[Decibel] Fwd: Summer of Code 2008 - Call For Ideas

[Matt Rogers]

On Monday 03 March 2008 02:49:49 Tobias Hunger wrote:
> On Saturday 01 March 2008, Matt Rogers wrote:
> > So you basically want to solve the messaging filter problems that we've
> > already solved in Kopete in Decibel again? I understand that this is a
> > natural extension, but IMHO, this is something that should be handled by
> > the chat application that gets started to handle the message in the
> > first place.
>
> Basically we need to solve the "decide what to do with an incoming
> communication request" problem in Decibel: Making that decision in a
> configurable way is a core feature.
>
> That certainly has much in common with problems like message filtering in
> kopete. That is the point: You solved the problem, the konversation guys
> probably did as well, and so did name-your-favorite-communication-app-here
> developers.
>

Agreed. Could you look at the Kopete::MessageHandler and 
Kopete::MessageHandlerChain classes in trunk/KDE/kdenetwork/kopete/libkopete
and see if what's there might be usable for decibel?


> > If you have these filters, you'll need to handle how to chain them
> > together so that things are processed in the right order, provide a UI
> > so that messages that are logged (for example) can be viewed, etc.
>
> Yes.
>
> We need much of that anyway since we want to be able to configure responses
> to incoming (and outgoing) communication requests. We have to deal with
> questions like: Does the user want kopete to handle jabber? How about IRC,
> maybe he prefers konversation for that? What if application X can not
> handle the communication request for whatever reason? Should we try Z then
> or just give up?
>
> So we need to define a order in which applications are queried. We already
> need to chain them together. Extending this mechanism to allow for message
> filtering is (from the decibel server point of view) probably just a small
> change in the already implemented API. It offers a lot of flexibility, so I
> think it is worth the trouble.
>
> > You might as well just port the Kopete messaging filtering API to
> > Decibel, but that's just as bad since both versions will still have to
> > be maintained, and then we'll get into "Decibel supports this, why
> > doesn't Kopete?" crap that we already have with the other instant
> > messengers. Sounds like a nightmare to me.
>
> Well, if kopete does support Decibel, then it will support everything
> Decibel does. Sorry, couldn't stop myself here;-)
>

I would love that. But I don't have time to do it, and so far, neither does
anybody else. Do you have time? Even better, do you have time to co-mentor an 
SoC project for Kopete to do that with me?

Thanks
--
Matt