1 Account based MUC joining

     2 =========================

     3 

     4 Normally when joing a MUC groupchat, it is each individual client that

     5 joins. This means their presence in the group is tied to the session,

     6 which can be short-lived or unstable, especially in the case of mobile

     7 clients.

     8 

     9 This has a few problems. For one, for every message to the groupchat, a

    10 copy is sent to each joined client. This means that at the account

    11 level, each message would pass by once for each client that is joined,

    12 making it difficult to archive these messages in the users personal

    13 archive.

    14 

    15 A potentially better approach would be that the user account itself is

    16 the entity that joins the groupchat. Since the account is an entity that

    17 lives in the server itself, and the server tends to be online on a good

    18 connection most of the time, this may improve the experience and

    19 simplify some problems.

    20 

    21 This is one of the essential changes in the MIX architecture, which is

    22 being designed to replace MUC.

    23 

    24 `mod_minimix` is an experiment meant to determine if things can be

    25 improved without replacing the entire MUC standard. It works by

    26 pretending to each client that nothing is different and that they are

    27 joining MUCs directly, but behind the scenes, it arranges it such that

    28 only the account itself joins each groupchat. Which sessions have joined

    29 which groups are kept track of. Groupchat messages are then forked to

    30 those sessions, similar to how normal chat messages work.

    31 

    32 ## Known issues

    33 

    34 -   You can never leave.

    35 -   You will never see anyone leave.

    36 

    37 ## Unknown issues

    38 

    39 -   Probably many.

    40 

    41 # Compatibility

    42 

    43 Briefly tested with Prosody trunk (as of this writing).