[OTR-users] Request: Pidgin plugin should request refresh if other user offline

[Ian Goldberg]

On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 12:54:37PM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
> Here's the situation:
>
> 0. Linux Pidgin with 3.2.0 otr plugin on either end, using Jabber.
>
> 1. Users Alice and Bob negotiate a secure connection and chat for a while.
> 2. Bob logs off
> 3. Alice sends a message, which gets encrypted because of (1)
> 4. Bob logs on from a different machine and sees there was an encrypted
> message he couldn't decrypt.
> => boom.
>
> I think I recall that under such circumstances, the overall setup at one
> point used to automatically retransmit Alice's message after
> re-negotiating the encryption, but this doesn't happen here.
>
> Proposal: the plugin should tell Alice that Bob has disconnected and she
> should terminate the private conversation and re-establish it.

Hmm.  That's supposed to be what happens now.  When Bob logs off in step
2, his pidgin is supposed to send messages to all of his OTR
conversations informing the other side that he's disconnected.  That's
when Alice should see the "Bob has terminated his OTR conversation; you
should do the same" message, and Alice's side switches to Finished.

Now if Bob *crashes* in step 2, I agree that the offline-stored message
Alice sends in step 3 won't be readable by Bob if Bob has discarded his
session.  That's the intended behaviour.

   - Ian