[Gossip-dev] New IRC account widget

[Mikael Hallendal]

26 jan 2007 kl. 11.11 skrev Martyn Russell:

Hi,

>> The two reasons you mention below are the exact two reasons why  
>> Gossip
>> was started in the first place. Me and Richard was tired of IM  
>> clients
>> being two complex (existing jabber clients, IRC, etc.) or trying to
>> solve it all (Gaim).
>
> An I agree with this to some extent. I don't want oodles of features
> coming out of Gossip's ears, I just want common usage available for my
> communication requirements. Those tend towards IRC, MSN and Jabber.  
> All
> I need from those protocols is the ability to talk to my contacts, I
> don't need any bells and whistles. With Telepathy, I don't want to see
> the interface change much at all, because at the end of the day,
> (depending on protocol) all you really end up doing is sending  
> messages,
> chatting with VoIP or using video. The backend really makes no
> difference to me, I just want a clean interface where I can do this to
> my contacts and the underlying protocol matters not. So it is in my
> interests (personally) to keep the interface similar to how it is now
> within reason.

As said before, I don't really see the rationale to add IRC support  
to Gossip. It would make a whole lot more sense to add XMPP Chatroom  
support to xchat(-gnome) than the other way around. Especially now  
that we are using Telepathy where the connection can be shared and  
this sort of multiprogram setups will be easy.

By adding IRC (as an example of a communication protocol that is  
quite different from XMPP or other "IM" protocols) you will make the  
UI more complex whether you like it or not. Thinking different is  
just naive.

XMPP, MSN, AIM, <insert favorite IM here> all are quite similar  
(though you will have loads of problems with these alone). IRC is  
fundamentally different in that you don't have contacts in the same  
way and no contact list.

By just adding support for all the IM-protocols you will have more  
problems than you can handle without making the UI severely more  
complex than it has been.

So I propose that the time is spent on adding support for XMPP  
chatrooms in xchat instead of the other way around. Using different  
programs for different needs is not a bad thing per se.

Best Regards,
   Mikael Hallendal

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