Implementing application specific communication on top of `iron-docs`

[bn-c]

Overview

• iroh-docs uses iroh-gossip under the hood to implement the exchange of ToLiveActor events. Using NamespaceID as gossip's TopicId, See following snippet from iroh-docs

let sub = self
    .gossip
    .subscribe_with_opts(namespace.into(), JoinOptions::with_bootstrap(bootstrap));

let (sender, stream) = sub.split();
let abort_handle = self.active_tasks.spawn(
    receive_loop(
        namespace,
        stream,
        self.to_live_actor.clone(),
        self.sync.clone(),
    )
    .map(move |res| (namespace, res)),
);
entry.insert(ActiveState {
    sender,
    abort_handle,
});

Problem:

• I would like to be able to send custom events to peers who are interested in the same iroh-docs namespace.
• Looking at iroh-gossip examples, I'm only seeing this TopicId::from_bytes(rand::random()) as a way to create a TopicId.
  Question:
• Should I use the same channel (NamespaceId) to send my custom events, may affect iroh-docs or add computational overhead to differentiate the events.
• Or is there a standard way for me to generate one or multiple TopicId based on the NamespaceId to use as a separate channel for my application specific events?

Perhaps this boils down to whether I can (or should) get away with using only DocTicket to connect and sync not just my application's document, but my entire application as well?