<p>Hmm...</p>
<p>Suppose that we add the ability to output to email as well as to IM/chat clients. (The Jabber architecture should allow this, shouldn't it?) Then, it seems to me, you could merge it with the proposed acs-messaging/general comments merge proposed on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20010911090808/http://www.arsdigita.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000IuZ">this thread</a>. This strikes me as a very powerful general-purpose approach that would make it much easier to retarget messages to various different devices.</p>