[OTR-dev] acoountname as 'ourname' in 'incorrect no-plugin' message

[Ian Goldberg]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2006 at 12:34:46PM +1100, Scott Ellis wrote:
> > In what protocols is the "unique identifier" not human-readable?  Is
> > this not the string that someone else would type in to their IM client
> > in order to send you a message?  If not, I'd think there's got to be a
> > way to determine what that string is.
> 
> e.g ICQ - the UIN is just a number - readable but not meaningful to me. The
> nickname they're given on the receiving end (if any) is not necessarily
> known to the sender

That's certainly true.  But the account name is certainly better for a
non-OTR person to see than something else.

> > Ah, but that message (generated by the sender) needs to be readable and
> > make sense to someone that really *doesn't* have an OTR plugin.  So you
> > can't rely on the receiver to fill in the sender's name properly.
> 
> yes I realise that - but it's prefixed with the ?OTR? thing - so if there
> does happen to be an otr plugin on the receiving end, and if the message had
> some sort of recognisable standard content (e.g. i've modified the lib to
> remove html tags, so straight strcmp wouldn't work) then the receiver could
> do something more useful with it - and also fill in the nickname of the
> sender

You don't need standard content: the "?OTR?" is enough to indicate
what's going on, *if* the user has an active OTR plugin that just
happens to be set to "Never" for this contact.

How common is that, though?  In what situations do I want OTR *not* to
start, *even if* the other guy pushes the "Start OTR" button?  Does this
come up a lot for other people?

Thanks,

   - Ian