Folks,

I can't help thinking we have multiple arguments going on, so I'd like to
see if I can disentangle them a little.

1) We all (I think) want a mechanism to send rich(er) IM messages.

2) Some of us want to send complex, structured documents.

The problem is that sending structured documents isn't a solution for IM,
and sending a textual markup is useless for structured documents.

As an example, Goffi has repeatedly and eloquently stated that Markdown
won't produce a stable rendering of an input document, and therefore is
totally useless for, for example, the blog-style use he puts XHTML-IM to.
In fact, XHTML-IM itself is actually too limited for his case - he needs to
extend it.

But XHTML-IM is thoroughly overkill, and often plain annoying, when it's
used to mark up an IM message in a chatroom. There, we only need a handful
of very basic formatting cases for emphasis etc, but we really want the
receiver to be the one actually choosing the rendering.

So XHTML-IM isn't well-suited to the IM case it's named for, and
additionally is too limited for sharing real documents. In addition, while
I agree that "this specification might be implemented badly by people who
don't read the Security Considerations" is a poor argument, the evidence
has been out there for years that even experienced developers implement
XEP-0071 in ways that result in serious security issues.

So here's a strawman proposal:

- XEP-0071 is itself deprecated, and we no longer recommend using XHTML
within an IM context.
- A new XEP handles a markdown-like syntax for IM.
- A new XEP discusses embedding XHTML documents in XMPP, and carefully
covers the pitfalls.

Dave.
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