Re: GNOME Chat and the future of instant messaging in gnome

[Daniel Pocock <daniel pocock pro>]

On 12/11/15 22:53, Hugo Alejandro wrote:
> 2015-11-11 10:45 GMT-03:00 Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org
> <mailto:awilliam whitemice org>>:
>
>     > > I agree. Gnome 3 in the beginning had a strong integration with IM
>     > > systems. However, over time this has been set aside, and developed
>     > > an excellent IM application to the IRC protocol is most commonly
>     > > used for communication between developers (among other things).
>
>     +1 IRC.  IRC is a heavily used too often overlooked solution and
>     protocol.


I agree that IRC is used a lot between developers and nobody is trying
to eliminate that.

GNOME is aiming for a wider audience though and IRC is not suitable for
everybody and for every purpose.  E.g. IRC doesn't really enable voice
or video in any convenient way.


>     > > A new application or empathy, refocused on the use of SIP/SIMPLE
>     > > and XMPP/Jingle protocols, may be the best solution for GNOME RTC.
>
>     Another new app... sigh.   As a mere user of the GNOME DE [since before
>     the red-carpet Ximian days] there does seem to be a tragic amount of
>     re-invention in recent years; abandoning well-working featureful
>     application in favor of partially complete very limited applications
>     [like GNOME Music as one example].   It seems, even from my own
>     experience as a developer on other projects that Open Source actually
>     struggles to achieve a substantive degree of collaboration.
>
>
> I disagree. Rewrite applications lightens the code, stabilize and allow
> the redesign of essential functions for the average user, there are a
> very good example is Polari(chat).

There is a middle ground too: break applications into libraries.  The
best parts of an application should be converted into libraries that
alternative applications could use.  Applications can also be
modularized, with a plugin interface, so that people can re-write parts
of the application by replacing one plugin at a time.  These approaches
are better than re-writing whole applications from scratch, which leads
to lots of projects that are never finished.


> A new approach to support opensource and popular protocols (MTProto is
> popular), is to support features specific to each protocol.
>
> To follow the trend, you can deploy double ticket, for in sending
> messages or voice messages in XMPP and SIP, but the application of
> telegram, impeccably managed content (links, videos, music and other
> media) and that could be imitated, but does not apply to other features
> such as channels. The same is if you want to support the XMPP chat rooms.
>
> However, shared features like text and voice messaging, voice calls and
> video calls are welcome.
>  
>
>     > Note: Do not forget another alternative being updated, as Ekiga.
>     > http://blog.ekiga.net/?p=201
>
>     Yes.  +1 Ekiga
>
>
> Ekiga seems like a good alternative besides upgrading involves not only
> a new interface, also several changes inside the hood.
> I wish that supports HD video call.

Has Ekiga added support for NAT traversal using ICE and TURN though?
Any softphone without that tends to have limited usefulness as it will
sometimes have problems with one-way audio and ghost calls and that
irritates people a lot.

Regards,

Daniel