Programming Jabber

Scratching an Itch

Having all your contacts use the same IM system is all well and good in theory but in practice is rarely the case. (If you’re like me and have only a few friends, then this is not so much of a problem.) Jeremie Miller had correspondents in different IM systems and consequently had to have different IM clients running on his desktop to keep up with them all. Many great software projects stem from a personal “itch” that someone wanted to scratch. This was the primary itch that Jeremie had—a single client for all IM interaction: panacea.

Of course, one obvious solution would be to build a single client that supported all of the IM system protocols, but this approach had two drawbacks:

• The proprietary nature of the protocols made it harder to implement the support required and would make the client overly complicated.

• Every time the protocol, which wasn’t under his control, changed or a new one came along, the client would have to be modified—a task not practical for a large user base.

On top of that, GUI programming isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and Jeremie preferred a solution that allowed him to concentrate on the underlying problems at hand and let others build the GUIs.