empathy integration with the desktop

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

Our integration of empathy is pretty nice these days, you set up
accounts in the global settings, you can control presence via the user
menu, get nice notifications, etc.

However, to a normal user, just logging in for the first time none of
these things actually work. You won't get notifications from people even
if you switch to "Available", and the control center applet will always
keep showing your accounts as offline, with no obvious way to go online.

In order to go online and have the integrated stuff work in the
background you must first start a weirdly named application ("Empathy")
and then close(!) its window (this will not actually quit the app). This
causes you to go online and start using the integrated messaging
systems.

There is something weird with this... If IM is supposed to be integrated
with the shell it should just work, not be dependent on starting some
seemingly external application.

We could automatically launch empathy by default on login, but people
might not like to automatically go online as soon as they are at the
computer.

Another alternative is to add a "offline" entry under available/busy in
the user menu and start with that active, then autospawn empathy if
needed when you switch to available or busy.

-- 
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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
       alexl redhat com            alexander larsson gmail com 
He's a fiendish vegetarian cyborg on a search for his missing sister. She's a 
brilliant mute stripper with a knack for trouble. They fight crime!