I really like the idea of using Jabber on the back end. But based on reviewing the thread on that subject, it seems like there's a long way to go before that'll happen.
The jabber module I wrote can do this, I already wrote a groupchat recording bot. It only took a few hours, so it isn't a big deal. You can use any jabber client to post, and anyone without a jabber client could post through a web form and follow the discussion just like ACS chat, that is with javascript refresh.
If you want to look into it yourself, I think all my files are under
http://zmbh.com/nsjabber/
.
To be clear, my module turns AOLserver into a jabber client. Anything a jabber client can do works. The easy part is that you can program whatever application you want to in tcl. With a little more effort, you could have AOLserver act as a jabber component, which would be the best situation. If you wanted to maintain persistent connections to AOLserver from a web browser, you could probably easily have the thing work without refresh. One thread could setup and maintain a connection to the jabber server sending the browser each new message. A different window would be used for responding.
