XEP-0235: data forms?

Pedro Melo poked me via IM about XEP-0235 (Authorization
Tokens),
specifically to ask me why the protocol uses data forms. I
didn't have a
good answer. Since he challenged me about it, I've realized
that using
data forms here doesn't especially make sense, so I may
change that in
the next version of the spec.

Just so you know. 

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

Hi,

On Mar 29, 2008, at 2:52 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> Pedro Melo poked me via IM about XEP-0235
(Authorization Tokens),
> specifically to ask me why the protocol uses data
forms. I didn't  
> have a
> good answer. Since he challenged me about it, I've
realized that using
> data forms here doesn't especially make sense, so I may
change that in
> the next version of the spec.

I have nothing very strong against Data Forms. My point was
that, for  
clients that use XPath to parse the known parts of the
stanza (and  
transparently ignore anything that the client does not
support), data  
forms are a bit messy  and a nice
semantic XML is much easier to  
parse.

Best regards,
-- 
Pedro Melo
Blog: http://www.simplic
idade.org/notes/
XMPP ID: melosimplicidade.org
Use XMPP!

On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 8:59 PM, Pedro Melo <melosimplicidade.org> wrote:
>
>  I have nothing very strong against Data Forms. My
point was that, for
>  clients that use XPath to parse the known parts of the
stanza (and
>  transparently ignore anything that the client does not
support), data
>  forms are a bit messy  and a nice
semantic XML is much easier to
>  parse.
>

In fact I'd say that Data Forms are good when you don't know
in
advance all the possible fields, or when you have complex
input
schemes that must be rendered in clients (e.g. muc or
pubsub
configuration). In the other cases as best practice I
wouldn't abuse
on them, in order not to be too much verbose (though we may
find a way
to "binarize" them ;))

-- 
Fabio Forno, Ph.D.
Bluendo srl http://www.bluendo.com
jabber id: ffjabber.bluendo.com