Re: Implementing idea for GSoC 2013 - Transfers App

["M.S. Suraj" <mssurajkaiga gmail com>]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 4:44 AM, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) <zeeshanak gnome org> wrote:

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 1:41 AM, M.S. Suraj <mssurajkaiga gmail com> wrote:
> Thank you for the quick reply. I wasn't aware about libsoup and am currently
> going through its APIs. I read the comments and the discussion posted below
> it.
>
> But I'm not sure about the D-Bus interface. Will the download take place in
> the browser/app that requested it, or will it be transferred to Transfers?

There is no decision on this yet but as I said, based on that
discussion I think we should go for former.

> I
> would prefer the latter but then again, we would face the problem of
> transferring credentials to Transfers.

Exactly.

> On the other hand, if the download
> takes place in the browser/app itself, then all we need to do is query for
> current status of the ongoing downloads and update the notification tray,
> but this would not give Transfers much control over the download (like
> setting speed/bandwidth limit

I don't think we need to control that and even if we do, this control
can also be exposed over D-Bus by the apps.

>, pausing/restarting downloads)

Same here, it can be easily exposed over D-Bus.

> and also we
> would need the application to be running until the download finishes.

Yes but apps can be split into backend and UI so then only backend
needs to be running, some apps already are AFAIK. Another (much
simpler to implement) solution could be for apps to hide their UI
rather than exiting the application completely if user quits the UI
while a transfer is in progress. If user launches the app again, the
UI is shown again.

 Yes, we could keep a condition for handling such cases. If the browser supports a separate backend - UI system, we could close the UI or if backend and ui are together, we could hide the UI. Also, about transferring downloads, if required we can implement a feature for transferring simple URL downloads from the browser to Transfers.

 

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Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
FSF member#5124

Since libsoup makes the work of implementing file downloading easier, it would also be feasible to implement the following features:

 - File transfer within the system (should be pretty easy work)

 - Person to person transfers over chat

    This could also be done over D-Bus interfaces implemented by the chat client or if the chat is browser-based, then again its same as we discussed above.

 - Bluetooth file transfer

    This could be done using GnomeBluetooth. Although I have no experience in GnomeBluetooth, I have worked with bluez api for a college project and from the
    GnomeBluetooth page, I believe its based on bluez, so not much of a problem.

Before discussing other points, I would like to add the idea of adding bit-torrent protocol support to Transfers as well, since I believe this wasn't covered in the file download section and also, I couldn't find any GNOME bit-torrent tool.

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With regards,

M S Suraj