A version is only interesting if you know the software that it goes
with.
Unfortunately all we have is a URI, which means for any sane display
I need a
table of URI->"software name" mappings, and thus I can only display
versions
for software I know about. That seems limiting.
Not really; you can just cache the identity part of a disco query when
you cache the list of features. Usually the identity contains the
client name, and you are already generally getting that when you do
your disco query. In general, I see things like...
<identity category='client' name='Exodus' type='pc'/>
...coming back. You cache the name, and add the version.
(Optionally, if the name string contains the version string, a'la
'Exodus 0.9.1' and version '0.9.1' you just use the name unmodified.)
Granted, this becomes an issue if you have two clients with identical
hashes but different names, so Justin's suggestion of an 'n' field in
the caps is not without merit. But users do like this information --
and it can be useful to know that someone is on the Gmail web client,
rather than Google Talk itself -- so having SOME way to convey it in a
sensible and bandwidth-efficient manner (i.e., avoiding our old-school
iq:version flood) is a good idea.
--
Rachel Blackman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Trillian Messenger - http://www.trillianastra.com/
