XEP-0333: Chat Markers

WARNING: This Standards-Track document is Experimental. Publication as an XMPP Extension Protocol does not imply approval of this proposal by the XMPP Standards Foundation. Implementation of the protocol described herein is encouraged in exploratory implementations, but production systems are advised to carefully consider whether it is appropriate to deploy implementations of this protocol before it advances to a status of Draft.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The concept of delivery and read receipts has been popularised by other messaging services such as iMessage, Google Hangouts and Blackberry Messenger. These services provide a visual indication of when a message has been delivered to any of the recipients resources and (optionally) when it has been read. These visual indications (referred to herein as "Chat Markers") are synced between all of the sender's and recipient's resources automatically, so the state of a chat is always consistent. If one or more of the resources is not connected, it can fetch Chat Markers from the Message Archive upon reconnecting.

Message Delivery Receipts [1] currently provides delivery receipts on a per message basis, but it does not provide any mechanism for the user to indicate that they have read or acknowledged the message. As delivery receipts are sent on a per message basis it would require multiple messages to "sync up" up delivery receipts between resources.

Moreover by using Chat State Notifications [2] you could infer that a message has been read by the recipient, if they become active at any point after the message has been delivered, but again it would require multiple messages to "sync up" chat states between resources.

This XEP outlines an efficient message based protocol to provide this functionally using Chat Markers.

Note: Chat Markers do not mark each individual message, nor do they assume a reliable transport. This means that Chat Markers can only provide a heuristic solution, but this is often satisfactory for the majority of use cases.

2. Terminology

The term "active chat" refers to a chat that a user is currently active in. See Chat State Notifications [3].

The term "system notification" refers to a notification (typically a preview) that is displayed separately to a Chat.

The term "read" in the context of iMessage, Google Hangouts and Blackberry Messenger, directly maps to the displayed element in the Chat Marker namespace.

The term "markable message" refers to the stanza for which the original sender would like to receive a Chat Marker.

The term "Chat Marker" refers to the stanza by which the recipient replies to a "markable message" with a marker.

3. Requirements

This document addresses the following requirements:

1. Enable a client to mark a message as markable.
2. Enable a client to mark the last received message in a chat.
3. Enable a client to mark the last displayed message in a chat.
4. Enable a client to mark the last acknowledged message in a chat.
5. Enable a client to fetch and set Chat Markers regardless of wether the other users in a chat are online.

4. Determining support

If an entity supports the Chat Markers protocol, it MUST report that by including a Service Discovery [4] feature of "urn:xmpp:chat-markers:0" in response to disco#info requests:

Example 1. Client queries for server features

<iq type='get' id='disco1' to='capulet.lit' from='juliet@capulet.lit/balcony'>
  <query xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/disco#info'/>
</iq>

Example 2. Entity responds with features

<iq type='result' id='disco1' from='capulet.lit' to='juliet@capulet.lit/balcony'>
  <query xmlns='http://jabber.org/protocol/disco#info'>
    ...
    <feature var='urn:xmpp:chat-markers:0'/>
    ...
  </query>
</iq>

Support can also be determined via Entity Capabilities [5], a.k.a. "caps".

5. When to send Chat Markers and markable messages

6. Protocol Format

Chat Markers use a dedicated protocol extension qualified by the 'urn:xmpp:chat-markers:0' namespace.

There are 4 allowable elements in the namespace, the first 'markable' indicates that a message can be marked with a Chat Marker and is therefore a markable message.

The 3 other allowable elements in this namespace are used to mark a message (in order of significance):

• received -- the message has been received by a client.
• displayed -- the message has been displayed to a user in a active chat and not in a system notification.
• acknowledged -- the message has been acknowledged by some user interaction e.g. pressing an acknowledgement button.

The Chat Marker MUST have an 'id' which is the 'id' of the message being marked.

The Chat Marker MUST have a 'thread' if the message has been received, displayed or acknowledged in the context of a thread.

A Chat Marker Indicates that all messages up to and including that message 'id' have been marked. If a thread is supplied, a Chat Marker is only valid in the context of that thread.

Example 3. Example Content Message with a markable Chat Marker

      
<message
    from='northumberland@shakespeare.lit/westminster'
    id='message-1'
    to='ingrichard@royalty.england.lit/throne'>
  <thread>sleeping</thread>
  <body>>My lord, dispatch; read o'er these articles.</body>
  <markable xmlns='urn:xmpp:chat-markers:0'/>
</message>

Note: A sender MUST include an 'id' attribute on every markable message.

If recipient does not support the Chat Markers protocol it SHOULD NOT return an error.

Example 4. Example Message marked with a recieved Chat Marker

      
<message
    from='kingrichard@royalty.england.lit/throne'
    id='message-2'
    to='northumberland@shakespeare.lit/westminster'>
  <received xmlns='urn:xmpp:chat-markers:0' 
               id='message-1'
           thread='sleeping'/>
</message>

When the recipient sends a Chat Marker, it SHOULD ensure that the message stanza contains only the Chat Marker child element. Naturally, intermediate entities might add other extension elements to the message when routing or delivering the receipt message, e.g., a <delay/> element as specified in Delayed Delivery [8].

7. Requirements

Clients SHOULD use Message Carbons [9] to support multiple online resources.

Clients SHOULD use Message Archiving [10] or Message Archive Management [11] to support offline updating of Chat Markers. Chat Markers SHOULD be archived, so they can be fetched and set regardless of wether the other users in a chat are online.

Messages MUST have an 'id' to use Chat Markers.

Messages MUST include the 'markable' element to use Chat Markers.

Chat Markers MUST only move forward. If a Chat Maker is received for an earlier message than the current Chat Marker, it MUST be ignored by the client.

Chat Markers for unknown messages MUST be ignored by the client. A client MAY store the Chat Marker incase the associated message is retrieved later.

8. Business Rules

9. Security Considerations

A user may not wish to disclose that they have received, displayed or acknowledge a message.

It is possible for a sender to leak its presence when updating Chat Markers; therefore, a sender SHOULD NOT send Chat Markers to recipients who are not otherwise authorized to view its presence.

10. IANA Considerations

This document requires no interaction with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

11. XMPP Registrar Considerations

12. XML Schema

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>

<xs:schema attributeFormDefault="unqualified" 
  elementFormDefault="qualified" 
  targetNamespace="urn:xmpp:chat-markers:0" 
  xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    
  <xs:annotation>
    <xs:documentation>
      The protocol documented by this schema is defined in
      XEP-XXXX: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-XXXX.html
    </xs:documentation>
  </xs:annotation>
  
  <xs:element name="markable">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:simpleContent>
        <xs:extension base="xs:string">
        </xs:extension>
      </xs:simpleContent>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>

  <xs:element name="received">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:simpleContent>
        <xs:extension base="xs:string">
          <xs:attribute type="xs:string" name="id"/>
          <xs:attribute type="xs:string" name="thread"/>
        </xs:extension>
      </xs:simpleContent>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
  
  <xs:element name="displayed">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:simpleContent>
        <xs:extension base="xs:string">
          <xs:attribute type="xs:string" name="id"/>
          <xs:attribute type="xs:string" name="thread"/>
        </xs:extension>
      </xs:simpleContent>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
  
  
  <xs:element name="acknowledged">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:simpleContent>
        <xs:extension base="xs:string">
          <xs:attribute type="xs:string" name="id"/>
          <xs:attribute type="xs:string" name="thread"/>
        </xs:extension>
      </xs:simpleContent>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
  
</xs:schema>

Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0333
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Experimental
Type: Standards Track
Version: 0.1
Last Updated: 2013-07-11
Approving Body: XMPP Council
Dependencies: XMPP Core, XEP-0001
Supersedes: None
Superseded By: None
Short Name: NOT_YET_ASSIGNED
Source Control: HTML
This document in other formats: XML  PDF

Appendix B: Author Information

Appendix C: Legal Notices

Appendix D: Relation to XMPP

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 6120) and XMPP IM (RFC 6121) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.

Appendix E: Discussion Venue

The primary venue for discussion of XMPP Extension Protocols is the <standards@xmpp.org> discussion list.

Discussion on other xmpp.org discussion lists might also be appropriate; see <http://xmpp.org/about/discuss.shtml> for a complete list.

Errata can be sent to <editor@xmpp.org>.

Appendix F: Requirements Conformance

The following requirements keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".

Appendix G: Notes

Appendix H: Revision History

Note: Older versions of this specification might be available at http://xmpp.org/extensions/attic/

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