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diff --git a/docs/terminology.rst b/docs/terminology.rst deleted file mode 100644 index cc6e6760ac..0000000000 --- a/docs/terminology.rst +++ /dev/null @@ -1,86 +0,0 @@ -=========== -Terminology -=========== - -A list of definitions of specific terminology used among these documents. -These terms were originally taken from the server-server documentation, and may -not currently match the exact meanings used in other places; though as a -medium-term goal we should encourage the unification of this terminology. - - -Terms -===== - -Backfilling: - The process of synchronising historic state from one home server to another, - to backfill the event storage so that scrollback can be presented to the - client(s). (Formerly, and confusingly, called 'pagination') - -Context: - A single human-level entity of interest (currently, a chat room) - -EDU (Ephemeral Data Unit): - A message that relates directly to a given pair of home servers that are - exchanging it. EDUs are short-lived messages that related only to one single - pair of servers; they are not persisted for a long time and are not forwarded - on to other servers. Because of this, they have no internal ID nor previous - EDUs reference chain. - -Event: - A record of activity that records a single thing that happened on to a context - (currently, a chat room). These are the "chat messages" that Synapse makes - available. - [[NOTE(paul): The current server-server implementation calls these simply - "messages" but the term is too ambiguous here; I've called them Events]] - -PDU (Persistent Data Unit): - A message that relates to a single context, irrespective of the server that - is communicating it. PDUs either encode a single Event, or a single State - change. A PDU is referred to by its PDU ID; the pair of its origin server - and local reference from that server. - -PDU ID: - The pair of PDU Origin and PDU Reference, that together globally uniquely - refers to a specific PDU. - -PDU Origin: - The name of the origin server that generated a given PDU. This may not be the - server from which it has been received, due to the way they are copied around - from server to server. The origin always records the original server that - created it. - -PDU Reference: - A local ID used to refer to a specific PDU from a given origin server. These - references are opaque at the protocol level, but may optionally have some - structured meaning within a given origin server or implementation. - -Presence: - The concept of whether a user is currently online, how available they declare - they are, and so on. See also: doc/model/presence - -Profile: - A set of metadata about a user, such as a display name, provided for the - benefit of other users. See also: doc/model/profiles - -Room ID: - An opaque string (of as-yet undecided format) that identifies a particular - room and used in PDUs referring to it. - -Room Alias: - A human-readable string of the form #name:some.domain that users can use as a - pointer to identify a room; a Directory Server will map this to its Room ID - -State: - A set of metadata maintained about a Context, which is replicated among the - servers in addition to the history of Events. - -User ID: - A string of the form @localpart:domain.name that identifies a user for - wire-protocol purposes. The localpart is meaningless outside of a particular - home server. This takes a human-readable form that end-users can use directly - if they so wish, avoiding the 3PIDs. - -Transaction: - A message which relates to the communication between a given pair of servers. - A transaction contains possibly-empty lists of PDUs and EDUs. - |