Does anyone know what existing clients do when faced with multiple reply elements in a single message? Do they pick the first, last, or do anything with both? My guess is that they'll vary, giving us the XMPP equivalent of Undefined Behaviour - we saw that with MUC codes a few years back when clients often only picked one. Discovering the answer to this will indicate if this would need to be a spec bump or not.
There's nothing I noted in the existing spec that stipulates only one reply element can exist in a single message, so it's possible some clients are doing this kind of thing already. Final comment - XML is ordered, so the arrangement attribute is redundant - and prone to other exciting UB, like if there's two at the same rank, or gaps, or... (I have no opinion on whether we should do multi-replies, incidentally - though to be clear, no objections either) On Sat, 28 Jun 2025 at 23:16, Greatsword <[email protected]> wrote: > I've seen some IM platforms (namely Revolt and Guilded) have the ability > to let the user reference multiple messages in a single reply, which might > be a useful feature. I think with the XEP as it currently is, it could be > fairly simple to add support for this feature. > > I think an addition like this would be good. > > """ > Section 3.2 - Multi-Message Replies > > A user may want to reply to multiple messages with a single message. This > can be done by including many reply elements. Ordering is important, so the > reply element MUST include an "arrangement" attribute that counts up from > 0, with 0 being displayed at the top in the client UI. > > EXAMPLE 5. Yuri replies to both Max's and Anna's messages in a MUC. > ``` > <message to='[email protected]' from=' > [email protected]/anna' id='groupchat-id1' type='groupchat'> > <stanza-id xmlns='urn:xmpp:sid:0' id='groupchat-id1' /> > <body>A fort will keep us safe!</body> > </message> > > <message to='[email protected]' from=' > [email protected]/max' id='groupchat-id2' type='groupchat'> > <stanza-id xmlns='urn:xmpp:sid:0' id='groupchat-id2' /> > <body>Adoring blue flags for style!</body> > </message> > > <message to='[email protected]' from=' > [email protected]/yuri' id='groupchat-id3' type='groupchat'> > <stanza-id xmlns='urn:xmpp:sid:0' id='groupchat-id3' /> > <body>Excellent ideas! Let's get right to it!</body> > <reply to='[email protected]/anna' id='groupchat-id1' > arrangement='0' xmlns='urn:xmpp:reply:0' /> > <reply to='[email protected]/max' id='groupchat-id2' > arrangement='1' xmlns='urn:xmpp:reply:0' /> > </message> > ``` > > A fallback for this would work in the same way as the previous section, > the main difference is that the fallback would include all referenced > messages. > > """ > > I think it also might be worth considering having some kind of limiter in > how many messages can be referenced by one reply - perhaps MUCs that > advertise support for replies could indicate in a data form how many > references may be one message, and if clients don't self-enforce this, then > the MUC could throw a policy violation error and drop the message. > _______________________________________________ > Standards mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >
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