Important Announcement - Developers please note.

[Ian Lowe]

In light of Patrick's request, we have completed the IANA request form, and
begun the official process to get a unique port allocation for xPL.

I have been unable to speak to Mark Harrison about this yet (it is a
holiday
weekend after all), however, it's clear that xap and xpl cannot co-exist
within a single PC at present, due to differences in the hub
implementation,
as well as the actual incompatibilities between the protocols. It's in
no-one's interests to be confrontational about this, and presenting at
least
the possibility that people can install both platforms is the path of least
contention.

With this in mind, there's only one way to look at this: xap has been
assigned the port, and we are using it as a favour from Mark Harrison. It's
abundantly clear that in the event of any official complaint, xpl would be
found at fault for using port 3639, which has been assigned to xap.

At present, the xPL applications in the field can be easily adapted to use
the correct port we are assigned by IANA, if we were to remain using port
3639, this would become an ever greater axe hanging over our heads, as the
time and effort to re-write the code will only increase as time passes.

IANA State that the expected turnaround of requests is two weeks.
Therefore,
be aware that coding carried out just now *will* have to changed in a
couple
of weeks.

As this provides a very clear timescale within which all existing
applications will be modified, This becomes an important time to revisit
Message Schemas, frameworks etc. With any luck, this forced code review
will
prompt us to build a better, stronger, more useful set of software!

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to drop me an email
personally, or even post here. There's nothing to hide.

Ian.