[Telepathy] libsoylent API draft

[Travis Reitter]

Hi everyone,

Sven Pfaller has posted a draft of the libsoylent API (and begun
implementation).

You can find the API draft here:

     http://www.kalterregen.de/gsoc/libsoylent-API.txt

Basic design goals

   * People cohesion!:
      o Consuming applications won't have to manually associate peoples'
accounts on various protocols (which is actually a lot tougher than it
sounds)

   * Make it trivial to:
      o Read and (where applicable) write contacts' attributes
      o Start a synchronous or asynchronous communication channel with
any contact

   * Base around libebook's EVCard:
      o Gets us vCard's flexible support for arbitrary key/value pairs
      o Brings the benefits of vCard's wide adoption in software in
general
      o Shares the standard Gnome addressbook with Evolution and the
rest of the desktop

   * Simplicity:
      o Should be easier to use than EVCard directly yet avoid
EContact's inflexibility
      o Leverage Telepathy's power while limiting its exposure to the
libsoylent-consuming app


We'd really appreciate any and all constructive feedback!

If you think you might be able to make use of something like libsoylent,
I've got some questions for you:

   * Is the API missing anything that you would expect you'd need
(convenience functions included)
   * Do you see any fundamental design flaws?
   * Does some function just plain look weird? Let us know! :)

Thanks,
-Travis