None of that were problems that stopped XMPP from being popular. The ones you mentioned are problems nerds had with it, not normal users. Except "unified specification", that's a big one
It was simple: UI/UX experience:
* each server supported different set of features
* each client supported different set of features
* some of them (like gateways to other chats) were "generic" enough that power users were needed to set them up, even if they worked extremely well
* Most chats were "text-mostly" with shitty html subset, which was just worse for power and normal users alone compared to now-near-standard "markdown + reactions"
Will you get your chat history on given combination of client and server ? Who the fuck knows
Will you have direct data transfer work ? Who the fuck knows
Can you share file to a group chat ? Who the fuck knows
"Oh look markdown is popular, lets IMPLEMENT SOMETHING ELSE THAT'S SIMILAR BUT INCOMPATIBLE" https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0393.html and other great XEPs... I swear whoever is running that is smoking crack
And the XEPs. Millions of them. There is no version of protocol to target by client or server, there is not even "level of features" (lets say "text only", "text + voice", "text + video conferencing"), no, pick and choose, and on both server and client site.
XMPP is absolute mess and mountain of design by committee
482 of them. A XEP is how someone proposes a feature, and how the community collaborates around the protocol's development. Many XEPs never gain enough traction to be marked as "stable", and they get automatically deferred after a year.
This means out of the 482 XEPs, a much smaller number are actually required to implement working stuff in XMPP.
Hopefully this solves the common misconception, which you seem to have, that you have to implement every XEP. Some aren't even dealing with protocol changes, some are only informational, and some only pertain to client or server features.
> There is no version of protocol to target by client or server, there is not even "level of features" (lets say "text only", "text + voice", "text + video conferencing"), no, pick and choose, and on both server and client site.
False. We publish annual "compliance suites" which contains an array of features and two compliance levels for each ("core" and "advanced").
> There is no version of protocol to target by client or server, there is not even "level of features" (lets say "text only", "text + voice", "text + video conferencing"), no, pick and choose, and on both server and client site.
Yes, there is. But your entire comment is based on years-old view of what XMPP was
It was simple: UI/UX experience:
* each server supported different set of features * each client supported different set of features * some of them (like gateways to other chats) were "generic" enough that power users were needed to set them up, even if they worked extremely well * Most chats were "text-mostly" with shitty html subset, which was just worse for power and normal users alone compared to now-near-standard "markdown + reactions"
Will you get your chat history on given combination of client and server ? Who the fuck knows
Will you have direct data transfer work ? Who the fuck knows
Can you share file to a group chat ? Who the fuck knows
"Oh look markdown is popular, lets IMPLEMENT SOMETHING ELSE THAT'S SIMILAR BUT INCOMPATIBLE" https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0393.html and other great XEPs... I swear whoever is running that is smoking crack
And the XEPs. Millions of them. There is no version of protocol to target by client or server, there is not even "level of features" (lets say "text only", "text + voice", "text + video conferencing"), no, pick and choose, and on both server and client site.
XMPP is absolute mess and mountain of design by committee