Messages can be shown out of order in text chat

• Ring version: 2019-08-24-01
• Device model: Samsung Tablet S2
• Android version: 8.1 / LineageOS 15.1-20190228
• Jami-Version from F-droid

Steps to reproduce

• Can you reproduce the bug: at will
• Steps:
  1. Alice sends two messages while Bob is offline. 2. Alice goes offline. 3. Bob goes online and sends Alice a message.
• Actual result: Bob sees his message above the two older messages from Alice after she returned online.
• Expected result: Text chat messages shall be shown in chronological order. Reliably.

Additional information

Timestamps from the peer can't be trusted in Jami. We don't have a server, so the timestamp showed is when Bob receives the message, not when Alice sends the message, because there is no way to trust the timestamp sent by Alice. Trusting the peer timestamp would allow the peer to rewrite the history.

The only viable solution is to have the device online to get the correct timestamp.

closed

In fact the timeline will be ordered per device with group chat where a sequence number per device will be present. So messages will only increase and indeed the order will be kept but per device.