<abstract>This document defines Mediated Information eXchange (MIX), an XMPP protocol extension for the exchange of information among multiple users through a mediating service. The protocol can be used to provide human group communication and communication between non-human entities using channels, although with greater flexibility and extensibility than existing groupchat technologies such as Multi-User Chat (MUC). MIX uses Publish-Subscribe to provide flexible access and publication, and uses Message Archive Management (MAM) to provide storage and archiving. </abstract>
<remark><p>Clarification of MIX Proxy concept; Clarify node definitions; Make all nodes optional; Merge ACL node into configuration node; Add information node including avatar; Resolve 4.1 question by accepting provisional answer; Add discovery examples; setting and sharing Subject; Protocol to request channel information and participants; vCard Request; Private Messages; Set user preferences with XEP-0004; Remove references to member and occupant; Add Role Definition; Add Banned and Allowed Nodes; Update Configuration Definition;Add information on original id to message reflected back to sender Add XEP-0372 mechanism to reference channel and informal invite; Channel Invitations </p></remark>
<p>The Mediated Information eXchange (MIX) protocol is intended as a replacement for Multi-User Chat (MUC). MUC is a major application of XMPP that was developed in 2002 and standardized in &xep0045;. MIX implements the same basic MUC patterns in a more flexible and extensible way in order to address requirements that have emerged since MUC was developed. MIX supports all of the core chatroom features that are familiar from MUC, such as discussion topics and invitations. Like MUC, it also defines a strong access control model, including the ability to ban users, to name administrators, and to provide controls as to which users can participate in channels.</p>
<li>Experience has shown that it is difficult to use MUC to build several kinds of communication applications (such as a multimedia conference focus) without undesirable adaptations.</li>
<li>In the years after MUC was designed, both &xep0060; and &xep0313; have been developed and it is desirable to reuse these building blocks (e.g., MAM can be used for message history) rather than using the less robust methods defined in &xep0045;.</li>
<p>If a server wishes to expose both MUC and MIX representations of chatrooms, it is recommended to do so by serving MUC and MIX on different domains, but a server MAY serve them on the same domain. The MIX service SHOULD include a reference to the MUC mirror, so that clients understanding both protocols can choose to show only one copy of the service.</p>
<li>A user's participation in a channel persists and is not modified by the user's client going online and offline.</li>
<li>Multiple devices associated with the same account can share the same nick in the channel, with well-defined rules making each client individually addressable.</li>
<li>Channels are not required to support or reflect presence for participants.</li>
<li>A reconnecting client can quickly resync with respect to messages and presence.</li>
<li>A user may (subject to configuration) receive messages from a channel as an invisible observer.</li>
<li>Configuration can be observed externally to the channel (e.g., list of participants, access control rights, etc.).</li>
<li>MIX services should provide mechanisms to prevent JIDs from being harvested.</li>
<li>MIX and Message Archive Management (MAM) should work well together.</li>
<li>A user can determine which channels they participate in.</li>
<li>Provide extensibility regarding data formats that can be sent within a channel (files, structured data, indications about media sources in multimedia conferences, etc.) as well as flexibility regarding which data formats a user wants to receive.</li>
<li>Enable federation of a channel across multiple servers, to provide a service equivalent to "federated MUC" &xep0289;.</li>
<li>MIX channels (roughly equivalent to MUC rooms) are hosted on one or more MIX domains, (examples: 'mix.example.com'; 'conference.example.com'; 'talk.example.com'), which are discoverable through &xep0030;. Each channel on a MIX service may then be discovered and queried.</li>
<li> In MIX each channel (e.g., 'channel@mix.example.com') is a pubsub service. This is based on the model from &xep0163; where every user JID (e.g., 'user@example.com') is its own pubsub service. </li>
<li>A channel's pubsub service contains a number of nodes for different event types or data formats. As described below, this document defines several standard nodes; however, future specifications or proprietary services can define their own nodes for extensibility.</li>
<li>Affiliations with the nodes are managed by the MIX service by channel level operations, so that the user does not have to separately manage affiliations with the individual PubSub nodes.
<li>&xep0313; (MAM) is used for all history access, with each node being individually addressable for MAM queries. This simplifies implementation compared to MUC (which had a specialized and rather limited history retrieval mechanism).</li>
<li>A client can achieve a 'quick resync' of a node by requesting just those changes it has not yet received, using standard MAM protocol. This solves the old MUC issue of either receiving duplicate messages when rejoining a room or potentially missing messages.</li>
<li>Because MAM is used for history, only those nodes that have a 'current value' need to store any items in them — e.g., 'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence' and 'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:subject' would store their current values (with older values being queryable through MAM), while 'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:messages' would store no items.</li>
<li>A user's participation in a channel outlives their client sessions. A client which is offline will not share presence within the channel, but the associated user will still be listed as an participant. </li>
<li>Each participant is addressable by a single bare JID, which is a proxy JID (not the user's real JID) to make it straightforward to hide the user's real JID from other channel participants. Full JIDs comprised of this bare JID plus a resource (also anonymized) are then constructed, allowing visibility into the number of online resources participating in a channel.</li>
<li>MIX requires client support and server support from the server providing the MIX service. Although some protocol is shared with MUC, MUC clients are not interoperable with MIX servers. This means that where a user chooses to use MIX, all of the users clients need to support MIX.</li>
<p>MIX is based upon domains providing a MIX service, such as 'mix.shakespeare.example'. Note that although PubSub communication is used, a domain used for MIX is a MIX domain and not a standard &xep0060; domain. Like MUC, there is no requirement on the naming of these domains; the label 'mix' and the fact that it is a subdomain of a 'shakespeare.example' service are purely for example.</p>
<p>Every MIX channel is an addressable PubSub service (with additional MIX semantics) that will be addressed using a bare JID by other XMPP entities, for example coven@mix.shakespeare.example. While &xep0060; is used as the basis for the MIX model, MIX uses standard presence and groupchat messages to provide an interface to the MIX service that does not expose PubSub protocol for many of the more common functions.
<p> Historical data (such as the messages sent to the channel) is stored in an archive supporting Message Archive Management (MAM) so that clients can subsequently access this data with MAM. Each node can be archived separately (e.g., the presence node or the configuration node). MIX clients can retrieve archived information with MAM in order to quickly resync messages with regard to a channel, and can do so without providing presence information.</p>
A MIX channel does not send messages and presence directly to an XMPP MIX client. Instead it sends them to a MIX Proxy, which runs on the server which a MIX client accesses. MIX clients MUST make use of a MIX Proxy. Use of a MIX proxy enables flexible support of multiple clients for an XMPP user.
The primary model is that a user will join a channel over an extended period, and that the user (not a specific client used by the user) joins the channel. The primary subscription is with the client's bare JID. The MIX channel will send messages and presences to the MIX Proxy using the bare JID. The MIX Proxy will then send the messages and presence information to zero or more clients.
<li>Each MIX client will register with the MIX Proxy when it comes online. A key benefit of this approach is that MIX messages will only be sent to clients that support MIX. This enables use of clients that do not use MIX in conjunction with the MIX proxy.</li>
<li>MIX Service and Channel subscription and management is handled through the MIX proxy so that the MIX Proxy can track all subscription changes and share subscription information between MIX clients. To achieve this, a MIX client sends these MIX management queries to the MIX Proxy using the clients full JID and receives responses back from the MIX Proxy. The MIX Proxy will communicate these requests to a MIX channel from the MIX using the user's bare JID. Because the MIX Proxy is aware of subscription information, it can provide integrated support to a set of MIX clients.</li>
<li>Messages from a MIX client to a MIX channel will go direct to the MIX service and not through the MIX Proxy.</li>
<li>Messages from a MIX channel to a MIX client MUST be handled by a MIX Proxy.</li>
<li>The MIX Proxy will only send messages to online clients and will discard messages if no clients are online.
This means that a MIX client needs to resynchronize with the MIX service when it comes online. This synchronization will happen directly between the MIX client and MIX channel.</li>
<li>The MIX Proxy will know which channels are subscribed to, and so can send this list to a MIX client. Because channel subscriptions are long term, this information will be used instead of the bookmark approach used with MUC.</li>
<li>Different clients may wish to access different channels (e.g., a mobile client may only access a subset of the channels in which a user is interested). The MIX Proxy MAY handle sending messages only to the clients that wish for them, perhaps using a profile mechanism.</li>
Messages being sent from MIX channel to MIX Proxy (which will be of type=groupchat) and presence information are sent to the bare JID. This means that the MIX Proxy will use a modification of the standard &rfc6121; rules.
The behaviour of a MIX Proxy and the protocol between MIX Proxy and MIX Client is not currently defined in this specification. It will be defined in one of three places.
It may be desirable in some situations to provide different service to different clients. For example, a mobile client may participate in a smaller set of MIX channels than a desktop client. This needs support from the server to which the client connects, so that MIX client and the connected server can negotiate which channels to send. This is not supported by the core MIX specification, but it is anticipated that this will be specified in one of the following ways:
MIX channels store presence in the presence node using the proxy JID of each online client for a user. User presence may be included for all or selected clients of a given user, based on client choice to publish presence. Where a user publishes presence for multiple clients, this information is available to all users subscribing to the channel presence.
External XMPP entities can direct stanzas to clients publishing their presence by sending them to the appropriate full proxy JID in the presence node. These stanzas MAY be routed to the client by the MIX channel. The choice to do this is dependent on MIX channel policy. For example, a disco request MAY be routed through the MIX channel to the client.
Presence updates are distributed by a channel to the bare JID of subscribers and then the subscriber's server will distribute to each of the subscriber's currently online clients.
Private messages MAY be sent to channel participants if allowed by channel policy. Private messages are
addressed to the user's bare proxy JID determined from the participants node, and routed by the MIX to the user's bare real JID, where standard distribution rules will apply.
Private messages MAY also be sent to specific clients identified by the full proxy JID of the client in the participants list, if allowed by channel policy.
<tr><td>'JID Visible'</td><td>In these channels, some or all participant JIDs are visible to all channel participants.</td></tr>
<tr><td>'JID Hidden'</td><td>In these channels, no participant JIDs are visible to channel participants, but they are visible to channel administrators.</td></tr>
<tr><td>'No JID Visibility Preference'</td><td>The users JID will be visible in JID Visible channels and hidden in JID Hidden channels.</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Prefer Hidden'</td><td>The user's JID will be hidden in JID Visible channels if the channel policy allows this.</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Enforce Hidden'</td><td>The user's JID will never be shown and the user will be removed from channel if channel administrator enforces visibility.</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Enforce Visible'</td><td>The users JID will always be shown and the user will be removed from channel if mode is changed to 'JID Hidden'.</td></tr>
The primary representation of a participant in a MIX channel is a proxy JID, which is an anonymized JID using the same domain as the channel and with the name of the channel encoded, using the format "<channel>+<generated identifier>@<mix domain>". They generated identifier MUST NOT contain the '+' characters. The Channel name MAY contain the '+' character. For example in the channel 'coven@mix.shakespeare.example', the user 'hag66@shakespeare.example' might have a proxy JID of 'coven+123456@mix.shakespeare.example'. The reason for the proxy JID is to support JID Hidden channels. Proxy JIDs are also used in JID Visible channels, for consistency and to enable switching of JID visibility. The "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:jidmap" node maps from proxy JID to real JID. While a user is a participant in a Channel, the mapping between real JID and proxy JID MUST NOT be changed,
The full JIDs held in the presence nodes are anonymized using a similar mechanism. First the bare JID is mapped to a bare proxy JID, using the mapping held in the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:jidmap" node for the bare JID. Then the resource is replaced with a generated value. For example, 'hag66@shakespeare.example' in the channel coven might have a proxy JID of 'coven+123456@mix.shakespeare.example/789'. There is no client visible mapping of proxy full JIDs maintained as this is not needed. The MIX channel will need to maintain a mapping, to support directly addressing clients, such as for client to client disco#info queries. While an anonymized JID is held in the presence node, the mapping to real JID MUST NOT be changed. When an anonoymized full JID is added to the presence node, mapping to a real full JID that was previously in the presence node, the same anonymized JID as the previous time MAY be used or a different anonymized JID MAY be used.
<tr><td>Messages</td><td>'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:messages'</td><td>For publishing messages. Each item of this node will contain a message sent to the channel.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Subject</td><td>'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:subject'</td><td>For publishing the subject of the channels</td></tr>
<tr><td>Participants</td><td>'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:participants'</td><td>For publishing the list of participants (identified by anonymized bare proxy JID), and identifying the nick. This is a list of users who would receive messages (by subscription to the messages node) and/or would receive presence (by subscription to the presence node).</td></tr>
<tr><td>JID Map</td><td>'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:jidmap'</td><td>For publishing a list of anonymized bare JIDs from the participants node with a 1:1 mapping to the corresponding real JIDs.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Presence</td><td>'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence'</td><td>For publishing information about the availability status of online participants, which may include multiple clients for a single participant.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Allowed</td><td>'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:allowed'</td><td>For storing JIDs that are allowed to be channel participants.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Banned</td><td>'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:banned'</td><td>For storing JIDs that are not allowed to be channel participants. </td></tr>
<tr><td>Configuration</td><td>'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:config'</td><td>For storing channel configuration. This information will generally be restricted to the channel owners.</td></tr>
MIX also makes use of two nodes for support of Avatars. These nodes and their use is defined in &xep0084;. These nodes may be created as part of a MIX channel, where it is desired to publish an avatar associated with the channel.
There are a number of MIX roles for each channel, listed in the following table. Rights will be assigned to the various roles in the channel configuration node.
</p>
<tablecaption="Channel Roles">
<tr><th>Role</th><th>Membership and Rights</th></tr>
<tr><td>Owners</td><td>These are owners of the list, as specified in the channel configuration node. Only owners are allowed to modify the channel configuration node.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Administrators</td><td>Administrators are defined in the channel configuration node. Administrators have update rights to the Allowed Node and Banned Node, so can control which users may participate in a channel. </td></tr>
<tr><td>Participants</td><td>Participants are users listed by JID in the participants node.</td></tr>
<tr><td>Allowed</td><td>Allowed is the set of JIDs that are participants or may be allowed to become participants. A JID is allowed if it does not match entry in the banned node and either it matches an entry in the allowed node or the allowed node is not present. </td></tr>
<tr><td>Anyone</td><td>Any user, including users in the banned node.</td></tr>
</table>
<p>
There will always be at lease one owner and "anyone" will always have role occupants. Other roles may not have any role occupants. Rights are defined in a strictly hierarchical manner, so that for example Owners will always have rights that Administrators have.
<p>Items in this node will contain a message identified by a unique ID. A MIX implementation SHOULD NOT make messages available for retrieval from this node using pubsub. The recommended approach is that zero history is held in the messages node, and that this node is used for publication only. The recommended approach to retrieve message history is MAM. Users subscribe to this node to receive messages.</p>
<p>Private Messages are not stored in the messages node.</p>
<p>The subject node publishes the current subject of channel. Subject history is stored in MAM. A single item is stored in this node at a time which MUST contain a "text" element and MAY contain additional text elements. Where multiple text elements are provided, each MUST posses an xml:lang attribute that describes the natural language of the subject. The following example shows the format of a item in the subject node.</p>
When a user subscribes to the Subject Node, this will cause the channel to send Subject messages to the user through the MIX Proxy. This is done on initial user subscription and on subject change. Clients MAY directly read the channel subject from the Subject Node using PubSub.
<p>Each channel participant is represented as an item of the 'urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:participants' channel node. Each item is named by the bare proxy JID of the participant. For example 'coven+123456@mix.shakespeare.example' might name the node item associated with participant 'hag66@shakespeare.example'. The nick associated with the user is mandatory and is stored in the item. The nick for each channel participant MUST be different to the nick of other participants.
This node MAY be subscribed to for jid-visible channels that permit subscription to this node - this will allow users to see changes to the channel participants.
<p>The JID Map node is used to associate a proxy bare JID to its corresponding real bare JID. The JID Map node MUST have one entry for each entry in the Participants node.
Each item is identified by proxy bare JID, mapping to the real bare JID. This node is used to give administrator access to real JIDs and participant access to real JIDs in jid-visible channels.
In JID visible channels, all participants may subscribe to this node. In JID hidden channels, only administrators can subscribe. </p>
The presence node contains the presence value for clients belonging to participants that choose to publish presence to the channel. A MIX channel MAY require that all participants publish presence. Each item in the presence node is identified by the full proxy JID, and contains the current presence value for that JID. The presence is encoded in the same way as data that would be sent in a presence stanza. The full JID is always used in this node. In MIX it is possible to have a 'presence-less channel' by not using this node. Access Control may be set to enforce that for each of the full JIDs in this list, the bare JID MUST be in the participants list.
This node may be subscribed to by users and this subscription MUST use the users bare JID. So presence of online clients is sent to the MIX Proxy for each user subscribed to this node. Presence is always sent using standard presence protocol.
<p>The Information node holds information about the channel. The information node contains a single item with the current information. Information node history is held in MAM.
The information node is named by the date/time at which the item was created. Users MAY subscribe to this node to receive information updates. The Information node item may contain the following attributes, each of which is optional:
<li>'Name'. A short string providing a name for the channel. The name and description values MUST contain a "text" element and MAY contain additional text elements. Where multiple text elements are provided, each MUST posses an xml:lang attribute that describes the natural language of the subject.</li>
<p>The format of the Information node follows &xep0004;. This allows configuration to be updated by MIX defined commands and that the results of update commands are the same as the PubSub node.
The following example shows the format of a item in the information node for the example coven@mix.shakespeare.example channel.
This node represents a list of JIDs that are allowed to become participants. If the allowed node is not present, all JIDs are allowed. The allowed list is always considered in conjunction with the banned list, stored in the banned node. Only Administrators and Owners have write permission to the allowed node and are also the only roles that are allows to subscribe to this node. Each item contains a real bare JID. The following example shows how the allowed list can specify single JIDs and domains.
This node represents a list of JIDs that are explicitly not allowed to become participants. The values in this list take priority over values in the allowed node. Only Administrators and Owners have write permission to the allowed node and are also the only roles that are allows to subscribe to this node. Each item contains a real bare JID.
The Configuration node holds the configuration of the channel as a single item, named by the date-time of the last update to the configuration. A single item is stored in the node, with previous configuration history accessed by MAM. Users MAY subscribe to the configuration node to get notification of configuration change. The configuration node is optional for a MIX channel. For example, configuration choices could be fixed and not exposed. A subset of the defined configuration options may be used and additional non-standard configuration options may be added. If configuration options to control functionality of the nature described here are provided, the options defined in this standard MUST be used. The following configuration options are defined:
<tr><td>'Owner'</td><td>Dare JIDs with Owner rights as defined in ACL node. When a channel is created, the JID creating the channel is configured as an owner, unless this attribute is explicitly configured to another value.</td><td>jid-multi</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Administrator'</td><td>Bare JIDs with Administrator rights.</td><td>jid-multi</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>'End of Life'</td><td>The date and time at which the channel will be automatically removed by the server. If this is not set, the channel is permanent.</td><td>text-single</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Nodes Present'</td><td>Specifies which nodes are present. Presence of config nodes is implicit. Jidmap node MUST be present if participants node is present. 'avatar' means that both Avatar Data and Avatar Metadata nodes are present.</td><td>list-multi</td><td>'participants'; 'presence'; 'subject'; 'information'; 'allowed'; 'banned'; 'avatar'</td><td>-</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Message Node Subscription'</td><td>Controls who can subscribe to messages node.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'allowed'; 'anyone'</td><td>'participants'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Presence Node Subscription'</td><td>Controls who can subscribe to presence node.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'allowed'; 'anyone'</td><td>'participants'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Participants Node Subscription'</td><td>Controls who can subscribe to participants node.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'allowed'; 'anyone'; 'nobody'; 'admins'; 'owners'</td><td>'participants'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Subject Node Subscription'</td><td>Controls who can subscribe to subject node.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'allowed'; 'anyone' </td><td>'participants'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Information Node Subscription'</td><td>Controls who can subscribe to the information node.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'allowed'; 'anyone'</td><td>'participants'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Allowed Node Subscription'</td><td>Controls who can subscribe to allowed node.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'allowed'; 'nobody'; 'admins'; 'owners' </td><td>'admins'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Banned Node Subscription'</td><td>Controls who can subscribe to banned node.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'allowed'; 'nobody'; 'admins'; 'owners' </td><td>'admins'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Configuration Node Access'</td><td>Controls who can subscribe to configuration node and who has read access to it.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'allowed'; 'nobody'; 'admins'; 'owners' </td><td>'owners'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Information Node Update Rights'</td><td>Controls who can make changes to the information node</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'admins'; 'owners' </td><td>'admins'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Avatar Nodes Update Rights'</td><td>Controls who can make changes to the avatar data and metadata nodes</td><td>list-single</td><td>'participants'; 'admins'; 'owners' </td><td>'admins'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'JID Visibility'</td><td>Controls JID visibility in the channel.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'jid-hidden'; 'jid-optionally-visible'; 'jid-mandatory-visible'</td><td>'jid-hidden'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Open Presence'</td><td>If selected, any client may register presence. If not selected, only clients with bare JID in the participants list may register presence.</td><td>boolean</td><td>-</td><td>false</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Participants Must Provide Presence'</td><td>If selected, all channel participants are required to share presence information with the channel.</td><td>boolean</td><td>-</td><td>false</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Allow User Message Retraction'</td><td>If this option is selected users will be able to retract messages sent to the MIX channel.</td><td>boolean</td><td>-</td><td>false</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Administrator Message Retraction Rights'</td><td>This controls which group is able to retract messages sent to the MIX channel.</td><td>list-single</td><td>'nobody'; 'admins'; 'owners'</td><td>'owners'</td></tr>
<tr><td>'Participation Addition by Invitation from Participant'</td><td>This option extends a channel so that a channel participant has rights to invite and enable other users as participants.</td><td>boolean</td><td>-</td><td>false</td></tr>
<tr><td>'No Private Messages'</td><td>If this option is selected, private messages may not be used with the channel.</td><td>boolean</td><td>-</td><td>false</td></tr>
The configuration node is in &xep0004; format and includes all of the options used by the channel, including values for options using default values. This means that the value in the form can be directly mapped with the form returned by configuration administration commands. Configuration nodes will typically have a large number of elements. The following short example is provided to illustrate the syntax of the configuration node.
The MIX standard allows channels to use non-standard nodes, using names that do no conflict with the standard nodes. The capabilities of these nodes may be specified in a future XEP or be for private agreement. Non-Standard nodes MUST NOT duplicate or otherwise provide capability that can be provided by standard nodes.
<p>The MIX service then MUST return its identity and the features it supports, which MUST include the 'urn:xmpp:mix:0' feature, and the identity MUST have a category of 'conference' and a type of 'text'. </p>
<li>'urn:xmpp:mix:0': This indicates support of MIX, and is returned by all MIX services.</li>
<li>'searchable': This is shown in the above example and indicates that a the MIX Service may be searched for channels. This presence of this feature can be used by a client to guide the user to search for channels in a MIX service.</li>
<li>'create-channel': This is described in <linkurl='#usecase-admin-check-create'> Checking for Permission to Create a Channel</link> in support of channel administration. An end user client may need to create channels, perhaps for short term usage. This feature helps the client to identify an MIX channel to use. It enables a configuration where permanent (searchable) channels are placed in one MIX service and clients will be able to create channels in another MIX service which is not searchable.</li>
<p>A MIX service MUST NOT advertise support for &xep0313;, as MAM is supported by the channels and not by the service. A MIX service MUST NOT advertise support for generic &xep0060;, as although MIX makes use of PubSub it is not a generic PubSub service.</p>
<p>The list of channels supported by a MIX service is obtained by a disco#items command. The MIX server MUST only return channel that exist and that the user making the query has rights to subscribe to. This query MAY be made directly by and XMPP client or by a MIX Proxy.</p>
<examplecaption='MIX Proxy Queries for Channels on MIX Service'><![CDATA[
<p>In order to find out more information about a given channel, a user can send a disco#info query to the channel. This query MUST be made by a MIX Proxy and not the end client.</p>
<p>Note that this query comes from the bare JID to the MIX channel, as it will always be sent to the MIX service by a MIX proxy. The channel MUST return its identity and the features it supports. Note that a MIX channel MUST support MAM and so the response will always include both MIX and MAM support.</p>
<p>Use disco#items to find the nodes associated with a channel. The MIX server MUST only return nodes that exist and that the user making the query has rights to subscribe to. This query MUST be made by a MIX Proxy and not the end client.</p>
<p>The Information Node contains various information about the channel that may be useful to the user. This can be read by the XMPP Client directly or by a MIX Proxy.</p>
Online clients in the channel are determined from the presence node. Participants in the channel are determined from the Participants Node which will give proxy JID and nick. The jidmap node is used to map to real JIDs. An operation is provided to list channel participants. For JID Hidden channels, only the nicks are returned. For JID Visible channels, nicks and real JIDs are returned.</p>
Where a client supports MIX, it MUST advertise this capability in response to a Disco request. This will enable other entities to determine if a client supports MIX. The following example shows a Disco response from a client that supports both MIX and MUC.
<section3topic='Joining a Channel'anchor='usecase-user-join'>
<p>A user joins a channel by sending a MIX "join" command. There is no default set of nodes, so user MUST specify the set of nodes to be subscribed to. To achieve the equivalent service to MUC, a user would subscribe to messages, presence and subject.
This will lead to the server subscribing the user to each of the requested nodes associated with the channel. The MIX server will also add the user to the participant list by injecting a new item into the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:participants" node automatically.
</p>
<p>The default MIX model is that only channel participants may subscribe to nodes. A MIX channel MAY allow non-participant subscription. This will be handled by clients directly subscribing to the desired PubSub nodes.</p>
<p>The channel responds with an IQ-result. This stanza includes the nodes to which the user has been successfully subscribed, as well as the bare JID that will be used for the user in this channel and added to the participant list. The following example shows the result of the above request when the request is completed in full. </p>
<examplecaption="Channel Processes Join Request in Full"><![CDATA[
If a user cannot be subscribed to one or more of the requested nodes (e.g., because the node does not exist), but can be subscribed to some the response simply lists the nodes successfully subscribed. If none of the nodes requested are successfully subscribed to, an error response is sent indicating the reason that the first node requested was not subscribed to. This response will also include other nodes requested where subscription failed for the same reason. The following response example shows a response to the initial request example where
<p>The user that has been added to the channel is identified by the item id of the item added to the pubsub node, which is the proxy JID of the new channel participant. Each <participant> element will include the nick of the user being added, which will be how the user will typically be shown in the channel.</p>
After the user has jointed the channel, the user's MIX Proxy MAY add the MIX channel to the user's roster using standard XMPP to update the roster. This is done to share the user's presence status with the channel and so the MIX channel will get presence information from the user. This roster entry will lead to the user's server correctly sending user's presence from all clients to the MIX channel. The roster subscription is configured with one way presence, as presence is sent to the MIX channel but no presence information is sent about the MIX channel. The user's MIX Proxy MUST remove this roster entry after the user leaves the channel.
If the user does not wish to publish presence information to the channel, the user will not add the roster entry. A channel may require presence to be provided by all channel participants, which is controlled by the 'Participants Must Provide Presence' option. The channel MAY check that channel participants have done this and MAY remove participants that do not do this.
A channel MAY publish an Avatar following &xep0084;. A client MAY make use of this information to associate an Avatar with the roster entry for a channel.
The user may specify that presence is not to be shared, which will prevent the MIX Channel from sending a presence probe for the user on channel start-up. The user will also choose to not include the MIX channel in the user's roster, so that presence will not be updated. Where the channel configuration sets 'Participants Must Provide Presence', this variable MUST be set to 'Share'.
<p>When joining a channel, the client may specify one or more preference options as a &xep0004; form. In the response, the server MUST specify all of the user preferences supported by the server, with default values if the user has not requested a different value. The following example shows joining a channel and setting a preference.</p>
<p>The client may also query the channel in order to find out which user preferences are supported and the options available. This will allow users to set options not specified in the standard, by providing a form template in the result.</p>
A user may modify preferences using the corresponding set operation. The set may specify values for some or all attributes. All attributes are returned in the result.
<p>Users generally remain in a channel for an extended period of time. In particular the user remains as a participant the channel does not change when the user goes offline as happens with &xep0045;. So, leaving the channel is a permanent action for a user across all clients, not just a matter of telling the channel that the user is not currently available or for a single client. In order to leave a channel, a user sends a MIX "leave" command to the channel. When a user leaves the channel, the user's client will remove the channel from the user's roster.</p>
<p>When the user leaves the channel, the MIX service is responsible for unsubscribing the user from all nodes in the channel and for removing the user from the participants and presence list. If the user has online presence when the user leaves the channel, the change of presence status caused by removing the user's entry or entries from the presence node will ensure that subscribers to the presence node are correctly updated on presence status.
Deletion from the participants and presence functions as if the item (channel participant) had been deleted using the PubSub retract mechanism with notification set to true. Notification of the deletion is sent to clients subscribed to the participants PubSub nodes, as shown in the example below.
Each participant of a channel may have a nick, which is how other users in the channel will see the user. In some cases a nick is not needed, for example where a user reads messages in a channel but does not send messages or share presence information. A nick MUST be present for a user to send a message to a channel or for a user's presence to be shared on a channel. There are four ways that a user's nick can be obtained. The choice of mechanism or mechanisms is dependent on channel policy:
<li>The nick is registered with the user account in some way, for example as part of user provisioning with nick configured as an attribute in a directory service. This may be chosen by corporate services that wish to ensure consistent nick values for a set of users and channels.</li>
<li>The nick is registered with the MIX service, as described in <linkurl='#usecase-user-register'> Registering a Nick </link>.</li>
<li>The user explicitly sets the nick, as described in this section.</li>
A user will typically set a nick when joining a channel and may update this nick from time to time. The user does this by sending a command to the channel to set the nick. If the user wishes the channel to assign a nick (or knows that the channel will assign a nick) the nick field can be left blank, so that the user can see what is assigned in the result.
</p>
<examplecaption="User sets Nick on Channel"><![CDATA[
The channel will return the nick that is to be used, noting that this may be different to the requested nick. MIX services SHOULD apply the "nickname" profile of the PRECIS OpaqueString class, as defined in &rfc7700;.
<section3topic='Registering a Nick'anchor='usecase-user-register'>
<p>A user can register a nick with the MIX service. Nick registration can be used ensure that a user is able to use the same nick in all channels in the service and to prevent other users from using a registered nick. This can help achieve a consistent experience across a set of channels and prevent user confusion. Support for nick registration by a MIX service is optional. Where nick registration is supported, nick registration may be optional or mandatory.
Where a user has registered a Nick with the MIX service, it may be used by each channel according to policy for the channel. A nick is associated with the user's bare JID.
The response will be a list of features of the MIX channel. If Nick Registration is supported, then the result set will include <feature var="mix_nick_register"/>.
</p>
<p>
To register a nick with the MIX service the user sends
<p>On success, the service informs the user of its nick. The nick that is issued might be different from the nick that was requested, for example if the service completes normalization of nicknames for purposes of internationalization.</p>
<p>If the register request does not contain a <nick/> element, then the MIX service assigns one. It is recommended that the assigned nick is a UUID following &rfc4122;.
A user joins a channel over an extended period, and participation in a channel does not generally change when user goes online or offline. The user's participation in a channel is reflected by the user's bare JID in the participant node. All messages to the channel are sent to this JID.
A user may share presence information with the channel, for one or more online clients. Where a user shares presence information with a channel, the channel is entered by the user's server into the user's roster when the user subscribes to the channel. When an XMPP client comes online or changes presence status, this will be communicated by the user to the user's server using broadcast presence. The user's XMPP server is then responsible to share this presence information to each entry in the roster and in particular to each MIX channel in the roster. The MIX channel will update the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence" node with any change of status and the updated presence information and then share this updated presence with users subscribed to this node, as described below. When the user sets an explicit status, this is used to modify the presence node in the channel. When a client being used by the user goes offline, the associated server will send presence status "unavailable" to the MIX channel, which will cause the full JID for that client to be removed from the presence node.
A channel may require that all channel participants share presence information with the channel, which is represented in the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence" node. If sharing presences is required by the channel, an XMPP client conforming to this specification SHALL share presence with the channel by including the channel in the user's roster. Note that the MIX server cannot generally enforce this, but it can require and enforce that when a message is sent to the channel, that the sender of the message is in the presence list.
Presence status and availability is set in a MIX channel by standard presence stanzas sent to the MIX channel by the user's server. User's wishing to receive presence updates will subscribe to the MIX channel presence node. Presence updates are sent out to subscribing using standard XEP-0045 compatible presence stanzas.
A user setting status is now used as an example. Unlike in &xep0045; where coming online is a special action, coming online in MIX is implicit when presence status is set. Going offline is a achieved by setting presence status to unavailable, which removes the client full JID entry from the presence node. When a user sets a presence status, the user's server sends updated presence to the MIX channel, and the MIX server then publishes the user's availability to the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence" node. If there is not an item named by the full JID of the client with updated presence status, this item is created. If there is not an item named by the full JID of the client with updated presence status, then an item is created.</p>
<p>The user's presence information is then published by the service to the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence" node, with the 'publisher' attribute set to the user's participant identifier (the proxy JID. The MIX channel then broadcasts the presence change to all users who are subscribed to the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence" node. The presence stanza is sent from the proxy (anonymized) full JID of the user.
The presence is distributed to those subscribing to the MIX channel presence node using a standard XMPP presence stanza. The presence change is recorded on the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence" node in the item for the full JID of the client to which the presence relates. The history of this node will be held as PubSub format in the MAM archive, so that presence history may be viewed.
The presence information for a channel is stored in the urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:presence node and distributed using standard presence stanzas to users subscribing to this presence node. The user's server will then pass this presence information on to all online clients. When a client goes offline, it will lose synchronization with the presence node. When the client comes online, the clients server will send a directed presence stanza to the MIX channel. This will happen as a consequence of the MIX channel being in the user's roster and the MIX channel sending a presence update to the MIX channel. When the MIX channel adds or modifies presence for a client to the roster, this presence change will be distributed to all users subscribing to the presence node.
When the full JID of a client is added to the MIX channel presence node and that full JID is not in the presence list, the MIX channel will send to the client presence for all of the items in the presence node using standard presence stanzas. This will give the client full current presence.
<section3topic="Determining Real JIDs"anchor="usecase-real-jids">
<p>
Presence information will provide a MIX client with the nicks and anonymized proxy JIDs for participants. For JID visible rooms, the user may look up the real JID using the "urn:xmpp:mix:nodes:jidmap" node. The items in this node are identified by proxy JID, and so the real JID can be retrieved using a straightforward PubSub query. While a user may subscribe to the jidmap node, it is more likely to be used to directly look up JIDs as and when needed.
A MIX client will typically display message history of the channel to the user. When a client comes online it will need to obtain this message history from the MAM archive associated with the channel. There are three basic approaches a client will take:
</p>
<ol>
<li>If the client has previously displayed message history and has been offline for a reasonably small time, the client will wish to retrieve all messages since the last one displayed to the user.</li>
<li>The client may wish to display a fixed number of messages, perhaps finding more messages if the client subsequently requests.</li>
<li>The client may wish to display messages from a recent time period, perhaps finding more messages if the client subsequently requests.</li>
<p>To achieve this, the client will query the user's own MAM archive using &xep0313;, with the query filtered by the channel JID. This gives the client flexibility to retrieve and display message history in a manner appropriate to the client implementation.</p>
<p>When a client goes offline, this presence update is sent by the client's server to the MIX channel. From the client perspective, this is the same as any other presence change. Handling by the MIX channel is slightly different.</p>
<examplecaption="Client Goes Offline in the Channel"><![CDATA[
<p>The MIX channel will retract (remove) the item in the presence node of the MIX channel identified by the client's full JID. The MIX channel will notify subscribers to the presence node of the user going offline by sending a presence stanza to the full proxy JID of each client.</p>
There is the possibility that the message associated with the user going offline will be lost. If this happens, "ghost" entries will appear in the presence node. A MIX server may take steps to address this, for example by probing client with a disco for presence items that remain unchanged for a long period.
</p>
<p>
It is desirable to prevent clients from going offline briefly and then coming back online again, as this will lead to "flapping presence". The recommended approach to achieve this is use of &xep0198; to maintain an XMPP client connection in the event of short term TCP failure.
<p>A client sends a message directly to a MIX channel as a standard groupchat message, in exactly the same way as for &xep0045;. Messages are sent directly to the channel and do not use the MIX Proxy. </p>
standard groupchat format. These messages sent by the channel are addressed to the bare JID of each participant and this will be handled by the participant's MIX Proxy. The message from value is the full Proxy JID of the message sender. The id of the message is the ID from the MAM archive.</p>
The messages sent to participants have a different message id to the originally submitted message. This does not impact most recipients, but it does not allow the message originator to correlate the message with the submitted message. To address this the MIX channel MUST include an additional element of the message copy going back to the originator's bare JID that includes the original id. This enables the originator to correlate the received message with the message submitted.
</p>
<examplecaption="Channel Reflects Message back to Originator"><![CDATA[
A MIX channel MAY support message retraction, where the sender of a messages or an administrator deletes a message. If this is done the original message MUST be replaced by a tombstone. The protocol to request retraction does this by a message with a <retract> element as shown in the following example.
</p>
<examplecaption="User Retracts a Message"><![CDATA[
The MIX channel will allow a user to retract a message sent by the user if the 'Allow User Message Retraction' option is configured. The MIX channel will allow a user to retract any message if the user is in the group specified by the 'Administrator Message Retraction Rights' option.
</p>
<p>
If the retraction message is accepted, it will be distributed to channel participants. This will allow retraction to happen in the MAM archive of each channel participant and to reflect the retraction in client GUI. A client receiving a retraction message SHOULD ensure that the retracted message is no longer displayed to the end user.
When a message is retracted the original message <body> MUST be removed and MUST be replaced with a tombstone using the <retracted> element that shows the JID of user performing the retraction and the time of the retraction.
<section3topic="Setting the Channel Subject"anchor="set-subject">
<p>
Setting the subject for a channel follows a similar procedure to sending a message. An XMPP client will send a message setting the subject directly to the MIX channel.
This message is received by the MIX channel, which will set the Subject Node for the channel, and then distribute the message to participants that are subscribed to the Subject Node, with the message addressed to the MIX Proxy.
</p>
<examplecaption="Channel Reflects New Subject to Participants"><![CDATA[
When a new Participant joins a channel and subscribes to the Subject Node, the channel MUST send to the user's MIX Proxy a message with the current subject. An XMPP Client MAY directly read the Subject node using &xep0060;.
A convenient way to reference another channel is to use &xep0372; which enables the JID of a channel to be shared. This might be used simply to inform the message recipient about the channel or as mechanism to invite the user to join the channel. This is useful as an invitation mechanism to a channel that any user can join or where the invitee knows that the user may join (e.g., because the channel is for all users in an organization).
<section3topic='Inviting another User to join a Channel that the user does not have Permission to Join'anchor='usecase-user-invite'>
<p> Invitation by reference, as described in the previous section, is a convenient approach to invite a user to join a channel that the user has permission to join. This section describes the approach used when the inviter has permission to grant rights for the invitee to become a channel participant. This might be because the inviter is an administrator of the channel or the channel may have a special mode where channel participants may grant rights for other users to join a channel ('Participation Addition by Invitation from Participant' enabled). This approach is used to avoid cluttering the allowed node with JIDs of users who are invited to join, but do not accept the invitation.
When a channel participant(the inviter) invites another user (the invitee) to join a channel, the following sequence of steps is followed:
The first step is for the inviter to request an invitation from the channel. The invitation contains inviter, invitee and a token. The channel will evaluate if the inviter has rights to issue the invitation. This will be because the inviter is a channel administrator or if the inviter is a channel participant and the channel has 'Participation Addition by Invitation from Participant' mode enable. If the inviter has rights to make the invitation, the channel will return a token. The token is a string that the channel can subsequently use to validate an invitation. The format of the token is not specified in this standard. The encoded token MAY reflect a validity time.
</p>
<examplecaption='Inviter Requests and Receives Invitation'><![CDATA[
<p>The invitation can now be used by the invitee to join a channel. The invitation is simply added to the standard channel join, so that the channel can validate the invitation using the token. If the allowed node is present and the invitee is not matched against any item, the channel MUST add the invitee to the allowed node as part of the join.</p>
Private Messages are used to provide communication with another channel participant through the MIX channel, without the initiating user knowing the real JID of the channel participant. A channel MAY support use of Private Messages. Private messages are standard XMPP messages. A message goes through a number of stages with different addressing. This is set out in the following table.
<tr><td>First Message from Client to MIX Channel</td><td>Full JID of initiator's client</td><td>Proxy bare JID of responder</td></tr>
<tr><td>First Message from MIX Channel to responder's MIX Proxy</td><td>Proxy full JID of initiator's client</td><td>Bare JID of responder</td></tr>
<tr><td>First Message from responder's MIX Proxy to one or more of the responder's clients</td><td>Proxy full JID of initiator</td><td>Full JID of responder's client</td></tr>
<tr><td>Messages from responder's client to MIX Channel</td><td>Full JID of responder's client</td><td>Proxy full JID of initiator's client</td></tr>
<tr><td>Messages from MIX channel to initiator's client</td><td>Proxy full JID of responder's client</td><td>Full JID of initiator's client</td></tr>
<tr><td>Messages from initiator's client to MIX Channel</td><td>Full JID of initiator's client</td><td>Proxy full JID of responder's client</td></tr>
<tr><td>Message from MIX Channel to responder's client</td><td>Proxy full JID of initiator's client</td><td>Full JID of responder's client</td></tr>
</table>
<p>Private Messages MAY be archived using MAM by the XMPP servers associated with initiator and responder. Private Messages MUST NOT be archived by the MIX channel.</p>
<p>A user may request the vCard of a channel participant by sending a request through the channel. The request may be sent directly by the client or through a MIX Proxy. The MIX channel MAY pass this request on or may block it. In the following example, the requesting client sends a message to the anonymized bare JID of the channel participant for which the vCard is desired.</p>
<examplecaption="Client directly requests vCard through channel"><![CDATA[
<iqfrom='hag66@shakespeare.example/intibo24'
id='lx09df27'
to='coven+989898@mix.shakespeare.example'
type='get'>
<vCardxmlns='vcard-temp'/>
</iq>
]]></example>
<p>The MIX channel MAY pass on the vCard request or may reject with an error, dependent on channel policy. The MIX service will then address the vCard request to the MIX proxy (bare JID) using an anonymous full proxy JID to hide the requester. </p>
<examplecaption="Channel passes on vCard request to MIX Proxy"><