I got into this issue when I was testing an Android client (Xabber) chatting to a Spark client (via Openfire). The point/issue is as follow:
It looks to me there’s a difference in the way the Spark client start a Private Chat depending if it is initiated within a Group Chat or from a Contact entry. Even the windows look a bit different.
Between the Spark client and the Xabber client what happens is that if the Spark client initiate a private chat within a Group Chat the Xabber client does not realize the messages are coming from a “Private Chat” and continues to write in the same window. To a certain extent the same happens if the Spark client initiate a Private Chat to a Psi client. The Psi client realizes there are private messages coming in but does not open any windows or so but just blips. On the contrary if a Private Chat is initiated from the Spark client via the contacts either towards a Xabber client or a Psi client all works fine, the Xabber client starts a new session as well as Psi opens a private chat windows … In the beginning I thought it was a Xabber issue but seeing the behavior of Psi I started to think it might be Spark related.
As said it might be a “fieature” but any help is much welcome.
Well, it is a “feature”. Private chats in MUC (group chat) are not the same as a normal chat via contacts list. Private chat is more like a special MUC room just for two users. I think Spark is behaving by standards. There was a ticket, which has been closed as won’t fix (SPARK-657). And there is a link to a protocol description http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html#privatemessage
Thank you wroot, indeed it looks like they are different… I understand the differences related to the protocol etc. although I think it is making the whole thing a bit complicated. Maybe I’m not that much into XMPP but I do not understand the need of having two different ways of creating a private chat. From the “USER” point of view when I need to privately chat with another user I do not really care if it originates from MCU or from a list … I’ll try to mail the Xabber people and point out the difference hopefully it will work.
Well, in MUC (Multi User Conferece) user can be represented by a nickname and you may not be able to know his real JID (jabber id or username), so if you start a private chat, you start a private chat with that nickname, not with the JID you maybe don’t know (i mean that your client is not allowed to know it by room’s policy). If you can’t access his JID, then you can’t start a normal chat with him, yet via MUC’s private chat you can have a personal chat with him. I think that was an idea behind this.
OK got the point, as I said I’m a “humble user”, I never looked into the protocol itself … I did some further tests with Psi and Spark, indeed it is a Xabber issue… I would say annoying because there no way to detect if the message you got is from a MCU originated, private chat or a MCU group message. More annoying is that you might not realize that, reply and the message will go to the MCU with all the consequences …