Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat
Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat
Posted Feb 12, 2015 5:44 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)In reply to: Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat by wahern
Parent article: Matrix: a new specification for federated realtime chat
XMPP is missing that distributed _stateless_ store-and-forward support. In XMPP each server has to store all of the state to remember which messages are yet to be sent to other servers while in Matrix servers can simply use an rsync-like protocol.
Matrix can be thought of as a new incarnation of USENET (now with real-time messaging!) rather than IRC.
> FWIW, I definitely prefer JSON over XML, simply because it's simpler, easier to parse, and maps more closely to language data structures, whether in C, Python, or something else. But tell me how Matrix solves the more serious problems which plague XMPP? Namely, the explosion of competing and complex extensions.
Personally, I don't really care about XML vs. JSON - both work perfectly fine and XML is actually better specified (I still miss XML schemas while using JSON, sigh).
The main feature that I like in Matrix is its use of distributed consensus protocols rather than explicit state storage like in XMPP. This single bit of design can do wonders.
Other than that, I agree that it's really early to tell if Matrix can avoid XMPP's pitfalls. But I have some hope and that's more than I can say about XMPP.