Re: Module proposal: Empathy for GNOME 2.22

[Travis Reitter <treitter-dev netdrain com>]

As the lead developer of Soylent, I thought I'd add my own opinions
based on experience with libempathy(-gtk).

Using libempathy(-gtk) as a Telepathy wrapper made it very easy for me
to integrate instant messaging into Soylent. I've found the API to be
very consistent and thereby easy to use.

The underlying Telepathy and Mission Control libraries also seem to be
well-designed, and Mission Control in particular makes it easy to
delegate work to external applications (eg, I tell Mission Control to
open an instant message to username x with my user account y, and it
tells Empathy to open the IM window). In other words, libempathy(-gtk),
Telepathy, and Mission Control actually *save* me from duplicating
effort (contrary to other opinions in this thread).

Xavier pointed out the wide adoption of Empathy(/Telepathy/Mission
Control) and great programs which build upon them - I think this stack
will important in pushing Gnome forward in many interesting new ways.

My main concerns right now are libempathy(-gtk)'s API stability and
documentation. The API in svn trunk has changed since the last release
(0.12), and (as Bj�points out) the documentation is basically
non-existent.

Xavier, could you explain how you plan to address these concerns in time
for the Gnome 2.22 release?

Thanks,
-Travis

On Sun, 2007-09-23 at 10:59 +0200, Xavier Claessens wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> * Proposal: Include Empathy in GNOME 2.22 desktop.
> 
> * Purpose: Empathy [1] consists of a rich set of reusable instant
> messaging widgets, and a GNOME client using those widgets. It uses
> Telepathy and Nokia's Mission Control, and reuses Gossip's UI. The main
> goal is to permit desktop integration by providing libempathy and
> libempathy-gtk libraries. libempathy-gtk is a set of powerful widgets
> that can be embeded into any GNOME application.
> 
> * Dependencies:
>    glib-2.0 >= 2.14.0
>    gconf-2.0 >= 1.2.0
>    libxml-2.0
>    gnome-vfs-2.0
>    libtelepathy >= 0.0.57
>    libmissioncontrol >= 4.33
>    gtk+-2.0 >= 2.12.0
>    libglade-2.0 >= 2.0.0
>    libgnomeui-2.0
>    libebook-1.2
>    libpanelapplet-2.0 >= 2.10.0
> 
> * Resource usage: Already using GNOME FTP, GNOME SVN and GNOME bugzilla.
> 
> * Adoption: It is packaged at least for debian, ubuntu, mandriva, gentoo
> and fedora. It is used by Intel for the moblin [2] platform. There is
> patches for Totem and nautilus-send-to [3] to make use of
> libempathy(-gtk). Someone was working on integration in gtetrinet but I
> don't know the status of that work. There is also an epiphany plugin
> [4]. Work was being done for GSoC to integrate Empathy into Jockosher
> [5]. Empathy is also used by Soylent [6].
> 
> * GNOME-ness: The community reports bugs in GNOME bugzilla and attach
> patches, I review and commit in GNOME's SVN. Some i18n teams already
> started to commit translations. I take care of usability thanks to loads
> of usability bugs opened by Vincent Untz. User documentation is not
> started yet, I guess we can pick gossip's doc and adapt it for Empathy
> since the UI is almost the same.
> 
> * Miscellaneous:
>  - There is patches to support File Transfer, Voice and Video. I think
> it will be ready before GNOME 2.22 feature freeze.
>  - Empathy is still a young project with some bugs but I'm pretty sure
> we can fix them in time for GNOME 2.22.
>  - At some point we'll have same features than Ekiga which is already in
> GNOME desktop. The big advantage of Empathy is it uses Telepathy
> framework which make easy for desktop integration and means we'll have
> VoIP for all protocols (SIP, MSN, Jabber, etc). Empathy supports all IM
> features (private chat, chatroom, presence, avatar, alias, etc), not
> only Voice and Video. Ekiga don't have those advantages.
> 
> Thanks,
> Xavier Claessens.
> 
> [1] http://live.gnome.org/Empathy
> [2] http://www.moblin.org/projects_chat.html
> [3] http://www.barisione.org/blog.html/p=100
> [4] http://blog.senko.net/2007/07/19/emphatic-epiphany
> [5] http://blog.mikeasoft.com/2007/05/07/jokosher-soc
> [6] http://live.gnome.org/Soylent
> 
> 
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