What should be in the contact list

[David Edmundson]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 1:18 PM, 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.
>
>
Ok, this seems to make a lot of sense.

A few comments however:

Right now there is no "Text chat app", only an executable for handling
pre-set up channels. I think the current program should stay that way, but I
have no objections to a new one being created which is a counter-part to the
contact list for joining rooms.

I think it's important to distinguish rooms from group chats - in MSN you
can only group chat with contacts, therefore using the contact list makes
the most sense. (they can start with one person, then invite people in the
chat handler). Jabber and IRC you explicitly enter a conference or room.

Does a room have to be restricted to text? If I joined a jabber conference
could everyone be on audio/video?
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