What should be in the contact list

[George Kiagiadakis]

2011/2/10 Martin Klapetek <martin.klapetek at gmail.com>:
> 2011/2/9 David Edmundson <david at davidedmundson.co.uk>
>>
>>  - A way of joining rooms
>> Ideally like Empathy which can query room lists, rather than my previous
>> simple text box. I've seen the Tp-Qt4 API documentation on  doing this.

I'm not sure this belongs in the contact list. I know most IM
applications put it in the contact list, but it seems wrong to me.
Rooms are not contacts. A contact list should only be about contacts.
A more suitable place for this would be the text chat ui. I'm a bit
inspired from the N900 way of thinking here, but for me the N900's
desktop is the only environment that properly integrates IM into the
desktop instead of having an IM app running on top of the desktop like
what we are used to with the classic IM apps.

So, what I am proposing is to have an extra window in the text chat
app (or well, even yet another app would work...) that is shown when
you start this app from the menu or krunner and that will have at
least the following options:

* option to join a chat room
* option to show history of conversations
* option to open the contact list and select a contact to start chatting

So, the user will have two items in his k-menu:

* Chat
* Contacts

As a user,  I think that if I wanted to join an irc channel, I would
click on "Chat" instead of "Contacts". It feels more natural.

This concept could be extended to include the call ui as well. The
call ui could also show history of calls, as well as offer a way to
call arbitrary numbers or sip IDs over sip or whatever other protocol
we may have in the future that supports sip-like calls. This also
doesn't belong to the contact list, as one would normally suggest.

>>
>> - A way of selecting your current presence?
>>  (slightly controversial, given we have a plasmoid, but I can see plenty
>> of reasons to have it in the contact list as well. It'd be a bit clearer. I
>> don't think it goes away from desktop integration)
>
> My vote is to keep this one in the CL as well. Imagine you don't have the
> plasmoid anywhere, have hidden panel etc. and you want to quickly set your
> presence. CL is the ideal place for that. Also Empathy has it there ;)

I also have an idea about this one, related to the above a little bit.
There are two possible usage scenarios of an IM app. The traditional
PC IM apps have a contact list that is the "main" window for doing
everything and that minimizes to the tray instead of closing, etc, and
the destop-integrated IM solutions (see N900 again) have a contact
list that doesn't really offer anything else than contacts.
Personally, I think our target should be the desktop integrated thing,
however, I think that many people will complain about it, as it is
something unfamiliar to them, so perhaps we could build a contact list
ui that can handle both use cases.

My proposal is this: If the user has the presence plasmoid active on
his desktop, adjust the contact list ui to show only contacts and no
accounts or anything else. In this case, the contact list should also
not minimize anywhere when closed, it should exit properly, plus it
should not alter the status of the accounts when it is closed. But, in
case the user has no presence plasmoid active, adjust the contact list
to act as a traditional IM app, which means: show accounts and a way
to set them online/offline, minimize to the tray instead of closing,
set accounts offline when it is closed and offer options to start the
text/call UIs so that the user can join chat rooms or call numbers
through the contact list. Of course this could be all configurable,
there is no point in restricting users if the application supports
something, I am just talking about defaults here.

>>
>> - A list of current connection issues?
>>  (again like Empathy which displays warning at the top of the list if
>> anything failed to connect, then launching the accounts-kcm as appropriate)
>
> Yes, we definitely need a way to let the user see the connection issues.
> Empathy's way seems great. Although I'd move it down, again as Dolphin uses
> it (and it fact the rest of KDE).

Yeah, we need that as well, but I think the presence plasmoid should
also show such errors and in the contact list their appearence should
be tied to the appearence of the accounts status, i.e. if the contact
list is configured to show no accounts, it should show no connection
errors as well.

Best regards,
George