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

[Charles Johnson <charlesjohnsont outlook com>]

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> Subject: Re: GNOME Chat and the future of instant messaging in gnome
> To: gnome-list gnome org
> From: kawazu428 gmail com
> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 21:27:19 +0200
>
> These days, we do have choices of browsers, we do have technologies such
> as HTML5 or JavaScript, and we do have a desktop that runs apps written
> in JavaScript. Likewise, I see more and more people using
> HTM5+JavaScript on frameworks such as Apache Cordova for building
> platform-agnostic mobile applications. How long until an HTML5 based
> client to some of the newer cloud services (Facebook, Google Hangouts,
> ...) natively will run on a GNOME / Linux desktop?

I do not know how to answer that, but you can now use those protocols from the web (maybe create webapps?).

But that's not the point of this discussion, popular protocols may remain in the background. In the case of 
using the backend Telepathy, there are many projects to integrate the new facebook protocol, hangouts, etc. 
(do a search on github and surprise).
> > On the other hand, MTProto (Telegram) is a new protocol, open source,
> > designed for security and cloud-based technology. Is that
> > innovation?
>
> Will MTProto eventually be adopted by GNOME Online Accounts or any other
> GNOME application some day?

If you read the post above, you will see that there are related projects. 
https://github.com/majn/telegram-purple (works in Pidgin/empathy) and 
https://github.com/TelepathyQt/telepathy-morse (work in Empathy/KDE Telepathy framework).

This discussion focuses on the future of GNOME chat client, either Empathy or a new app. As I said, I think 
the developers should focus on open source protocols, and to use the Telepathy backend , you can add other 
protocols supported by the community.

>
 > Well yes. This is one of my first impressions of Empathy too. Been using
> pidgin for a while, started using gajim just a few months ago as it
> seems to work better with our internal XMPP server. There are some
> things that, nevertheless, still aren't completely "fun" about XMPP -
> like building a setup with a mobile device and a desktop in which
> notifications always go to the device I work on _and_ still all the
> messages are available on all devices. 

XMPP is a decentralized protocol. If you use a private protocol with some custom settings, you can achieve 
it. Do you notice, that's a feature of modern cloud-based protocols?

> Trying to do so I got completely
> lost somewhere in between XMPP specifications and drafts, different
> servers implementing a different set of features and different clients
> providing a vague different set of functionality too (most multiprotocol
> chat clients obviously seem not a good choice when it comes to using
> XMPP specific features). 

Test a server in https://xmpp.net/

> Catering to such use cases in my opinion is
> something most of the "open source" approaches aren't yet completely up
> to, at least compared to other approaches including mobile devices
> (looking at Telegram again).

There android applications using XMPP and really looks like he's using Whatsapp / Telegram. Everything 
depends on the implementation carried out.

CJT