Re: [Ekiga-devel-list] Handling ordinary phone numbers ( Yet Another Approach)

[Alec Leamas <leamas alec gmail com>]

thomas schorpp wrote:
> Alec Leamas schrieb:
> > Trying to explain this once again, hopefully better. Questions in the 
> > end...
> >
> > The problem I try  to solve is that users typically stores telephone 
> > numbers, often formatted and without countrycode, whereas Ekiga today 
> > requires a complete URL to place even an ordinary PSTN call. 
>
> No it doesn't. This is SIP-providers' switches business. A good 
> VoIP/PSTN-provider with a fine designed switch does not require 
> +<countrycode>... for local country #s.
> With sipgate.de e.g. You dial WYSIWYG on Ekiga's dialpad, care about 
> @sipgate.de only, press green and off you go.
But you still have to handle the @sip.xxx suffix to connect to the right 
provider, which is a Bad Thing. And besides the expansion, there is also 
what happens when you paste a formatted number into Ekiga.  And you run 
into trouble when making DBus/CLI calls to connect to a specific number 
since Ekiga of today does not have the notion of a default PSTN provider.

A more basic question is if Ekiga should support current users, and the 
providers they have. Or be used to put pressure on providers to 
implement certain features... I'm not sure that Ekiga currently is in 
the situation where it can put a pressure big enough to be useful. And 
users don't really want to wait for what the further spreading of 
electronic notepads and mobiles will lead to... Do you?

Note that this is *not* about supporting providers that break the 
standards. It's about supporting a reasonably wide set of providers, and 
the way they implement standards.

Skype is out there, people are actually comparing  Ekiga w Skype. In 
Skype, you just enter the number, and it just works. Why should Ekiga be 
more complicated?  

Cheers!

--a
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