Re: Proposed XMPP Extension: Explicit Mentions

This was something I'd meant to include in the original proposal, and have added to my current working draft. Special characters like '@' MAY be sent in the original message, perhaps to show unsupporting clients that this was a mention. But implementations SHOULD include such characters within the range covered by the mention, so that both "user" and "@user" mentions can be formatted the same way. I haven't special-cased any characters in particular, as maybe rooms will use '#', or a different client might format it as "user," to look similar to existing clients. I hope that makes sense.


On 11 March 2026 1:07:50 am UTC, Maxime Buquet <[email protected]> wrote:
>On 2026/03/10, Snit Guckfung via Standards wrote:
>> On Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:47:05 +0100
>> Philipp Hörist <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> > Hi,
>> > 
>> > Im a bit confused about begin/end
>> > 
>> > The XEP says
>> > 
>> > > If a mention element of type urn:xmpp:mentions:0 or its subtypes
>> > > contains both begin and end attributes, the receiving entity MAY
>> > > use this as a hint that the specified range of the content is being
>> > > addressed to the specified occupant.  
>> > 
>> > I dont think this is necessary, as its usual that the content that
>> > follows the mention is addressed to the mentioned user.
>> > 
>> > What was missing was that we can special format the nickname or the
>> > @admin @all etc in the GUI when we receive a message, without
>> > hardcoding some regex or scanning for nicknames.
>> 
>> The 'begin' and 'end' attributes specify the range of the
>> specially-formatted text. It is meant to be used to, for example,
>> pillify text like "@room" or "@romeo". Note that there can be multiple
>> mentions, and the content addressed to them isn't always what follows:
>> "@romeo, have you seen @juliet?" has two mentions, with ranges
>> specified for "@romeo" and "@juliet".
>
>Just to be extra sure, the spec doesn't mention any special-cased "@"
>character. This is just an artifact used in clients UI and should not be
>observed on the wire, right?
>
>I'm confused by the examples here.
>
>Parameters begin and end here should not be concerned with any special
>character not part of what is used to refer to the mentioned
>occupant(s).
>
>Some clients may display "@channel" as a keyword or sth but we agree
>that's not what is being transmitted. It would look more like a mention
>tag addressed to the channel.
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