[Gossip-dev] Nokia released Mission Control

[Mikael Hallendal]

Xavier Claessens skrev:

Hi,

> For example gossip is (will be) the first IM client to support VoIP
> with jabber/gtalk thanks to telepathy. With that kind of think we are
> no more on the state of a simple jabber client, we do more!

Not sure what you mean here. There are several IM clients that support
voip. GTalk and IChat are two. Maybe you mean for GNOME?

I'm not convinced that putting voip support _into_ gossip is a good
idea. However, _integrating_ it with Gossip is. Be it through some
telepathy voip client or through Ekiga.

>> A nice UI is in my opinion what was lacking (and still to large
>> extent is) in other Jabber clients, so in that sense Gossip is not 
>> "yet-another-jabber client with nothing really special".
> 
> Totally agree, the UI is very nice! But I'm not talking about UI, I
> talk about the backend. Otherwise I wouldn't work to implement
> telepathy into gossip but I would start a new program designed from
> the ground to work with telepathy. I want to keep the ui and work
> only on the backend.

And here is where you are wrong in my opinion. Software design should
never be done from the backend up. Telepathy integration is not a goal
in itself. Design what you want in the UI-layer and then decide the best
way to do it technically.

Before you do this you can't really make any sound calls to the best way
to integrate it with Gossip.

> 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.

Yes, I get the feeling this is a lot of the driving force behind the
integration with Gossip. Ie. to drive Telepathy integration through a
popular UI.

> Dependencies are made to be used and to avoid duplicate work. That's 
> true for gtk (to build UI) and for telepathy (to build IM)!

I do know why you put things in libraries yes. However, you are
comparing Gtk+ (over a decade years on it's neck) and Telepathy (don't
even have everything we need yet).

> True, gossip don't provide something better, but a telepathy/MC aware
> IM client with a good desktop integration does provides something
> totally new and far better.

Design this totally new and far better system/desktop and then we can
look into whether Gossip is the right way for this and if so, how to
change Gossip to fit the picture.

I'm not very interested in taking Gossip down a path of regressions and
unstability to try something out. Gossip is to mature for that.

Also, as I've said numerous times. Gossip does provide something better,
for Jabber users who want to text chat, keep that in mind.

>> Maybe you should attack the problem from the other way. Take parts
>> from Gossip and create separate small apps?
> 
> I'm not sure for the best way here. First of all I really don't want
> to fork gossip UI and most of libgossip, if we split gossip into
> pieces I want to be sure people won't keep old gossip and continue
> work on it.

Why? Duplication of effort?

At the end of the day, people hack for different reasons. If someone
finds it more fun to hack on the old Gossip code base, let them.

>> My interest in Telepathy has nothing to do with multi protocol
>> support but the possibility to make XMPP more integrated in the
>> desktop. Whether this is done through Telepathy or a desktop
>> XMPP-server matters little to me (from a user point of view).
> 
> Telepathy provides both advantages: desktop integration and multi 
> protocol support. For me desktop integration is the best part and can
> begin if we adapt gossip to work with the MC.

Telepathy provides _a solution_ for desktop integration. However, at the
moment there isn't any and there also are other solutions for desktop
integration.

> 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.

Rather, all the work spent in Gossip/Gaim/Gajim has been duplicated by
the Telepathy project. Telepathy is the new player here.

You are pushing new technology and trying to convince existing projects
to drop their tested code and move to something new and untested. It is
_never_ a good idea to do so without considering why things are as they
are now and what user bases Gossip in this case has at the moment.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

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