What should be in the contact list

[George Goldberg]

Lazy top post here, but +1000000 to everything George K just said.

--
George G

On 11 February 2011 13:18, George Kiagiadakis
<kiagiadakis.george at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
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