Re: Online Desktop/People apps (short-term)

["Joe Shaw" <joe joeshaw org>]

Hi,

On 7/25/07, Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> wrote:
> That just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. What the Empathy block
> here is doing here is merging together data from various sources; not
> just e-d-s, but also Telepathy, Pidgin, or whatever. I see the
> online-desktop-server as another of those sources. As such, is there
> any reason to force it into the VCard mold?
>
> So, that's my big picture of the situation: We don't try to wedge extra
> functionality into e-d-s ... we just leave it as it currently is - a
> VCard store. Then we build the new world of people with dynamic merging
> using that as one more data source, as necessary.

To draw a parallel here with some existing software: this is
essentially the design we went with for Beagle.  It draws its content
from a wide variety of sources and then tries to present a reasonably
consistent single view of that data to apps.  It's not comprehensive;
if you want to dig down you need to go to the source directly, but it
gives a pointer (a URI) and is a system that's worked out incredibly
well for us.

We have a wide variety of components that exist today, like e-d-s, and
I don't think we need to radically rethink them in the o-d metaphor,
nor do we really want to if we want to also allow a non-o-d GNOME
world view.  We just need to build the new stuff on top and we can get
there as well.

So in summary: I agree, me too, +1. :)

Joe