[Telepathy] [Usability] Empathy is planning to make chats persistent - requires design changes

[Allan Day]

Hey Chandni,

Chandni Verma wrote:
> The Usability Team,
> 
> Empathy is planning to make chats persistent so that closing a chat
> window does not affect the connectivity of the user to the chat-room.
> In order to accomplish this, we need to make some non-trivial design
> decisions which require your creative input before embarking upon on
> it.
> 
> Bug link: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=599184
> 
> Related bugs having ready branches:
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643295  
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643755
> 
> Related bug closed as redundant:
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=601162

A key question here is how rooms get added to the contact list. Getting
the user to manually add them isn't a great solution, since it's labour
intensive and potentially lacks discoverability. On the other hand,
adding all rooms to the list risks swamping it with chat rooms, so that
it is hard to see actual contacts.

Is this something that has been thought about?

The general aim of this feature seems to be to minimise the scalability
limitations of tabs, as encountered by heavy muc users. If that is the
case, there might be other (potentially more radical) approaches that
could solve the problem more effectively. A conversation view might be
one such possibility.

Best wishes,

Allan
-- 
Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/
IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org