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File Sharing Notifications This specification provides a notification protocol for information about ongoing file uploads and media creation by the user. &LEGALNOTICE; xxxx ProtoXEP Standards Track Standards Council XMPP Core XMPP IM NOT_YET_ASSIGNED Linus Jahn lnj@kaidan.im lnj@kaidan.im 0.0.3 2018-07-20 lnj

Added Requirements and Acknowledgements, simplified some definitions and added rules for CSI.

0.0.2 2018-07-19 lnj

Seperated parts about the usage of chat states and moved the definitions of types to their examples.

0.0.1 2018-07-17 lnj

First draft.

The specification of &xep0085; defines a protocol for exchanging information about the activity of the user, for example that the user is currently typing. However with the new possibilities of media sharing as in &xep0385; and &xep0363; there are also new desirable chat states. For example when a user uploads an image, the upload usually takes a while. To notify the chat partner about the uploading process a new chat state is required.

When users send large files or have a very slow upstream connection it can make the chat partner confused when they are receiving an uploading state for a long time. In these cases it can be nice to share the upload progress. This way the chat partner can estimate if a file will arrive immediately or if it is better to go and get a coffee first.

Apart from notifications for sending files, there should also be notifications when a user is creating new media files, for example when the user is recording audio, recording a video or is taking a picture.

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Bernardo is informing Francisco about his activity of taking a picture to send it afterwards. If Francisco's client supports file sharing notifications, it should display this similarly to 'Bernardo is taking a photo…'.

A list of possible 'type' attributes is defined below.

Type Definition
animation An animated image file, for example a GIF file. It SHOULD NOT be used in the <creating/> state.
audio An audio file. This MAY also be displayed as a voice recording when used in the <creating/> state.
image An image file.
video A video file.
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Bernardo has taken a good picture for sending and has started uploading, now. The same notification is also used when the image existed before and there were no process of creating it.

The 'progress' attribute has to be in the range of zero (0) and one (1). With other words the bytes sent divided by the total bytes. Generally the progress SHOULD NOT have more than two digits after the decimal point since the exact uploading status isn't important. Also there SHOULD be no more progress updates than once per second.

The 'type' attribute equals the 'type' attribute by the <creating/> element.

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The file upload has succeeded and Bernardo sends the link to the file as defined in &xep0385; or another possible way. A notification that the file upload has finished is not sent, instead the recipient's client MUST recoginze the incoming media share and reset the state for this user.

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Of course the file upload also could have ended otherwise. In this case Bernardo has manually aborted the file upload. If the client encounters problems with the upload service after sending the first file sharing notification, the same format will also be used.

When a sending client chooses to map file sharing notifcations to &xep0085;, it MUST follow the following rules:

  • As long as no upload or creation is in progress, the normal XEP-0085 states are sent.
  • During creation, a client MUST send <composing/> state (overriding the state which would normally be sent with XEP-0085 logic).
  • During upload and while the user is active, a client SHOULD continue to send the <composing/> state (overriding the state which would normally be sent with XEP-0085 logic).
  • During upload and while the user is inactive, a client SHOULD send <inactive/> instead of <composing/>.
  • After the upload finishes or is aborted, the normal XEP-0085 logic takes over. Normally, this will put the conversation into <active/> or <inactive/> state (but if the user still has input pending, it may also be <paused/>).

A client MAY choose not to apply this mapping if it allows text input while creating or uploading media, to allow transmitting normal XEP-0085 states for the text input.

If a client allows a user to pick media which are already created (thus skipping the <creating/> state), it MAY treat interaction with the media selection like text input in XEP-0085 (i.e. send <composing/> while the user is actively engaging with it and switch to <paused/> if inactive for a certain time).

Media sharing protocols as &xep0385; don't forbid concurrent file uploads, so it may be the case that a client is uploading multiple files of different types to the same user or groupchat at the same time. This could result in different file types being affected at the same time. In this case clients SHOULD follow these rules:

  • Multiple <uploading/> or <creating/> elements or a combination of these MUST NOT be sent.
  • <creating/> notifications SHOULD be preferred to <uploading/> notifications.
  • If there are multiple running file uploads, a notification for the approximately next finishing upload SHOULD be sent.

Servers supporting &xep0352; SHOULD discard messages containing only a file sharing notification as long as a client is inactive.

File sharing notifications MAY be used in groupchats as defined in &xep0045; or &xep0369; just as in normal chats.

It is possible that the connection to any client is lost at any time or a client crashes. Thus, a client SHOULD work with timeouts that will clear notifications after certain intervals.

A client MUST have a possibility to disable file sharing notifications. This setting MAY be the same as the one for enabling &xep0085;.

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

This specification defines the following XML namespace:

  • urn:xmpp:fsn:0

Upon advancement of this specification from a status of Experimental to a status of Draft, the ®ISTRAR; shall add the foregoing namespace to the registry located at &NAMESPACES;, as described in Section 4 of &xep0053;.

tbd

Thanks to Jonas Wielicki for his helpful feedback and input.