[Telepathy] Avatar interface proposal

[Rob Taylor]

Raphael Slinckx wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-06-08 at 09:40 -0300, Andre Magalhaes wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 6/7/06, Rob Taylor <robtaylor at floopily.org> wrote:
>>> I would say:
>>> GetAvatarId (u: contact ) -> s: avatar_id
>>>
>>> The avatar id should be a unique, or statistically nearly unique
>>> identifier for a given image. It should also be valid over multiple
>>> sessions. e.g. a hash of the image data.
> [snip]
> 
> While i think the proposed API with the changes is reasonable, don't you
> think this is a major abstraction leakage ?
> 
> I know that for practical purposes (imposed by jabber's supposedly
> broken implementation only) it is easier to do it this way (having the
> client do the dirty work).
> 
> Still, i think the telepathy API shouldn't reflect that problem, and
> that the 'workaround' should be implemented in the jabber connection
> manager, to be one day removed when jabber gets fixed (read: never).
> 
> That implies that the jabber connection manager has a state containing
> old avatars and that it can do the matching against new hashes and all,
> to finally emit a new avatar signal.
> 

I don't think it does - its just means that on protocols that don't use
a unique token/hash to identify changes in avatars, the connection
manager has to do the hash itself. - A hash of the image data will of
course be the same between invocations and no back storage is needed.

The reason for this design is *not* to support Jabber's implementation,
but for efficiency when you have a telepathy client that stores avatars
(such as a client that synchronises your buddy's avatars with their
avatars in eds) not need to unnecessarily update all the avatars in
storage whenever a new connection comes online...

Thanks,
Rob Taylor