5 ms·

Google Wave's Web of Protocols (diagram and commentary)

42 points by jaaron 17y ago

rjurney 17y ago
Every time I hear 'Wave' I think of 'Ripscript' - http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPSCRIPT/ http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/PROGRAMS/GRAPHICS/RIPS...
ROFISH 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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.
andymoe 17y ago
I do like that everything runs over HTTP at its base...
- extension 17y ago
  The federation protocol (server to server) is over XMPP, not HTTP.
jacobolus 17y ago
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 17y ago
  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/thread/a2de2480e4c3beeb# http://groups.google.com/group/wave-protocol/browse_thread/t...
  - dandelany 17y ago
    Thanks, that's a great link... Best message in the thread is from Anthony Baxter @Google, about halfway down the page: "When I and other googlers have said 'there's no concrete client-server protocol', you can attach an unspoken 'yet' to that. We don't know what it should look like in it's final form. On the other hand, we have a fair idea about the requirements and needs of the federation protocol, which is why we took at stab at writing that down first. "If anyone has ideas about what this should look like based on what they've seen so far, start a discussion on it. It's not necessary for Google to come down the mountain with a completed standard engraved in stone. Or even in something softer, like soap."
  - jacobolus 17y ago
    > 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://orbited.org/ http://js.io/ http://js.io/
tybris 17y ago
I'm surprised by the lack of scepticism of Google Wave. It seems quite dodgy for the next "killer app".
- jaaron 17y ago
  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.

42 points by jaaron 17y ago

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

ROFISH 17y ago

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 17y ago
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.

andymoe 17y ago

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

extension 17y ago
The federation protocol (server to server) is over XMPP, not HTTP.

jacobolus 17y ago

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 17y ago
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/thread/a2de2480e4c3beeb# http://groups.google.com/group/wave-protocol/browse_thread/t...
- dandelany 17y ago
  Thanks, that's a great link... Best message in the thread is from Anthony Baxter @Google, about halfway down the page: "When I and other googlers have said 'there's no concrete client-server protocol', you can attach an unspoken 'yet' to that. We don't know what it should look like in it's final form. On the other hand, we have a fair idea about the requirements and needs of the federation protocol, which is why we took at stab at writing that down first. "If anyone has ideas about what this should look like based on what they've seen so far, start a discussion on it. It's not necessary for Google to come down the mountain with a completed standard engraved in stone. Or even in something softer, like soap."
- jacobolus 17y ago
  > 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://orbited.org/ http://js.io/ http://js.io/

tybris 17y ago

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

jaaron 17y ago
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.