC 2778 discourages its usage to substitute the
status of its parent element.

Regardless,
I
think things are not 100% clear to be sure that IOP issues could not
arise in this area.

Does it all make any sense?

Cheers,

David

[email-masked] escribió:

Hello,

Regards,
Silvestr

-----Original Message-----
From: Vikas Tandon [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 2:59 PM
To: 'Qian Sun'; [email-masked]
Subject: RE: [Simple] Appear Offline

Dear Qian,
It can be processed as the note in the Presence tuple where status will

be

Regards,
Vikas Tandon

-----Original Message-----
From: Qian Sun [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 3:39 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Simple] Appear Offline

Hi All,
"Appear Offline" is very popular in current IM software. People

sometimes

want to hide themselves, i.e. appear "offline" when they are actually
"online", at the same time they can get their buddies' presence
information.

Thanks in advance,
Qian Sun

---

From: Robert Sparks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:55:07 -0500

Look at RFC 3856 and RFC 2779 - search for "polite blocking".

RjS

On Apr 11, 2007, at 5:08 AM, Qian Sun wrote:

> sometimes want to hide themselves, i.e. appear “offline” when they  
> are actually “online”, at the same time they can get their buddies’  
> presence information.
>

---

From: Qian Sun <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:46:16 +0800

Dear all,
I have received several different answers so far:
1. The first one is from "Presence Authorization Rules" as Robert indicated, http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-simple-presence-rules-09.txt 
It uses a specific Action in presence rules, i.e. <actions><sub-handling>polite-block</sub-handling></actions>, to "tell the server to place the subscription into the "active" state, and to produce a presence document that indicates that the presentity is unavailable.  A reasonable document would exclude device and person information elements, and      include only a single service whose basic status is set to closed."

2. The second one is from IM SIMPLE of OMA, it looks like what David replied.
"The IM subscriber SHALL be shown to his contacts with presence status “offline” to his contacts when the “invisible” option is switched on."
"Upon receiving a service setting request containing the <vis-settings> element, as defined in Appendix E, from an IM User the IM Server SHALL act as a Presence Source."
"In the case when the value of the active attribute of the <vis-status> element is “closed”, the IM Server SHALL perform the publication of presence information as defined in [OMA-Pres-Spec] “Publication of presence information”. The IM Server: SHALL set the value of “Application-specific Availability for IM” Presence information element to unavailable"

3. I did saw some products had realized this feature using <note> element. :)
4. Do not publish your presence information, very simple!

Maybe we can also use "transformations" to archive this job, 
<transformations><provide-services><hidden/></provide-services></transformations>, this transformation turns the status of all service into "closed". It looks not bad.

Anyway, should we do something here to avoid confusion and potential IOP issues? 

Best Regard,
Qian

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Sparks [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 4:55 AM
To: Qian Sun
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Simple] Appear Offline

RjS

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:03:46 +0300

Hi

I've been thinking about it, and my previous suggestion (do not publish
anything) is not correct. I agree with David Viamonte, that if you want
to appear offline you simply set your status to closed. 

You want to appear offline, which means that you want to be able to use
IM service, but you do not want to be seen. Setting your presence status
to "closed" should not have impact on your usage of IM. So I think you
do not need "appear offline" option in presence document. When you
indicate to your IM client that you want to appear offline, it will set
presence status of IM service tuple to closed while keeping your online.

Does it make sense?

Silvestr

>Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 9:46 AM
>To: 'Robert Sparks'
>Cc: [email-masked]
>1. The first one is from "Presence Authorization Rules" as Robert
>indicated,
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-simple-presence-
>rules-09.txt
>It uses a specific Action in presence rules, i.e. <actions><sub-
>handling>polite-block</sub-handling></actions>, to "tell the server to
>place the subscription into the "active" state, and to produce a
presence
>document that indicates that the presentity is unavailable.  A
reasonable
>document would exclude device and person information elements, and
>include only a single service whose basic status is set to closed."
>
>"The IM subscriber SHALL be shown to his contacts with presence status
>"offline" to his contacts when the "invisible" option is switched on."
>"Upon receiving a service setting request containing the <vis-settings>
>element, as defined in Appendix E, from an IM User the IM Server SHALL
act
>as a Presence Source."
>"In the case when the value of the active attribute of the <vis-status>
>element is "closed", the IM Server SHALL perform the publication of
>presence information as defined in [OMA-Pres-Spec] "Publication of
presence
>information". The IM Server: SHALL set the value of
"Application-specific
>Availability for IM" Presence information element to unavailable"
>
>3. I did saw some products had realized this feature using <note>
element.
>:)
><transformations><provide-services><hidden/></provide-
>services></transformations>, this transformation turns the status of
all
>service into "closed". It looks not bad.
>
>Anyway, should we do something here to avoid confusion and potential
IOP
>issues?

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:51:23 -0500

>Does it make sense?

Yes. The presence source needs to publish status 'closed' in order to
appear to be offline.

Cheers,
Krisztian

>From: ext [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
>Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 11:04 PM
>To: [email-masked]
>Cc: [email-masked]
>anything) is not correct. I agree with David Viamonte, that if 
>you want to appear offline you simply set your status to closed. 
>
>You want to appear offline, which means that you want to be 
>able to use IM service, but you do not want to be seen. 
>Setting your presence status to "closed" should not have 
>impact on your usage of IM. So I think you do not need "appear 
>offline" option in presence document. When you indicate to 
>your IM client that you want to appear offline, it will set