[OTR-dev] Could OTR be made more fault-tolerant?

[Nathan of Guardian]

On Sun, Jun 21, 2015, at 10:22 AM, Jacek Wielemborek wrote:
> Perhaps there should be some "pinging" mechanism in place or when a
> undecipherable message gets received, an error message should be sent?
> The client could then discard such an error if he keeps a trusted
> session on another channel, basically doing what I'm doing when the
> problem happens. What do you guys think about this?

With ChatSecure, we handle this using XMPP message delivery receipts, so
that both ends absolutely know when the message has been received or not
through a visual checkmark or X. We also transparently handle session
refresh, so that if you move between devices during an OTR chat, or if
one side comes online while the other-side is trying to send it a
message, the OTR session will refresh, and the queued message will be
delivered. Finally, in our v14.2 release coming out this week, you can
set your OTR session to "FORCE", and we will queue all outbound messages
until a valid OTR session is enabled.

While Ximin and other's work on next-generation message protocols is
important, I think the current OTR+XMPP is quite capable, but just
poorly implemented by most apps from a usability and user experience
perspective.

+n

-- 
  Nathan of Guardian
  nathan at guardianproject.info