[Telepathy] Protocol Parameters in Telepathy

[Will Thompson]

Hi,

On 15/10/08 08:14, Prasad wrote:
> I am from the Spicebird project [http://www.spicebird.com].  We have 
> recently added IM support for Spicebird based on the Telepathy framework 
> on both Windows & GNU/Linux (on the trunk).  On windows we launch our 
> own DBus, while on GNU/Linux we have a build time option to use the 
> session bus or launch our own bus.
>   

Great! This looks like an interesting project; I'll have a play with it.

Browsing your SVN, I notice that you've made a few changes to make the
Telepathy stack build on Windows. We're interested in making stock
versions of the various components work on Windows, which would reduce
the need for you to keep local forks of each component. Is there any
chance you could submit patches to <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/> in
the Telepathy product, against the relevant component?

[Also, I note from browsing your SVN that you seem to have some
libpurple fixes, too. With my libpurple hat on, it'd be great to get
those fixes upstream, too, but currently the libpurple bug tracker etc.
is down. :(]

> We have some small problems with the protocol parameters.
>
> 1. Is there a way to relate parameters across multiple releases of 
> connection-managers.
>   

Not really, no. The intention is to avoid removing or changing
parameters in backwards-incompatible ways if possible, though.

> 2. When I see Empathy's account setting dialog, it asks for very few 
> parameters from the user for Gabble, while Gabble can take many more 
> parameters!  What is the criteria for asking and not asking a parameter?
>   

The Empathy developers have chosen manually which parameters are
important and which are not; Empathy has custom UI for a particular set
of protocols on certain connection managers, and has a fallback UI which
dumps all the parameters into the window for protocols or CMs it doesn't
know about.

> 3. Is there a way to relate parameters across connection-managers.  Eg: 
> I setup an account for Jabber using Gabble, can I make it work 
> transparently with Haze too?
>   

In theory, the parameters specified in the spec
<http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/spec.html#org.freedesktop.Telepathy.ConnectionManager.RequestConnection>
should behave in roughly the same ways, but you shouldn't try to use
parameters the user entered for one connection manager with another.
(Consider what would happen if two implementations of a protocol had an
encrypt-conversations boolean, which on one is a hard requirement — if
you can't encrypt the conversation, don't allow it at all — whereas the
other is best-effort.)

In practice, your XMPP parameters for Gabble will not work (well) with
Haze's XMPP protocol. (For instance,
<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14212> might bite you.)
Why would you want to use Haze for XMPP? Even with my Haze maintainer
hat on, I don't consider working XMPP support to be important. In
general, using “native” connection managers rather than Haze where
possible is probably a good idea. The most well-tested and complete
connection manager is Gabble; it would seem foolish not to use it. :)

Regards,

-- 
Will


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