On 06/10/14 22:29, Trevor Perrin wrote: > So you're arguing it's a desirable UX if out-of-order messages are not > displayed until their ancestors have been displayed, and that this is > generally achievable since clients can use a retransmit mechanism to > get any lost messages. > > I note that in asynchronous messaging (email, text messaging) you > can't assume other parties are online to do retransmits, so you're > assuming there's some server cacheing the ciphertexts that's able to > do this. >
Not necessarily - other members that are online can retransmit ciphertexts on
behalf of the original author. A server is only *needed* in the case that
*no-one else* is online, though it might improve performance in the other cases.
> Anyways, this is partly just a UX question. Are there existing
> widespread messaging systems that work this way (delay message display
> until causal ancestors arrive)? Most things I'm aware of simply
> display messages when they arrive.
>
"Partly just"? :p
If one doesn't care about consistency of history, it's fine to just display
messages immediately as they arrive. If one does care about it, then you can't.
Or at least, I believe not - and nobody has proposed a system that does so.
I was trying to describe why I think this, using precise language rather than
vague summaries, so that a coherent discussion can actually form and move
forward. I appreciate it's a lot to read, but I think it's useful for people to
grasp the problem.
I do describe other options where one *can* display messages immediately and
get a certain form of consistency ("single-message consistency"). It depends on
what one thinks is a suitable security property, and what resource constraints
there are.
TCP delays packets until missed packets with earlier sequence numbers arrive...
X
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