

Google Wave's Web of Protocols (diagram and commentary) - jaaron
http://cubiclemuses.com/cm/articles/2009/08/09/waves-web-of-protocols/

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jacobolus
As this blog post points out, unless the browser-server component gets opened
up, and it doesn't look to me like it's going to, Wave is a big vendor lock-in
project, with the Google interface the only one used by humans, and all the
federations stuff designed only for "bots". "We're open" becomes just
misdirection and fake hype.

But I think that's the least of Wave's problems at the moment. If they get the
server bugs worked out, and figure out access control, then we can start
talking about interoperability.

~~~
pohl
I've been watching this situation closely, and I too am concerned about how a
client/server protocol specification isn't being prioritized higher.

That said, does the Google Talk client in the sidebar of my GMail client speak
XMPP? Of course not...it's a web app, and it needs to talk to a web server as
an intermediary to a jabber server somewhere. I can log in using a desktop GUI
jabber client to an actual XMPP listener if I want to, and that is what is
important. I don't care one whit about the protocol that GMail Chat uses to
talk to its back end. That's a private matter between Google and Google.

It's not the browser-server protocol that needs to be specified, but rather
some other client-server protocol, without any assumption that the client is a
browser.

It seems to me that the relationship between "the web" and Wave is entirely
incidental, stemming from the fact that their reference client runs in a
browser. One might well write a client in Cocoa or GTK, in which case an open
specification for how Google's Wave client, written in GWT, communicates with
its back end does us no good at all.

However, I'm willing to give it time. It feels like they've got bigger fish to
fry at the moment, based on this thread:

[http://groups.google.com/group/wave-
protocol/browse_thread/t...](http://groups.google.com/group/wave-
protocol/browse_thread/thread/a2de2480e4c3beeb#)

~~~
jacobolus
> _That said, does the Google Talk client in the sidebar of my GMail client
> speak XMPP? Of course not...it's a web app,[...]_

It doesn't, but it should. This is something we’ve been trying to address with
the Orbited and JS.IO projects (links below). Building in-browser clients on a
JavaScript XMPP client saves developer effort and aids interop, because each
web client isn't inventing its own ad-hoc buggy mutated version of the
protocol, based essentially on the same semantics, but with arbitrary changes
to syntax.

<http://orbited.org/>

<http://js.io/>

~~~
pohl
That's a nice idea. There are other ways to skin that cat: if you have a
server-side library that speaks perfect jabber, your web client can invoke it
from afar. The library's API should work the same either way. Heck, if it's a
Java library use GWT RPC.

------
ROFISH
I've written about this before. Until Google releases both code and protocol
for a client-server integration, Wave is too complicated for the web. I spent
a whole week barely trying to emulate the same thing in Javascript and I
couldn't do it.

~~~
extension
I'm concerned about this too. The web client at the moment is brutally
unresponsive and hemorrhages memory in Firefox. I know it's far from release,
but I'm skeptical that these problems can ever be solved in a present day real
world web app. If we had worker threads and some browser patches, maybe.

------
rjurney
Every time I hear 'Wave' I think of 'Ripscript' -
[http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPS...](http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPSCRIPT/)

------
tybris
I'm surprised by the lack of scepticism of Google Wave. It seems quite dodgy
for the next "killer app".

~~~
jaaron
Once I actually used it, even in its current buggy pre-alpha state, I realized
that Wave is actually pretty cool and there are all sorts of ways in which I
would prefer to use a tool like wave over a wiki, email or IM. I believe Wave
has serious potential, but it's also got a long way to go.

------
andymoe
I do like that everything runs over HTTP at its base...

~~~
extension
The federation protocol (server to server) is over XMPP, not HTTP.

