[Gossip-dev] Nokia released Mission Control

[Xavier Claessens]

On dim, 2007-03-11 at 16:14 +0000, Martyn Russell wrote:
> Xavier Claessens wrote:
> > On dim, 2007-03-11 at 11:34 +0100, Tomasz Sterna wrote:
> >> I'm no big fan of telepathy. It's nice, yes.
> >> But it also bounds us. We cannot do and experiment with things that
> >> telepathy does not handle (yet). It also depends us hardly on something
> >> we don't fully control.
> > 
> > We depend on Gtk, should be recode it to be sure to fully control it? 
> 
> That's a really bad comparison. What Tomasz is saying, is basically he
> can take Gossip and install it stand alone on his machine - he KNOWS he
> will need dependencies like GTK+ etc, but that comes for free in 99.99%
> of the cases, having Telepathy doesn't and that is quite important to
> remember here. If Telepathy was part of Gnome and could easily be used
> on other Operating Systems, then I think it would make the transition
> and idea more comfortable for everyone. At the end of the day users want
> to just install one thing, not a list of things. This is something the
> developer/maintainer has to consider in such situations.

Users don't care about installing application, distributions do.
Telepathy won't be installed by default if it's not used by the desktop,
and you say desktop won't use if it's not installed by default...

I think telepathy will be installed in all systems if we use it.

> > Do
> > one think but do it well, gossip is an IM client not an IM protocol
> > backend. I totally convinced that telepathy is THE solution for all IM
> > UI. 
> 
> Actually, that is wrong. Currently Gossip is an IM client with an IM
> backend and support for integration with an IM subsystem.
> 
> >> Gossip is a nice Jabber (XMPP in future maybe) client. One of the
> >> nicest. Dropping backend support in favor of telepathy would make it
> >> just another telepathy frontend.
> > 
> > No, gossip is yet-another-jabber-client with nothing really special,
> > moving to telepathy opens the door to a new world of desktop integration
> > and would make gossip really interesting.
> 
> I'm sorry Xavier, but I have to agree with Mikael here. That is a bit of
> a kick in the bollocks. If you feel that way about Gossip, why work on
> it? Why work on it in the first place if it is the same as all the rest?
> I am sure you don't agree with that comment especially with all the hard
> work you have put in.

Gossip is a jabber client like others. It has a better UI/code
quality/design/fun than all others clients, but it's still just a jabber
client... With telepathy and MC we can do much more and integrate IM in
the desktop.

> > For me it's simple, move to telepathy or die. Traditional clients like
> > gaim which re-implement all protocols has no future, it can't be easily
> > integrated with other desktop applications and has too many code
> > duplication with other traditional IM clients.
> 
> Really it doesn't matter what GAIM does. I consider it far to broken for
> me to even worry about. But that is my personal view, I wouldn't be so
> hasty to condemn GAIM, it is still used by a LOT of people as Mikael says.
> 
> > Take a simple example in gossip the telepathy backend supporting VoIP
> > and all possible IM protocols with almost the same features as the
> > jabber backend takes 6923 lines of code, gossip's jabber backend that
> > can't do msn/irc/etc and without VoIP takes 13691 lines of code... Using
> > telepathy we support far more with the half of code, that's the proof
> > there is a lot of code duplication in traditional IM clients.
> 
> You are comparing apples to pairs here. I mean really, think about it,
> the Jabber backend has to interface to Loudmouth (which Telepathy does).
> So you are one layer higher with the Telepathy backend in Gossip. All
> the hard work by Daf, Robert, et al is done for you, all you have to do
> is connect a few signals, send a bit of data, remember some information,
> bla bla, it is a lot easier trust me.

yes, and all that work done by collabora guys is duplicated in
gossip/gaim/gajim/etc. If all IM clients depends on telepathy it will
save lots of work.