You are absolutely right. I usually encourage people to get involved in improving the (XMPP) situation.
Just last week I submitted a XEP for unique stanza IDs to the XSF [1], which will most likely be the base for IDs in MAM and other protocols. I guess that's the light reading you want. :)
And yes, Carbons (XEP-280), in it's current state, also suck. I'm working on a replacement XEP called "Message Routing 2.0 " (MR2): http://geekplace.eu/xeps/xep-mr2/xep-mr2.html It's in an early draft state, but I think it addresses most, if not all, issues with carbons, improving the multi-device situation in XMPP somewhat (I don't care if it's MR2 or an improved version of carbons that makes the race).
> see how ridiculously difficult this makes the basic idea of "all clients should see the same picture"
Being involved in XMPP a bit, I get quite a few requests on how to implement WhatsApp/Hangouts like groupchats. And while the basic idea is quite simple, implementing it is a non-trivial task. But it can certainly be done. But we need more motivated developers and specification designers to get it done. While the XMPP community is just great, the count of activley involved people is quite small.
Just last week I submitted a XEP for unique stanza IDs to the XSF [1], which will most likely be the base for IDs in MAM and other protocols. I guess that's the light reading you want. :)
And yes, Carbons (XEP-280), in it's current state, also suck. I'm working on a replacement XEP called "Message Routing 2.0 " (MR2): http://geekplace.eu/xeps/xep-mr2/xep-mr2.html It's in an early draft state, but I think it addresses most, if not all, issues with carbons, improving the multi-device situation in XMPP somewhat (I don't care if it's MR2 or an improved version of carbons that makes the race).
> see how ridiculously difficult this makes the basic idea of "all clients should see the same picture" Being involved in XMPP a bit, I get quite a few requests on how to implement WhatsApp/Hangouts like groupchats. And while the basic idea is quite simple, implementing it is a non-trivial task. But it can certainly be done. But we need more motivated developers and specification designers to get it done. While the XMPP community is just great, the count of activley involved people is quite small.
1: http://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/standards/2015-June/029865....