Re: GNOME Development Series Snapshot 2.3.0: "Mighty Atom"

["John (J5) Palmieri" <johnp martianrock com>]

On Sat, 2003-04-12 at 17:29, Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-04-12 at 08:41, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > <quote who="Daniel Farrell">
> > > We should keep the basic desktop in plain view.  Are there any reasons
> > > Gaim shouldn't be including in the basic desktop?
> > 
> > IMHO, Gaim does not integrate brilliantly with GNOME [1], and certainly
> > doesn't follow the HIG. I'm not sure the developers are willing to commit to
> > the goals of the GNOME Desktop release, either.
> 
> I don't think Jeff was quite hard enough on Gaim here.  From what I can
> see (I've been playing with CVS on and off for 6 months or so), it goes
> out of it's way to not use any GNOME features.  Their IRC channel also
> tends to flame you if you ask them "why doesn't GAIM pick up my GNOME
> web browser setting".  
I know, I went through this.  Gaim was supposed to use an external
script to do this last time I checked which was a while ago. It was
around the time that I created the first iteration of what was to be the
notification code.  One good thing about their animosity to GNOME
libraries was that it made me look at the notification code in libegg as
Gnoem 2.0's applets were much more invasive than Gnome 1.0's.  

> I really get the feeling that Gaim isn't
> interested in being a GNOME application, and probably shouldn't be a
> GNOME desktop application, based on their antagonistic attitude towards
> GNOME.  
Like I said before I am not married to it.  But I don't think one should
just dismiss the codebase out of hand.  It is currently the most stable,
popular and best working IM for Gnome.  

> > I would love to see a yummy, HIGgy, usable instant messaging app included in
> > the Desktop release, even though I don't use them. ;-)
> 
> IRC is an instant messenging protocol.  :)
XChat works fine for this.  As a joke I tried out Gaim's IRC plugin and I had to ask myself
why it was ever implemented.  IRC and IM are two totaly different beasts
that need different interfaces.

> > (One issue with IM stuff is that we can't rely on proprietary protocols and
> > servers working, and to satisfy a large majority of the users, we'd really
> > be wanting to support them... So, kind of a tough position.)
> 
> Yeah, a client that supports jabber first and foremost (assuming that it
> doesn't also do IRC, since the UI for that doesn't tend to work out well
> with the person-to-person nature of most other IM protocols) should be
> the client that we put in the GNOME desktop, when there's a client
> that's ready.  I don't have a good feeling that anything will be ready
> in the GNOME 2.4 timeframe. 

This is the problem I see all too often.  People want to be pure to the
point that they ignore a currently working option.  I understand and
respect the need for an open protocol enviornment but Gaim does support
open protocols.  What would be nice is to use Gaim for now and slowly
transition to libgaim the same way Gnome Multimedia was transitioned to
gstreamer.  I guess it could all be hashed out at the distribution level
for right now while gnome propper ponders the deaper issues.  I realy
don't care what I use as long as it supports AOL (which is what my
friends use) and has a similar interface as Gaim.  

One thing I would like to see in a Gnome IM client is one that
negotiates protocols on Gnome systems. People seem to like jabber and
perhaps that is how we should aproch it. All users are give an option to
sign up for a Jabber account on first login and it would be explained to
them that doing so would allow them to connect to any Gnome user.  Other
sign ups, logins would be presented as a way to talk to friends on other
networks. Most people know what network their friends are on.  In any
case I would accept Jabber being the default if it would be used in such
a way.

--
J5