The "unavailable" presence state should surely actually be "away" (SPEC-15)

[matrixbot]

We currently set a user as "unavailable" if they've been idle for 5 minutes or whatever in the webclient.

In practice, surely "unavailable" should mean "i am busy; go away". Whereas "idle" or "away" should mean "i don't seem to be using Matrix currently".

(Imported from https://matrix.org/jira/browse/SPEC-15)

(Reported by @ara4n)

[matrixbot]

Jira watchers: @leonerd @ara4n @richvdh

[matrixbot]

I picked "unavailable" as the state name because in practice the real condition is carried in the string field. The string could say "busy" or "away" or "idle" or whatever. The semantics of the application ought arguably to be the same in all situations.

"unavailable" in some way declares that the would-be recipient of the message is unlikely to reply any time soon. "away" would suggest they aren't even going to read it, whereas "busy" might mean "I am at my desk but doing something super-imporant so please don't distract me".

((Also shouldn't this be a SPEC bug?))

-- @leonerd

[matrixbot]

bit late now

-- @richvdh

[MurzNN]

Will be good to implement 2 presence states of users:

• Offline from timestamp - seems it's already implemented in Matrix and shows as Offline for XXh in Riot, or it shows now away status instead of full offline?
• Away from timestamp - this info seems missing now in Riot, because I see only online and offline statuses, so maybe missed in Matrix too. This must keep last activity status of user (when he last touch Matrix client) and can be named as Last seen at HH:MM, Away for XXh, Last activity XXh ago, Idle for XXh, Unavailable XXh, etc.

This is very useful to see idle info, especially in company messengers: I must know is user near the computer/phone now, or away many hours. At now if user installs Matrix Android client, I always see them as online, even if he turn off company computer and goes to sleep at home.

But Busy is not real presence, this is custom user status that user must select manually, when he really busy. This must be implemented via custom status message text, like "Now playing" in XMPP, or "Activity message" status field in Skype, etc.

If away presence info isn't implemented by privacy reasons, let's make this optional "Don't send idle events", like "Don't send typing notifications".