Programming Jabber

Acknowledgments

To my dearest wife, Sabine, who patiently and quietly took on all the demands of daily life for us during this project, allowing me to devote myself to researching and writing. To my son, Joseph, who knew I was writing a book but also knew that helping him build train tracks, drawing, and going on bicycle rides was always good tonic for a mind congested with XML.

To my grandpa, Harold Lomax, who never tired of reading through what I had written to check and correct grammar and punctuation.

To my editor, Chuck Toporek, who not only has great taste in music, but also has a sense of humor to match his infinite patience. Chuck taught me a great deal about writing and thinking, without me even realizing it was happening. Also, many thanks to David Chu, Chuck’s editorial assistant. It’s easy to miss the people behind the scenes when they do such a good job, so thanks for pushing my SGML files through when they needed to be checked by Tools, for coordinating the technical review, and for assisting Chuck to make this book happen. Thanks also to Lenny Muellner, my SGML guru. He helped me with my SGML queries and always kept me on the right track.

To the reviewers of this book, Jens Alfke, Matthew Allum, Michael Bauer, Piers Harding, Jeremie Miller, and Thomas Muldowney, who gave up a lot of their time to provide me with wonderful feedback and great insights. Special thanks go to Piers, the best technical debating partner you could wish for; trying to keep up with him mentally is what drives me on.

And, of course, where would this book be without the very thing that captured my imagination and held it all this time? Thanks to Jeremie and the team of core Jabber developers for building something so fascinating. Thanks also to the Jabber developer community at large, a more friendly bunch of diverse people one could hardly hope to meet.

Finally, thanks to Tim O’Reilly and all of O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., for seeing Jabber for what it really is and for having confidence in me to write about it.