I totally agree with cross-platform and zero conf. (Justin Karneges, Steve Brown et al.)
To get around the CLIENT knowing many transports and many clients having to do that, I suggest we have each desktop run a small private SERVER that has all the transports. The server can use s2s to connect to the 'proper' Jabber world (or even a spoof s2c that behaves as a client to the remote server) and use its own local transports to directly connect from the desktop to the AIM world, MSN world etc etc . I.e. Jabber central servers will be for Jabber-to-Jabber only. When on a desktop, the server can be AUTH'd to only allow a single LOCALHOST client to connect at a time. This would mean a very limited overhead for the desktop. Users then have a free choice of Client and the Jabber world need only create one transport for the personal server that can be distributed to all, thus making those transports regularly updated and robust. If we have a drag and drop 'personal server' with AIM, ICQ, Jabber and, erm...MSN, that runs automatically and transparently in the background and only when the Client is up, it would surely help the spread of Jabber. The personal server can be manually started, but in future, clients can add a hook to permit the spawning of the personal server. Client designers can then focus on look-and-feel, skins, usability, thinness and robustness and forget about having to handle multi-platform issues which, frankly, each client is re-inventing the wheel in that regard. My $0.02 Tim _______________________________________________ jdev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev
