Re: Proposed XMPP Extension: Explicit Mentions

Goffi <[email protected]> Wed, 01 Apr 2026 10:11:32 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.network.jabber.standards-jig
Message-ID	<3403337.aeNJFYEL58@tazar3>
Le mardi 31 mars 2026, 21:21:59 heure d’été d’Europe centrale Snit Guckfung 
via Standards a écrit :
> Ah, I see now. Yes, this would be useful functionality to have. I'm
> generally either always in a room or never in it, so I hadn't considered
> the case where someone only pops into rooms selectively.
> 
> Could this be achieved with the MUC service sending something like
> XEP-224 in a message to you, or does that also only work if you're
> currently in the room? Otherwise, what exactly would this look like?

A message sent by the room directly to the used, probably and "headline". With 
a link to the room and message ID. I don't know about XEP-0224, I've not 
implemented it so far and Philipp Hörist explicitly asked to not use it in a 
previous message in this thread. XEP-0372 could do the job, but it was 
discussed yesterday at the council meeting that maybe your specification and 
XEP-0372 could be merged somehow?

> What exactly would the logistics of this be? Are the references /
> mentions attached to the blog post itself? How would the mentioned user
> get notified? Is it just on the things they're subscribed to?

The difficulty with Pubsub is that depending on the feature we can have any kind 
of payload.

We could just says that mention are only for blogging (XEP-0277/XEP-0472) and 
work with some kind of Atom extension (don't know if there is already 
something we can use with Atom).

But I also want to be able to mention people with other features, for instance 
with Pubsub File Sharing (XEP-0498) if somebody appears on a photo or is part 
of a team working on a PDF. I use Form Discovery and Publishing (XEP-0346) to 
make a tickets handling system (that you can see here: https://www.goffi.org/
forge/goffi/libervia-backend/tickets), I want to be able to mention somebody in 
the ticket description. It can be useful for Calendar Events (XEP-0471) too, 
etc.

With XEP-0372 a message is sent independently of Pubsub with the Pubsub item 
linked in the `uri` parameter. That works.

Practical note: In my AP <=> XMPP gateway, I've had troubles to map 
ActivityPub mention to XMPP XEP-0372 mentions because the former has the 
mentions inside the payload of the message, while with XEP-0372 it's separated 
(and thus is not received at the same time). I don't think that we can really 
do otherwise with pubsub if we want something generic, as we can't modify the 
payload. Even if we used Pubsub Attachments (XEP-0470), this would be 
separated.
Having XEP-0372 like separated message + maybe something in the payload in 
some cases (like blogging) could help.

So to sum-up: we need something that can send a <message type="headline"> to a 
JID with a link to the pubsub item. This is exactly what XEP-0372 is doing. 
I'll be happy to update my code if this feature is merged in explicit mention.

 

> My point is that I don't get why we'd make a markup format which is
> compatible with, and honestly just reinvents, XEP-0394, rather than just
> using XEP-0394 itself.
> 
> The only explanation I could come up with is that some people don't
> want to implement XEP-0394, instead prefering some other markup format,
> such as XHTML-IM. However, the way mentions are currently marked up is
> an exact replica of XEP-0394, so I can't see an XHTML-IM user's
> objections to XEP-0394 not also applying to mentions.
> 
> Markup is meant to be purely aesthetic, which is why all of the actual
> functionality would be going in a separate proposal, no? If so, then
> there's no real loss in not supporting the markup format, and if that's
> the case, then why shouldn't we just use XEP-0394? 
> 
> Since there's no real loss in not supporting XEP-0394 mention markup,
> there'd be no loss if an XHTML-IM enthusiast decided they wanted to
> specify a format which relies on XHTML-IM, instead. Both formats could
> coexist, because, again, all actual functionality is in a completely
> separate document that'd be supported regardless.
> 
> One of the first responses to the proposal on this list has an example
> of what XHTML-IM markup for mentions could look like, and Marvin's
> recent response shows possible XEP-0394 markup.
> 
> I can't seem to word this in a way I find satisfactory, so hopefully
> this explanation makes sense :)

Ah I understand it better. So you're wondering why people would have mention 
"marking" without implementing XEP-0394? I actually agree with you, I think 
that this was suggested (not by me initially) as you say because people don't 
want to implement the whole marking thing (with bold, italic, etc) just to get 
mention. However, people can do partial implementation if they want.

So yes, we may have something simply depending on XEP-0394, because that's 
exactly what it is: marking the location of the mention in the payload.

Now that Explicit Mention made it to experimental, I hope that will get good 
feedback from first implementations. It would be great if somebody could make a 
XEP-0394 update/new protoXEP for mentions (Marvin?).

Best,
Goffi

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