Re: GNOME Online Accounts extensibility

[Patryk Zawadzki <patrys pld-linux org>]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 7:40 PM, David Zeuthen <zeuthen gmail com> wrote:
> I.  Adding support for a provider P, currently means making code-changes to
>    all of the GNOME apps using its services.. because most of the time standard
>    standardized protocols are not in use. For the few cases where it
> uses a standard
>    protocol (such as XMPP and IMAP/SMTP) we could support pluggable providers.
>
>    For example, we could, presumably, read "plug-in" files from some directory
>    so we could list 200 different XMPP chat services or 200 different
> IMAP servers.
>    That that no-one ever heard about. But would we want the user to
> see this? The
>    answer is: not in GOA.

Can't we just have an option that says "Other Jabber/XMPP provider"
and allows me to enter my JID, the server name, password, port etc.?
It would cover most of people's needs even if they need to ask the
provider for details (that they have to provide anyway). Most
importantly it would mean not using two configuration windows, one of
which not showing anything other than Google and the other saying that
some accounts "could not be configured here". The current state of
affairs leads to confusion (I had to explain that to a live person, I
failed because I did not have any sensible arguments).

Same could probably be done for IMAP/POP3/SMTP.

-- 
Patryk Zawadzki
I solve problems.