SVG over Jabber. Whiteboarding is a very interesting application of Jabber, one I'm eagerly awaiting though I don't expect it any time soon. If I had more time to write my own client, I could help hurry it along. Sunir Shah had what appeared to be a working demo of simple SVG over Jabber, but since I didn't have anyone to try it with, I'm not sure. Here's my response to that article:
Speaking as a programmer intending to write a whiteboarding-able Jabber client that will need its own parsing library, SVG looks too complex to not cause headaches: I readily concede I'm not experienced enough to write my own SVG parser (or, likely, have an opinion about SVG's quality), but the CSIRO SVG Toolkit needs CSS2 and JavaScript parsers in addition to the XML parser--and the version I'm looking at is months old and, even though it includes source, is 70% the size of Batik. I'm sure Batik does more, but do I need that for Jabber whiteboarding?
The drafted streaming XPM protocol doesn't strike me as a good idea, either; most pleasing would be a simpler vector graphics protocol, and I've had my own daydreamy delusions of grandeur trying to design one. In all this, though, the best protocol is the one the most clients use, so if it's SVG, it's SVG. I would just prefer something simpler.
I didn't include the links, though. Lazy. Might have to go to school tonight to work on that paper, so I suppose I should be on the ball, ready for that. But it's a lazy Sunday, too much inertia.
