Re: [Ekiga-devel-list] On rewriting the text chat stack

[Julien Puydt <jpuydt free fr>]

Hi,

Le 16/10/2015 18:36, Eugen Dedu a écrit :
> Thanks, Julien, if you could implement the chat, right now it is the
> only important regression I think (compared to v4).

In which chat was pretty bad...

> First of all, I think it is essential to implement ONLY ONE METHOD,
> completely and bug-free, so that it becomes usable by all users.  It
> should especially be avoided to implement several protocols and none of
> them working.  Better to have one protocol working in 2 months than all
> of them working only in several years by now.  In my opinion, 200-400
> lines dealing with chat backend can be later updated to another
> protocol, if really needed.

The goal isn't to implement all protocols -- it's to build things 
cleanly enough so it doesn't become a headache later.

> Second point, currently we do not have enough man-power to implement all
> the open chat protocols you mentioned.  I wonder if we will ever have,
> knowing that there are other things in Ekiga which are more important in
> my opinion (secure videoconferencing, Ekiga.net, multi-user conference,
> echo cancelling etc. etc.)  Again, let's work on only one of them so
> that a person can send a message to another one (one to one, not one to
> many), in particular to the one he is doing videoconference with.

Yes, one implementation, but the framework must be sound and not get in 
the way of a second.

> Third, as far as I understand, SIP MESSAGE, or better MSRP if possible
> in a reasonable time, is the most appropriate chat protocol in our case.
>   Ekiga's main mission is videoconferencing, not supporting all chat
> protocols, for which there are other programs, much more advanced than
> Ekiga.

Yes.

> Finally, would you mind to contact us when you will work on GUI for
> chat?  For example, should text chat be in the same window as the video,
> or on its own?  I do not yet have an idea...

Well, GUI isn't my strong point, but I think having the text in a window 
and the fact of the other person in another is pretty inconvenient, so 
there should be a way to put both side-to-side.

> As a side note, see also
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=651837:  "The correct way to
> receive Instant Messages is via the new OpalIMContext class. This will
> allow for future non-SIP IM to be used. For example, there are a lot of
> Jabber (XMPP) classes already in PTLib, one day in the not too distant
> future, I hope, we will bolt that into the OPAL system and there will be
> OpalPresentity and OpalIMContext derived concrete classes so the user
> application will barely change at all."

That's a good thing to have in mind for the one implementation, thanks 
for the reminder. And it can help to see how things are organised there. 
I'm also having a look at pidgin's sources.

> Happy hacking,

Well, I'm still on the thinking side of things : writing comes later.

Snark