[sldev] Question: Replacing current group chat with XMPP?

[Harold Brown]

This page may be of some use:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_protocols

And from the comparison provided there it would seem that

PSYC - http://www.psyced.org/  or  http://about.psyc.eu/

would be a very good choice for the back end system.  Note that the psyced
server provides IRC as well as XMPP.


On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 1:32 PM, Dahlia Trimble <dahliatrimble at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 7:41 AM, David M Chess <chess at us.ibm.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > From: "Dahlia Trimble" <dahliatrimble at gmail.com>
>>
>> >I don't know if the IRC model is applicable to SL, but from my experience
>> as
>> >a somewhat heavy IRC user, I just dont see any of the group chat problems
>> >that SL sees and I haven't seen any evidence that the SL *logged in* user
>> >and message volume is greater, if anything I would believe the IRC volume
>> is
>> >much higher.
>>
>> Do you have a rough feeling for how many different channels a user is
>> likely to be in at once?  Again, my impression from Zero is that the IRC
>> provider(s) that he talked to cited that as a particular worry-point for
>> scaling.
>
>
> No, I don't have a feel for this yer, and I don't have any data about how
> multiple channel usage affects current IRC servers. I suspect these data may
> be fairly easy to get as most servers will tell you what other channels any
> user is currently logged into, and the source code could be studied to offer
> some suggestions about what limitations there may be, or how they could be
> overcome if they do exist.  There are also several available open source
> implementations of servers, and some may perform better or worse in this
> regard.
>
>
>> >From what little I know of IRC architecture, each server can serve a
>> limited
>> >amount of users and also forwards messages to other servers in a star
>> >configuration. I'm having a hard time envisioning a system that could
>> scale
>> >better than that by just throwing hardware at it as seems possible with
>> the
>> >IRC model.
>>
>> That's my impression also.  Distributed pub/sub!  (That is, there's no
>> polling, and a message isn't sent to a server unless there's an interested
>> user in that direction.)
>>
>> >I wish it was tongue-in-cheek, but I am a heavy IRC user and so far it's
>> the
>> >only way I can reliably communicate with others when SL's system fails,
>> or
>> >if I want to message people on other grids.
>>
>> Well, sure, but I don't really understand the desire for a normal IRC
>> client _in the SL viewer_.  Doesn't KDE / Gnome / Finder / Windows handle
>> the problem of offering convenient access to both SL and IRC at the same
>> time?
>
>
> It's a matter of how screen real estate is used. It's easy to forget that
> end users are using SL because it offers a 3D immersive experience, and
> without that, it's just yet another chat client. Also I will most likely be
> using SL on a laptop and screen real estate is critical, having yet another
> window simultaneously appearing on the screen severely reduces the 3D
> experience. I haven't seen many chat clients of any kind that take this into
> regard, and unfortunately that includes the Communicate window and the
> minimum size that it will size to, although it has improved from previous
> prototypes. Using the chat window in another application and minimizing it
> or letting it move behind the SL client window effectively removes me from
> the conversation, so that isn't the best option. A possible compromise would
> be some kind of client-side plug in architecture for chat protocols, or even
> a chat redirection proxy if the client can't be modified in this sense. Then
> again a well designed AJAX web chat client running in a browser window
> inside the SL client may even be a contender to replace the Communicate
> window.
>
> Here's how I use IRC in the current SL viewers:
> 1. press the F1 key to open a help browser
> 2. type "google.com" in the URL field and hit <enter>
> 3. search for "web irc"
> 4. pick one, some offer connections to different networks and some may use
> more or less screen area than others.
> 5. sign in. resize the browser window as appropriate and chat away while
> you are using SL.
>
> Note that if you close the browser of navigate to another page, you will
> most likely need to relog into the web chat client to reuse it, as there
> doesnt seem to be multiple tabs available in the client's browser.
>
>
> Also, I'm not trying to advocate a switch to IRC, but rather I'm suggesting
> it as a possible alternative and as a well-oiled machine worthy of study.
>
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