[Decibel] Decibel and the Telepathy Spec - into the future...

[George Goldberg]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Tobias Hunger <tobias at aquazul.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 25 November 2008 14:34:18 George Goldberg wrote:
>> Ok, so I've done a bit of research into this problem and it seems that
>> its been identified in the telepathy SPEC [1]. The solution that is
>> suggested there makes a lot of sense to me. Basically, the Account
>> Manager process should not install itself as a DBus autostart service,
>> but instead the desktop environment should take care of starting the
>> appropriate Account Manager process when a user logs on.
>
> So accounts appear and vanish based on desktop environment started? That does
> not sound like a good idea to me. I'd really prefer decibel and the telepathy
> stuff to be able to run in parallel: Then the kde apps can see the KDE accounts
> (configured in decibel) and the gnome apps see the gnome accounts (from mission
> control) and everybody is happy.

I can see your point there, but I do still have some reservations
about it. I'll reply to this bit later once I've had a chance to think
about it a bit more.

>> There could
>> probably even be a KCM to allow configuration of this in the case that
>> a user has multiple Account Manager implementations installed on the
>> same computer.
>
> 1. How can you figure out that several implementations are available and which
> binaries to start? Basically all that springs to my mind is hardcoding a list
> of possible file names and that does not sound right to me.
>
> 2. How will having a KCM module make my kde-based accounts visible in empathy?
> Gnome will just ignore my KDE settings and just start up the telepathy mission
> control thingy anyway. We'd need some cross desktop standard on how to
> configure which D-Bus services to start. I am not aware of anything in that
> direction.

Agreed. There should be some equivalent of .manager files or some kind
of .desktop files for this. I don't see any movement in this direction
at the moment either, but I see no harm in trying to get some movement
going :).

> I do not see a really good solution. The best we can do is to at least
> consistently use one set of accounts (be that KDE or gnome based or whatnot)
> with each application. That is best done by having decibel and the mission
> control thing coexist peacefully.

Agreed. Until there is a *good* solution - ie until these issues can
be resolved in a satisfactory way, peacful coexistance is definitely
the safest way forward.


---
George Goldberg