Re: Proposed module: empathy

[Guillaume Desmottes <cass skynet be>]

Hi,

Disclaimer: I work for Collabora which sponsors most of the
Telepathy/Empathy development.

> I didn't say that I don't want Telepathy in. It's no secret that I
> don't like Empathy but I DO like the goals of Telepathy. I just happen
> to think that Empathy is a poor implementation of a Telepathy client.

Why do you think Empathy is a poor Telepathy client? What would you like
to see in a "good" Telepathy client? How Empathy could be improved to
fit your needs?

>  My question above is entirely intended to start a discussion about
> **Telepathy** being pro-actively (or not) promoted throughout the
> project. I'm looking for anyone to offer some opinions about this and
> (hopefully) some kind of goals. 

Ok, so let's talk about Telepathy.

GNOME could gain the following features thanks to Telepathy:

a) a good, simple and GNOMEish multi protocols IM client (including
Jabber, MSN, IRC, XMPP link local and all the others protocols
implemented in libpurple)

b) Deep integration of IM and presence into the GNOME Desktop. For
example use Rhythmbox to set the track you're listening to in your
presence message. Or use a nautilus extension to send files to your
friends. Share Epiphany links with your contacts...

c) A user friendly audio/video client (currently using Jingle and SIP
but that could be extended to MSN at some point).

d) A multi protocol collaboration framework (Tubes). I think it's easier
to describe few use cases for this:
- You have a problem to configure one of your program and ask help to
your friend Bob. You hit a "share my desktop with Bob " button, he
receives a notification "Jason offers you to see his desktop. <accept>
<decline>". He accepts, Vinagre is automatically launched and connected
to your desktop. You didn't care about launching a VNC server or forward
the right port from your router to your workstation.
- You are chatting with some friends in a multi users chat room. You hit
the "play gtetrinet" button, tetrinet-server is automatically launched
and shared through a tube. Each participant in the room just have to
accept the request and gtetrinet will be launched and automatically
connected to your server.
- You launch glchess and choose a "play with..." menu entry. The list of
your contacts is displayed and you choose with which of them you want to
play.

All of this is protocol independent and completely transparent for the
application. So you don't have to care about the underlying IM network,
NAT penetration, etc. For now tubes are implemented in Gabble (XMPP) and
Salut (link-local XMPP). That means you can use them from home when you
are connected to Internet or from a train without server using
Avahi/Salut magic.


We are just proposing a) for GNOME 2.22 so a GNOMEish IM client.
Audio/video isn't polished enough yet for c).

libempathy and libempathy-gtk will help us for b) but the API isn't
stable enough and still need documentation to be really usable. So,
let's see that as a middle term goal.

d) can really improve user's experience, but tubes aren't ready for the
desktop yet. We need to modify Mission Control to properly handle them
and add API to libempathy.
So here again, that's not what we are suggesting for GNOME 2.22.

Please focus your attention on the Empathy client (a). The other points
are very important too of course, but aren't ready yet for GNOME. We are
working really hard to improve them and hopefully will be ready for
GNOME 2.24 or 2.26.
So the real questions for now are: "Does GNOME could benefit from an
user friendly IM client? Could Empathy be this client? Is Telepathy a
good technology to improve GNOME users' experience as a middle term
goal?".


Of course my answers to these 3 questions is yes but, as said, I'm a bit
partial. :)


	G.


--
Guillaume Desmottes <cass skynet be>
Jabber <cassidy jabber belnet be>
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