Hi All!
Long time no speak on this mailing list.
Billiob raised an interesting question on IRC about amsn2 and possible multiprotocol support, the discussion then led to whether or not have some kind of amsn daemon, so we could easily 'switch front ends'.. example, you'd be on GTK front end, then you're away, you ssh home, then make it switch into curses and you can see who wrote you, etc.. or also switch it at will into web front end.. then get back home, switch it back to GTK front end... something like that...
This led me to brainstorm a little about the future of aMSN2 along with Telepathy.. here are my thoughts :
<KaKaRoTo-KS> billiob, if you're talking about a daemon, then a client, then you are talking about telepathy
<KaKaRoTo-KS> and I honestly think that telepathy is a great great idea with great potential, but I find it lacking in many things
<KaKaRoTo-KS> I really wouldn't mind if we made amsn2 use telepathy as a backend
<KaKaRoTo-KS> I always thought about doing a telepathy port of amsn2 protocol layer
<KaKaRoTo-KS> the problem with telepathy (TP), is that it's very 'generic' and not enough 'msn-specific'
<KaKaRoTo-KS> there is no such thing as custom emoticons, there is no such thing as winks/nudges.. no voice clips, etc...
<KaKaRoTo-KS> so for everything specific that we would need, we would have to create our own little interface on top of that, and have the CMs implement that interface...
<KaKaRoTo-KS> in the end, it might not really be such a bad idea.. you know, have the full feature-set of papyon, but wrapped around dbus with telepathy-butterfly
<KaKaRoTo-KS> for anything not in the spec, create our custom interface, and file a bug to the tp guys so they can integrate our interface into the main tp spec
<KaKaRoTo-KS> the only difference it would make is that we would become multi-process with a dbus dependency
<KaKaRoTo-KS> I don't really like the dbus dependency, nor the multiprocess idea... but it does have its advantages...
<KaKaRoTo-KS> (the UI crashes, you restart it, you're still online and you haven't lost your messages... if the CM crashes, the UI is still there and to the user it just appears as if you lost your connection)
<KaKaRoTo-KS> (and it will auto-respawn, and autoreconnect)
<KaKaRoTo-KS> what we're doing anyways between the protocol and the core, is the same thing.. the protocol layer acts as a CM (telepathy connection manager) and the protocol->core interface acts just like the telepathy dbus interface...
<KaKaRoTo-KS> amsn2 only reinvents the wheel.. which isn't really always a good idea..
<KaKaRoTo-KS> also, just by implementing the telepathy spec, we will automatically gain access to xmpp, sip, IRC, every other damn protocol there is out there (even all pidgin protocols through tp-haze which wraps libpurple into a telepathy CM)
<KaKaRoTo-KS> with no cost at all.. zero, the same interface for every protocol... just like empathy does
<KaKaRoTo-KS> + we would be able to get a much better desktop integration.. if we use (not if, we must use) mission-control5, then we will get all the accounts directly from MC5, just like empathy..
<KaKaRoTo-KS> so an empathy user starts amsn2, and he doesn't need to enter his new login info..
<KaKaRoTo-KS> and there is already gnome-panel and other telepathy-ready desktop-integrated widgets/apps/etc.. that use MC5/telepathy that would take advantage of that..
<KaKaRoTo-KS> people would see amsn2 as being desktop-integrated..
<KaKaRoTo-KS> "oh wow, I just created an account in amsn, and my gnome panel just showed me that I'm online on msn.. "
<KaKaRoTo-KS> billiob, maybe it's time to talk about this..
<KaKaRoTo-KS> + advantage, it's not like we're dropping papyon.. we'll still be using papyon, so we haven't wasted a project for nothing :)
<KaKaRoTo-KS> +tp is backed by collabora, so ++ :)
<KaKaRoTo-KS> billiob, maybe I should move this discussion to the mailing list.. what do you think ?
So there it is.. we could make aMSN2 a telepathy front end, and have a custom MSN interface implemented by telepathy-butterfly (which uses papyon) for anything missing from the telepathy-spec. It's better than to rewrite what others already did.
What do you guys think? It's time to make this mailing list extra-active, like in the old days, everybody throw your opinions in here, I want to see a 30 mails long thread tomorrow when I wake up..
Good night! :)
KaKaRoTo