Hi Mat,
I really love your work. (thinking that is only a prof of concept) I think is very important to use the UNIX philosophy and let other software to do what it do better, and we don't need to create another XMPP client. We only must to do the things talk together.
The possibility to chat (and other things) using the Pidign in the same processes is obvious and also cool. :-)
Questions/Proposals: - How dificult will be to start the shared drawing from Inkscape? The Pidgin plugin can read the command line arguments (like --inkboard-pid=XYZ) and make things happen on the start with less interaction? - The Pidgin plugin may abstract the protocol and enable shared drawing with the popular MSN or the Classic ICQ? - It must support a "chat room" to allow drawing with more then 2 persons.
Best wishes, Aurium