[Telepathy] Proposed standard MC API

[Tobias Hunger]

On Thursday 02 August 2007, Alberto Mardegan wrote:
> > So far I have made the following decisions:

I don't like you getting inspiration from Decibel and then claim all the 
credit by calling it org.freedesktop.Telepathy.MissionControl does not sound 
fair to me.

And the FirstUpperCase nameing convention is pretty much against everything 
used in KDE.

> > - Abstract plugins like Decibel's "Component" system. These are like
> >   Nokia Mission Control's channel handlers and filters. We need to come
> >   up with a standard API for these.
>
> Is Decibel using components only for handling channels as Nokia MC does,
> or do they something more?

They handle and filter channels.

> > - We need something like Nokia Mission Control's "Profiles" system
> >   because changing a connection manager for a given protocol isn't
> >   necessarily going to work as there is no exhaustive standard
> >   for the configuration settings a given connection manager should
> >   take. Particularly, we need to decide on who provides the profiles;
> >   Mission Control, the UI or somewhere else?
>
> This has also some impact on the accounts API: AddAccount (which I would
> rather call CreateAccount) needs to receive the profile in input.

In decibel AddAccount takes a array of string/variant pairs. These must 
contain a special decibel_protocol pair which lists the protocol the account 
is meant to be used with.

> About 
> account creation, Nokia MC does not emit the "AccountCreated" signal
> until the account is complete (i.e., all the required parameters are
> set), because it's likely that clients listening to this signal would
> respond to it trying to get some information on the newly created
> account, or put it online.

Decibel just errors out when somebody tries to create an account without 
giving all the required parameters.

> Maybe we could split the API into two different parts:
>
> CreateAccount ( [s:profile?] ) -> o
>
> That creates the account object but doesn't return it in ListAccounts
> and friends, and maybe emits an AccountCreated signal (but would it be
> of any use?), and

So you have accounts in limbo... feels strange to me.

> In the ProtocolManager (or, probably better, in a separate Protocol
> class) we need a method for retrieving the list of the valid protocol
> parameters, with their type, default value and whether they are required.

Yeap. In Decibel the ProtocolManager can provide this kind of information.

> Also, some way to link the bits together, that is from Account get the
> Profile, and from the Profile the Protocol.

Decibel only exposes what you call a Profile. I see no reason to make the 
mapping from profile to protocol public.

Best Regards,
Tobias

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