OK. I’m on the path of the answer here. Check this out.
I’m in a muc using pidgin. There is also a smack client in the chatroom. I try to send a picture of a chicken by typing the word “chicken”, and what pidgin sends to the muc is this:
<message type=‘groupchat’ id=‘purple408cd26f’ to=‘xxx@conference.chat.xxx.com’>
<**body**>chicken</**body**>
</message>
Now, in the same room, I kick out all of the smack based clients. I again type the word chicken, exactly as before, but this time pidgin sends:
<message type=‘groupchat’ id=‘purple408cd273’ to=‘xxx@conference.chat.xxx.com’>
<**body**>chicken</**body**>
<**html** **xmlns**='**http://jabber.org/protocol/xhtml-im**'>
<**body** **xmlns**='**http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml**'>
<**p**>
<**img** **alt**='chicken' **src**='cid:sha1+0e1ba91075cd60c6ad54807af38c3fa4dabd9c02@bob.xmpp.org'/>
</**p**>
</**body**>
</**html**>
</message>
What seems to be happening is that my pidgin recognizes that there’s a non-pidgin client in the muc, so it doesn’t even attempt to send the XHTML message.
In examinign this, I notice something. The smack based clients report their presence as:
<presence id=‘AWHQf-5’ to=‘cepasp@chat.xxx.com/leavenworth’ from=‘xxx@conference.chat.xxx.com/Wendell’>
<**x** **xmlns**='**http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#user**'>
<**item** **jid**='imservice2@chat.xxx.com/Wendell' **affiliation**='none' **role**='participant'/>
</**x**>
</presence>
However, the presence from a pidgin client looks like this:
<presence to=‘cepasp@chat.xxx.com/leavenworth’ from=‘xxx@conference.chat.xxx.com/nelliott’>
<**priority**>1</**priority**>
<**c** **xmlns**='**http://jabber.org/protocol/caps**' **node**='http://pidgin.im/' **hash**='sha-1' **ver**='I22W7CegORwdbnu0ZiQwGpxr0Go='/>
<**x** **xmlns**='**vcard-temp:x:update**'>
<**photo**/>
</**x**>
<**x** **xmlns**='**http://jabber.org/protocol/muc#user**'>
<**item** **jid**='nelliott@chat.xxx.com/e002b5dc' **affiliation**='none' **role**='participant'/>
</**x**>
</presence>
I think the key is the caps. My theory is that pidgin looks at the muc, looks at who’s there, and notes what their cilent is. Then, if it sees a pidgin client it sends images but if it sees a non-pidgin client it doesn’t. General XHTML messages (without images) work in all cases. It’s the sending of ![]()
that’s the problem. Consider this message, with an XHTML-IM body. This is what my pidgin client sends even with smack clients on the muc. To cause it to produce this message I sent it in bold. ‘chicken’ should have been an ![]()
like above, but pidgin chose to not send it that way because of the presence of the smack client:
<message type=‘groupchat’ id=‘purple408cd420’ to=‘liban_chat@conference.chat.libaninc.com’>
<**body**>TEST</**body**>
<**html** **xmlns**='**http://jabber.org/protocol/xhtml-im**'>
<**body** **xmlns**='**http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml**'>
<**p**>
<**span** **style**='font-weight: bold;'>TEST TEST chicken TEST TEST</**span**>
</**p**>
</**body**>
</html>
</message>
I have attempted to fix this by using the flow fork of smack and smackx. I modify my connection as follows:
Presence pres = new Presence( Presence.Type.available );
CapsExtension caps = new CapsExtension( "[http://pidgin.im/](http://pidgin.im/)", "I22W7CegORwdbnu0ZiQwGpxr0Go=", "sha-1");
pres.addExtension( caps );
connection.sendPacket( pres );
in other words, I’m trying to fake being a pidgin client to see how that changes thigns. It doesn’t help (yet) because I think I have it wrong. I don’t really know how to construct that verification string. I also don’t know if my smack client needs to keep sending those presence messages over and over, or if it’s sufficient to do it just once on startup.