Re: Link dialog and Undo for linking

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

2012/1/4 Erick Pérez Castellanos <erick red gmail com>:
>
>> The plan is to expose search in the way that it is going to be
>> presented in the other GNOME 3 mockups. There is also a video that
>> gives you an idea [0]. You can totally use a static search bar if you
>> don't fancy tackling that yet though. :)
>
>
>> Having thought about this topic over the Christmas break, I'm coming
>> to the view that we need a bit of a rethink of our approach to
>> linking. Currently, GNOME Contacts presents every persona (in libfolks
>> speak) as a contact. This creates a number of issues:
>>
>> 1. Some contact stores aren't writeable, leaving us in the unfortunate
>> position of presenting contacts that cannot be changed
>>
>> 2. GNOME Contacts could become flooded with personas from social
>> networking sites
>>
>> 3. It isn't clear where 'my contacts' are being stored
>>
>> Another problem with the current linking design is that link
>> suggestions are buried in a dialog, and will therefore typically not
>> be discovered.
>>
>> One way to deal with these problems is to make a distinction between
>> 'my contacts' and 'other contacts'. My contacts are those contacts
>> whose details I personally administer. They are recorded in a personal
>> repository of contact data which I have control over. Other contacts
>> are those contacts whose details only exist in other repositories of
>> contact data. A contact who I only have details for in Twitter or
>> Facebook does not belong to my contacts.
>>
>> This distinction between my contacts and other contacts is quite
>> common. Gmail has the concept of 'My Contacts' Android has something
>> called 'All Contacts' (which roughly conforms to what I have described
>> as 'other contacts'). I think it is useful, in that it is close to how
>> people tend to think about their contact data.
>>
>> There are a few ways in which we can organise GNOME Contacts around
>> the distinction between my and other contacts:
>>
>>  * The default persona store can be treated as 'my contacts'. The list
>> of contacts presented by GNOME Contacts can be the contacts in the
>> default store, with any personas that are linked to them displayed
>> inline. Other contacts (personas that aren't in the default store and
>> which aren't linked to a persona from the default store) can be
>> displayed in search results as a separate category [1].
>
>>  * Other contacts can be presented differently, and can have an option
>> to link them to a contact in the default store [1].
>
>>  * Use inline linking suggestions [2, 3]
>>
>>  * On first run, if there is more than one online account capable of
>> being the default store, ask which one to use [4]. If there is no
>> online account for contacts, prompt the user to create one or to use
>> the local address book [5].
>>
>>  * If there are no contacts in the default store, prompt the user to
>> either import contacts or change address books [6].
>>
>>  * When linking, the contact selector should operate in two modes -
>> one for linking to my contacts [7] and one for linking to other
>> contacts [8]. When linking to my contacts, only other contacts should
>> be displayed in the dialog, and vice versa.
>>
>> Hope that makes sense. What do you think?
>
> Here, I think it's everything pretty cooked up. I like the point of
> having one central (default) store and letting the user select/handle
> it, today that's kinda blurry.

Yeah I agree about the blurriness.

> Second, about the links dialog itself, there's one use case I'm not
> seeing here:
> Say I read ezine 'A' and I follow some journalist 'Z' of that ezine. If
> I have it in my circles in G+ and follow him in twitter I would have to
> instances of the same people in 'Other Contacts' category right. Why
> don't use the link-to-other-contact dialog for linking these two ?

Good question. Partly because that would confuse the mental model. My
contacts are the primary object dealt with by GNOME Contacts.
Everything that happens in the app largely happens in reference to
them. It seems more complex (and therefore less elegant).

The idea is that, if someone is important to you, you will add them to
my contacts. Again, let's remember that the purpose of GNOME Contacts
is to store your contact details, not aggregate every piece of contact
data that is available. ;)

> Finally, how about unlink contacts ?

Another good question! The current implementation has inline unlink
buttons. That seems like a good way to go for now, since it is more
discoverable than using a dialog.

> I do really like where the project is heading. Thxs for the hard work

Yay, I'm glad!

Allan
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