[Gossip-dev] Using xchat-gnome's UI for gossip chatrooms

[Xavier Claessens]

On dim, 2007-01-21 at 11:55 +0100, Mikael Hallendal wrote:
> 20 jan 2007 kl. 18.58 skrev Martyn Russell:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> >> However, I think that Xchat will always want to be more IRC specific
> >> (unless it is also going multi-protocol) than Gossip can/will be  
> >> so to
> >> me it would make sense to keep XChat next to Gossip on a desktop  
> >> rather
> >> than merge them into one application.
> >
> > Although I agree in principle, I don't think this is something  
> > everyone
> > wants. I personally just want ONE chat client to use IRC, Jabber  
> > and MSN
> > from, I am not interested in multiple applications, BUT, I am not an
> > advanced IRC user and so perhaps we do need both an IRC simple Gossip
> > solution and an application? I just know how I want to use it.
> 
> It's the same as with all multi-functionality tools. You can use your  
> swiss army knife to screw, cut, looking glass. However a screwdriver,  
> a larger knife or a larger looking glass will always do the job better.
> 
> Gossip is currently leaning towards becoming a swiss army knife and  
> by doing so you just have to accept that you will not cater those  
> that are looking for the real tools.

I agree, gossip will certainly not implement all IRC features, but who
need them ? I think most users just want IM to be well integrated in the
desktop don't need that much functionality. That's why we need a
telepathy IRC client ! Now this telepathy IRC client can be a separate
application to provide a more irc specific UI, but that needs more work
to build another client using telepathy. Gossip already implement most
telepathy features and has a good (even if not perfect) chatroom
abstraction in libgossip that will save lots of work to reuse that
pieces (I hope so). In the end all chatroom protocol is nothing more
than a list of joined rooms with for each a list of members, a topic and
a text-view.

In the other hand gossip may gain of having a x-g-like UI for chatrooms.
I personally prefer the x-g way of displaying a MUC over gossip's
current chatroom UI. When I compare gossip's chatroom window and x-g's I
see no big difference in supported features. I think x-g UI can be
perfectly used for jabber chatrooms. Note that x-g is not xchat, x-g's
ui is lot simpler and provide less (useless for common use cases)
features.

The big question here is: what about having a group-chat-window separate
from private chats ? In gossip actually you have the group chat embedded
as tab in in the same window than private chats, I think it's not a very
good idea. Personally I prefer having a separate window because I keep
jabber/irc chatroom open all the time even if I don't speak on the room.
For private chats I close the window as soon as I have nothing more to
say to the person. So the idea to have a special window looking like
x-g's window for all chatrooms is for me a better choice because I can
auto-join all favorite chatrooms when gossip starts and having them all
in a window and keep that window open and ready to discuss on a irc
channel or a jabber room.

Maybe this difference between chatrooms and private chat is why nobody
use jabber chatrooms. All jabber clients supports jabber chatrooms like
other private chats, that's not what users expect, they prefer the x-g's
way for group chats. That may be a reason why IRC is far more popular
than jabber chatrooms even if jabber is a better and more modern
protocol than IRC.

That's just an idea, maybe I'm wrong and we should really make a
separate application for IRC using telepathy instead of trying to merge
x-g and gossip together...

Xavier Claessens.