[Telepathy] Proposed standard MC API

[Naba Kumar]

Hi,

ext Robert McQueen wrote:
> Naba Kumar wrote:
>> So in short there is no real use case for this feature :)
> 
> I disagree strongly. Many use cases have been presented:

I am still not convinced with your reasoning.

>  * servers with different groups of people, Home vs Work, as you discussed
 >
Sure, if the client UI does not mind torturing the user :). I made it 
clear that this is an nonviable feature.

>  * servers that are not reachable when in certain situations (like
> ok.research.nokia.com? :D)
 >
That's more close to 'one' account than a 'group' of accounts. One 
doesn't use a hammer to kill a fly. Controlling the account individually 
is just good enough and is also better for the user by avoiding sensory 
overload.

I have 5 IM accounts (a sophisticated computer user); irc 'nick', gmail, 
jabber, yahoo, sip) and I have no clue how I would ever group them.

It's not like users will amusingly have 15 IM accounts that they somehow 
will need grouping to manage them. IM accounts, as I see, are just like 
email addresses. Nobody groups their email addresses.

>  * manipulating IM accounts independently from Telephony (eg being
> offline for text but being callable on your office phone)
> 
Grouping/tagging/categorization/folders makes sense when there is lots 
of items to manage such as Files, Contacts, etc. It is an expensive and 
demanding interaction that is best avoided if it can be done without, 
such as when you have 3 accounts to manage.

MC would still have per account API and accounts filtering so the client 
UIs can very well have additional features, be it grouping, 
presence-based-on-caps, or whatever. So, not having grouping in MC does 
not exclude any special effects from the UIs.

> At any rate, it's very easy to implement in MC and represents a
> simplificaton to parts of the API (filtering/manipulating many accounts
> at the same time), and it's easy for a UI to choose not to use that by
> just turning 'enabled' into a group for that client only.
> 
As I understand, the grouping API doesn't affect the functioning of MC 
and is quite irrelevant to presence processing inside MC. It only serves 
to simplify certain way of setting presence. I would say the added 
convenience is not worth the increase in API complexity that MC gets, 
especially when similar effect can be accomplished from the UIs in a 
more versatile ways.

Thanks.

Regards,
-Naba