[Twisted-Python] Five Crazy Ideas to Start Your Week

[Bruce Mitchener]

Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Oct 2002 20:08:14 +0300, Tommi Virtanen <tv at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
>>	So user A will see python at python.org as "python", user B will see
>>	python at twistedmatrix.com as "python", and if those two ever have to be
>>	squashed to the same namespace, user A will see "python
>>	(python at python.org)" and "python at twistedmatrix.com" and user B will see
>>	"python at python.org" and "python (python at twistedmatrix.com)"?
> 
> 
> This is how e-mail naming works, isn't it?  User A is connecting to python.org,
> user B is connecting to twistedmatrix.com.  The difference is that hosts may
> provide either redirects for a certain name between each other, or relays for a
> particular channel (a-la ry).
> 
> 
>>	This problem may be easier to think of in terms of nicks than of
>>	channels; IIRC there was some chat system that under the hood
>>	identified users with user at host (unix user id / email, whatever), but
>>	allowed them to set their list of "preferred nicknames".  User A would
>>	see user B with the first available preferred nickname from B's list,
>>	or as userB at hostB if none was available. And this was, IIRC, done fully
>>	in A's client; if B and C saw different people (were on different
>>	channels), they could see A with a different nickname.
> 
> 
> This is an interesting idea, but it has the potential to be pretty confusing, I
> think.  Tacking on an implicit domain name to channel/user names is a
> convenience, but shifting around the displayed name is potentially even more
> confusing.  (At least: as I understand it, I was thinking the user would type
> "join python" and get a window that says "python at twistedmatrix.com"; what
> you're suggesting is that the user types "join python at twistedmatrix.com" and
> gets a window that says "Arglebargle!" because that is the python group's
> preferred nickname? )

To what extent should prior art and IETF work be looked at in these 
sorts of areas?

Some of the more readily obvious stuff in this area would be the IETF 
IMPP working group:

     http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/impp-charter.html

and things like Jabber, Zephyr, and so on.

  - Bruce