the final XChat needs some sort of notification (maybe color change or small icon) when a message is received/read.
It definitely will have notifications.
That is great,
but have another request/question for the XChat, do we really need the address and the public key as destination?
After all, its not called a public key for nothing
I have some clarification on this:
The public key is used to encrypt messages sent to a given address. So you need it if you want the message to be private.
Here's a summary of the mechanism:
- User A wants to send a message to user B
- User A gets public key of user B
- User A encrypts a packet which has his own public key and sends to user B
- Only user B can decrypt, since the private key of user B is required to decode a message encrypted with user B's public key
- Now user B has user A's public key, and can encrypt and send back a message.
So addresses are analogous to phone numbers, and in order to secure the communication, a public key is needed.