Pavel Simerda wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:49:01 -0600
Peter Saint-Andre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Ahoj Pavle!

Pavel Simerda wrote:
Hello,

I have some suggestions for XEP-0231 (Data Element).
Thanks for looking at this spec so thoroughly.

I actually have some questions. First, lolek from the jabbim.cz project
is going to propose a XEP for text emoticons.

Similar to XEP-0038? We can bring that back if someone wants to maintain it.

I like his ideas but I
suggested him to use Data Element instead of a custom solution.

+1

He still has doubts but I promised him to try to sort it out and to
help him with language corrections of his document too.

Great, thanks.

I didn't find in the specs what should be used for domain ID in the
CID. The examples apparently use the domain part of JID that is not
unique for the clients. I looked at the RFC and still don't know a
proper mapping to XMPP.

His original idea was to use a cryptographic hash function and not a
CID.

I think your idea of a UUID followed by the domain part of the JID would work well.

He also pointed out he misses a feature that would allow a client to
advertise which mimetypes it supports.

Yes we can add a disco feature for that.

This is another questions... if it's just emoticons, should we just
support png and mng types or add some accept-advertisement facility?

I don't think it hurts to define a way to advertise what MIME types you support. We'll use the data element for things other than emoticons, but IMHO the simplest approach would be to advertise in general which MIME types you support, not "I support these mime types for emoticons" and "I support these other mime types for file transfer thumbnails" etc. Does anyone think that level of complexity is needed?

Is there a written policy for image formats in XMPP extensions?

Not yet.

Right now, as the example shows:

<message from='[EMAIL PROTECTED]/castle'
         to='[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
         type='groupchat'>
  <body>Yet here's a spot.</body>
  <html xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/xhtml-im'>
    <body xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
      <p>
        Yet here's a spot.
        <img alt='A spot'
             src='cid:[email protected]'/>
      </p>
    </body>
  </html>
<data xmlns='urn:xmpp:tmp:data-element' alt='A spot'
        cid='[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
        type='image/png'>
    iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs+9AAAABGdBTUEAALGP
    C/xhBQAAAAlwSFlzAAALEwAACxMBAJqcGAAAAAd0SU1FB9YGARc5KB0XV+IA
    AAAddEVYdENvbW1lbnQAQ3JlYXRlZCB3aXRoIFRoZSBHSU1Q72QlbgAAAF1J
    REFUGNO9zL0NglAAxPEfdLTs4BZM4DIO4C7OwQg2JoQ9LE1exdlYvBBeZ7jq
    ch9//q1uH4TLzw4d6+ErXMMcXuHWxId3KOETnnXXV6MJpcq2MLaI97CER3N0
    vr4MkhoXe0rZigAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==
  </data>
</message>

Note: in this particular example the data is very short, this may
not be the case in real world where people tend to ignore the size
of data they send.
Yes, that's just about the smallest image I could find. The spec says that the image should not be more than 8k (which is twice the
suggested size of an IBB chunk) but we don't know if people will
typically send images that are smaller or larger than 8k -- I think
smaller but I don't know that yet.


Might it be advertised by the client/server? And rejected if the other
party tries to send a bigger one (just to force them to fix it)?

I think that's handled at a different layer (e.g., rate limiting). But we do need to define better handling for stanzas that are too large (there is a proto-XEP about it but the Council didn't accept it and I never incorporated their feedback).

We send data once for every session (and omit for subsequent
messages).
In this case it's important to define "session" (see rfc321bis). Is
it a chat session, a presence session, or something else?


Exactly.

This has two important implications:

1) The other entity may or may not cache it for the session and
reuse it. That is good.

2) If an entity keeps the data for a longer time (e.g. for weeks
or even permanently), this cache will never be used. As the sending
entity always resends the data for a new session.

What I propose is:

 * By default the sending entity would not send the data. It would
   merely reference it by its cid url.
 * Let the recieving client follow "3.4 Retrieving Uncached Media
Data" if the data is not cached (no real change, this is already
being done).
I think I like that approach. It introduces a round trip for the IQ, which might introduce some latency. But it puts the burden for
"storing" and "serving" the image on the sender, which might
discourage abuse of in-band images.

 * Reserve the possibility of sending the data immediately with the
   message for the *specific* case that the sending client actually
   knows the recieving party cannot have the data cached (e.g. the
   data was never sent before). This behavior should be considered
   optional.
In that case the sender needs to keep a list of every JID to which it has ever sent the image. That seems suboptimal.

I didn't write it exactly as I meant it. There may be cases we are
knowingly sending something really new. But we might just as well drop
this feature if you think it's better.

If it's optional, it does no great harm. In fact it's not even a feature, just an implementation note.

I'm afraid some people will object.

Don't be afraid -- some people will always object. :)

And I suppose the recipient might have received the image from
another sender at some point, or might have received the image
through other means (e.g., an emoticon "bundle").

The problem is... that we really want the users to get what we send
them. If they got it from someone else, we need to secure it by a hash
function, not a mere ID. It would have to actually check the hash
when caching.

Isn't that a bit paranoid for something as lightweight as emoticon bundles?

Another issue would be the particular hash functions. Some client
authors or users may want to prevent using data from third parties
protected by weak hash functions.

That's why I only considered caching per sender JID.

I suppose caching per sender JID makes sense, yes.

If we want to use hashes... and third party data, we should use some
specific "hostnames", possibly sha256.cid.xmpp.org for sha256 or
something like that.

Sure. If desired.

I further propose we add some informational section about generation
of CIDs. Although it's specified elsewhere, I believe this XEP will
be very useful and will be referenced from many future XEPs (and
maybe improved as well - possibly some server caching etc). I think
the informational section could suggest UUIDs generated by hashing
the actual content.
Yes I think that would be helpful.

Another thing that could be considered... is to add some sort of
caching hint attribute that would suggest how long its reasonable to
cache a particular resource.
Do you think that would really be helpful? I'm still thinking about
it...


This feature would be optional, so it's easy to add it when we think
it's useful. Right now I have no idea :).

Maybe we could borrow from HTTP Cookies
but allow (suggest) the clients to have some mechanisms for
limiting the time, size and number of cached objects.

There are many possibilities, I will just describe one of them.
Do you have examples of these?


The attribute values could be stated more abstractly... like...
"session", "short", "medium", "long" with recommended defaults, for
example. But usually the sender knows better.

Mimicking HTTP values is OK with me.

cache="no"
 - no reason for caching the file will not be used again
Perhaps a thumbnail related to file transfer or some other ephemeral
image?

cache="session"
 - we suggest the recieving party only caches for this
   particular session
Perhaps also a thumbnail, or an image related to a whiteboarding
session?

cache="12"
 - we suggest caching for twelve days from the last use of this cid
(!)
 - for every use (recieved reference) the recieving client should
reset the date we count from
Perhaps images included in an XHTML notification from a blogging
service or somesuch?

cache="unlimited"
 - we suggest the client picks the longest time it allows (it could
   possibly cache some small pieces of data permanenty)
Perhaps a commonly-used emoticon?


Good use cases, thanks.

Of course, the client MAY ignore the caching hit. In this case it
SHOULD NOT cache at all.
Why not? My client could ignore caching hints because it has its own local policy (e.g. cache images only from people in my "Friends"
group, but cache those forever because I want to keep them in message
history). Or my client could ignore caching hints because it simply
can't cache images (no room on the device, web client, etc.).


I don't know, really :).

Well it seems a bit strong to say you SHOULD NOT cache in those instances. Just leave it up to the implementation.

If the cache attribute is not specified, we should decide on a
reasonable default value ('session' or '1' day both seem good to
me).
I think that's up to the client.


A reasonable default makes no harm, does it? :)

I suppose '1' day is OK, or 'session' if define what we mean by that.

Peter

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