A note on terminology

This page explains why some terms seem to be used interchangeably within the documentation.

There are places in the documentation where some phrases are used in ways that could be confusing. This page attempts to remove any of that confusion which may be caused by the lack of a rigidly controlled vocabulary.

Stanzas and packets

Each XML construct sent over an authenticated XMPP connection is a stanza. This is the terminology used in the proposed IETF standard. However, you could also consider that each stanza is a "packet" of information. This is the approach taken by the developers of the Smack API, which this software uses.

It's my intention to use the term "stanza" when discussing XML constructs sent over an XMPP connection, and the term "Packet" when discussing Packet objects sent via an XMPPConnection. But the terms both represent the same data structure, and are basically interchangeable.

Functions and methods

Functions are either declared in ECMAScript or methods called from within ECMAScript.

Methods are Java methods.

Viewports, canvases, and packet handlers

In the vocabulary of the SVG specification, a viewport is any window in which SVG is viewed. By analogy, both Mozilla & javax.swing.text.html.HTMLDocument are HTML viewports, since they can both render HTML.

In the vocabulary of JFC/Swing upon which the Batik SVG toolkit is built, a canvas is any area that displays graphics. Specifically, within the Java2D toolkit, a canvas displays images & vector graphics. Batik provides a canvas specifically meant for drawing SVG graphics, the JSVGCanvas. This canvas is extended with GradientSVGCanvas to provide XMPP capabilities.

A packet handler is any object that can register itself with a Gradient PacketRouter. Packet handlers have a thread ID, document path, and controller JID. All packet handlers implement the PacketHandler interface. GradientSVGCanvas is an extension of the Canvas class that acts as an SVG viewport, and implements PacketHandler.

© 2006. Some rights reserved. Author: Ian Sollars.