[ashward]

There are a couple of key points here which a lot of you are missing which are:

* The JSON -> XML conversion is done on the server rather than in the client. Browsers are surprisingly bad at xml (one of the reasons buddycloud chose to move the xmpp layer out of the browser), and xml dom manipulation can make for overly complex code (we should also bear in mind one of the philosophies of xmpp which was simple clients, complex servers), and this leads me to my second point:

* It's really simple. This opens it up as a no-brainer solution for web devs who would otherwise just throw up a proprietary silo system based purely on socket.io or similar. Sure, if you really want all the complexities and nuances of xmpp then use an xml based library, but if you just want to send simple messages between users then this is really simple, and hey - what would have been a silo system is suddenly federatable at zero cost.

The point here is that this library is not aimed at hardcore xmpp devs, but devs who would be put off by anything other than json. Make this library as easy to use as socket.io on its own and suddenly you've got more systems running on xmpp which wouldn't otherwise have been (which is great for everyone)!