Support for XMPP

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Created a Spec in the Wiki
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity8/JabberIntegration#preview

Linked it to online accounts, as I would start with adding a xmpp setup to the panel.

If somebody tells me such a patch will be accepted I will start working on this...

Of course the patch would be welcome :-) But I have to warn you that the API for account plugins will change in the future -- hopefully adapting for the new changes won't be hard.

Anyway, the right repository where to stage the change is the account-plugins one; or you can use your own repository, like the UbuntuOne guys are doing: in that case you don't have to wait for us everytime you want to make a new release. :-)

Thanks for the feedback. What do you mean with "future"? If it is just a few days I can wait (still have to finish my work on Friends anyways).

This change would also mean that people can manage their XMPP accounts on the desktop with the online-accounts-ui. Currently they just show up as an empty entry that cannot be interacted with.

Hi Pat,

are you working on this? Or did you mark it "in progress" because of my posts.

I will most likely find some time to finish the accounts plugin but the rest is a little to much for me alone. Also I need some design input how the messaging-app will handle multiple protocols.

Hi @ all...

Can you toll me the status of the jabber/xmpp integration for Ubuntu touch?

Hi Ralf

I am currenlty building a prototype (using Telepathy-Qt5 and the UbuntuSDK) and hope to merge simple chat support in time for 14.10.

I will publish the code on launchpad soon. Any help is welcome.

Hi Kai...

thank´s for working on this...
I can´t really help, because i don´t have any experience in programming, but i can test, and test and test....

So, i´m looking forward to that.

Greetz, Ralf.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Just to add some context on the status quo:
What's working:
 - Telepathy framework, just make sure you have telepathy-gabble installed for XMPP support
 - You can manually add an account using mc-tool
 - You can use mc-tool to set the account online/offline
 - You can receive messages, BUT you only see them in notification and the message overview
What's missing/not working:
 - Messaging app needs work to understand more than text messages coming through telepathy from oFono
 - You can't reply to messages. Seems there is some logic that breaks that as it was written only with SMS based text messaging in mind.
 - Accounts plugin needs to be created to have a UI for managing the XMPP account(s)

JFTR: This actually applies also to all(?) other telepathy (and by extension through haze also libpurple) messaging protocols like SIPe(MS Lync/OCS), ICQ, GaduGadu, SIP/SIMPLE, …

Almost a year and no further comments?

I think there is no momentum here anymore because almost nobody still uses XMPP. Google and Facebook started phasing it out and in the mobile space there are much better alternatives.

I hope that at Ubuntu touch will get support for the textsecure protocol at some point.

Hate to admit but I think xmpp/jabber failed even though it is more reliable on mobile than it used to be.

The thing is that I really want a solution that I can self-host. I don't want to use any public servers for chat or mail. I have my android device set up to use Zarafa groupware (GPL software) through activesync and Xabber against ejabberd.

The only alternative would be something like tox (peer to peer) but that won't be mobile friendly any time soon if ever.

BTW, Google still has jabber running AFAIK, I use some people's gmail to connect through my own jabber id.

Guy

@mikahdh (f4tmike)

Why did it fail? I have been using it on Android+Linux for years without any issue, even battery drain is hardly noticable (Xabber on Android)

Couldn't convince my friends to stick with it because it was very unreliable. Messages got lost, propably when you switched cell areas.
Later a few clients came up with xep-0198 and xep-0280 which were pretty reliable, like 'conversations'. Anyway it's still a mess
because different clients implement different xeps which makes a common, reliable base impossible.

I did the steps here:
http://www.taurix.net/content/jabber-ubuntu-touch

And it seems jabber support backend is mostly working, even telepathy-gabble is installed by default. It is just not handled at all in the GUI.

XMPP is not dead ... I just convinced a new friend to use it. We are very happy about it and the fact that it is decentralized. Supporting it is supporting open communications. We shouldn't have to rely on big companies that just want to make money out of you for such fundamental social actions as talking to each other.
XMPP support is the one feature that I miss most on my Ubuntu Phone, and seeing it integrated into Messaging would make me really happy.

@kai-mast Google's and Facebook's use of XMPP may not be elegant (especially FB's), but it is a usable back end solution that allows people to migrate more seamlessly from Android—it is probably the biggest impediment to my personal adoption of Ubuntu Touch on my phone. It doesn't have to be a perfect solution, especially now at the beginning where most people using UT are early adopters who understand that it may still be a few years before everything works as smoothly as we're accustomed to from other systems.

Plus add OTR to the conversation and you got a rock solid IM solution that I would like much more to use on my mobile than WhatsApp or Telegram. Different XEP coverage by some clients can be a pain, but that should be not a reason not to try to get this done for Ubuntu Touch. People started hating Skype, so some of them might get interested in Jabber again.

Note that at the time of writing the wish for an XMPP client on the uApp Explorer wishlist (https://uappexplorer.com/wishlist/5679333d8ee27f8ebbfe9570) has 28 upvotes and no downvotes, which is not that bad.

I use telepathy-facebook and telepathy-telegram on my desktop so please add full telepathy support to Messaging app.

I feel like the ship has sailed on this when Canoncial decided to write a seperate app for Telegram.

You could have a single unified messaging app for telegram, sms, texsecure and more if you wanted to. This is possible. Remember that Maemo even had a skype plugin for telepathy (and it was awesome!).
This would be such a killer feature and you could actually make an argument for people to use ubuntu on their phones because of this.

But it doesn't seem to happen.

+1

-xmpp client (based on libpurple for various service support)
-otr (would be included in libpurple support)

+1

I completely agree. libpurple integration would improve methods of communication a lot. After all, a phone is primarily a communication device. XMPP (w/ jingle extension) is still very popular. For me it's a reason to keep Nokia's N900 as a daily phone.

You can already receive XMPP messages if they aren't encrypted with some work behind the scenes using the terminal. But it would be great if we could send messages, use OMEMO encryption and have a better UI to do more things that XMPP allows/requires.

Of course you can already receive them using the terminal. This bugreport is only about adding UI support for this on the phone/Unity8.

You can receive them in the messaging app