Yep , been ages since I did anything at xmpp-im-client : and all blame to be laid on me.
One thing let to another and I was neck deep in fixing the server up quite a bit !
The next release when it does come out is going to be quite interesting
Some very interesting usecases are going to be possible ... patience for a couple of months more !

So , I will need to tie up loose ends for a couple of more weeks : and then hopefully I will be able to get enough of my life back to actually start working on the project.

A very clear and concise post by Neal Gafter on the use , differences and benifits of closures here.
When I read the initial proposal , it was slightly confusing.
I felt that the return syntax smelt like goto's , ability to access non-final local variables was worrisome , etc.
The ideas on the last two posts (here and here) are very instructive and clarify things quite a bit.
The synchronous usecase is something I have tried time and again to solve within my code - usually inefficiently with hacked up callbacks : closures would be a much more cleaner fix for this problem.