Implement realtime chat, possibly using XMPP

The benefit of using XMPP and Jingle is that instead of JS client you can put any client (Pidgin, Jitsi etc.), and it would still work, since it will talk a standard protocol.

@shmerl If we are speaking of adding XMPP as an IM service only, then we may have a reasoning behind this. We can use XMPP for a lot more than just IM, if we were so inclined. I believe both Facebook and Twitter are/were using XMPP for realtime communication between their client side and server side code.

If we do this, I'd like to give the user the freedom to run XMPP or not. If they don't want it, they can disable its use. If they do want it, it is their responsibility to provide a server and XMPP protocol support on the backend. Diaspora is essentially just providing a nice web-based client to use with an XMPP server.

For a first version, I feel like it'd be easier to just focus on text chat, and then move on to voice/video implementation later. Are there free software implementations of this on the client side I can take a look at? Also, what is everyone's consensus on using a Flash component to handle video chat for regression into older browser clients?

@Tom Scott: Yes, we can use XMPP for Diaspora's own protocol, but as I said, this is out of scope for this particular discussion.

Back to IM: XMPP surely can be optional. Podmin can simply not associate the pod with XMPP server (and not install that server). There is no need to make it mandatory.

Regarding clients - Text/IM libraries are already around. Example:
http://strophe.im/strophejs/
https://gist.github.com/processone/739147

Audio/video conferencing and Jignle support through JavaScript is still catching up and you'll have to do the research. But that can be put to phase 2, with text IM being the first phase.

Who is the person requested to implement this feature?

@christophe - chat has been one of the most wanted features since the beginning, requested by many people

@tomscott

Are there free software implementations of this on the client side I can take a look at?

Look at Jappix Mini ;)

what is everyone's consensus on using a Flash component to handle video chat for regression into older browser clients?

I'll block anything using Flash. This technology does not exist anymore :p

@flaburgan uhh, i think you misunderstood my question. but it was a stupid question anyway, because i'm pretty sure we can get websockets to work all the way down to IE 6 without using flash.

@shmerl i do know about Strophe. should be a decent choice for communicating with the XMPP server. let's focus on text chat right now. would Jappix Mini or the Facebook IM design work for our purposes?

and by "Jappix Mini" i mean the way it looks, not the product itself. we can't really use Jappix as a product because we don't control its code.

How would you link Diaspora accounts with XMPP accounts?

Do you intend to allow users to provide an existing XMPP account or should they register a new account (on the connected XMPP server) through Diaspora? (see XEP 0077)

@rekado when i was playing around with ejabberd, i found the easiest solution would be to simply create an XMPP user for each diaspora user on the pod. and when new users are added/removed, we create/destroy their corresponding jabber user. seems pretty easy since both of them are using a relational DB.