[Telepathy] Status of Telepathy Python

[Danielle Madeley]

Telepathy-Python is mostly unmaintained; especially the client-side APIs
(where let's face it, there aren't many, nothing high-level, and even
some of the low-level classes are missing).

The future of writing Telepathy in Python is likely tp-glib via
gobject-introspection/PyGI. This is how gnome-shell does it's Telepathy
integration in Javascript. I don't know that anyone has tried writing a
Python client in it today, but someone has to go first.

As the author of a lot of the documentation, I know it needs a lot of
work. It doesn't document today's best practice, it's strangely
organised with way too much cross-referencing, and doesn't dealt well
with documenting the different approaches taken by APIs (also it has 0
Qt4 documentation).

It is my plan (who knows when) to convert the documentation into
something topic based (i.e. Mallard) which should allow for much easier
expansion. Including 'cook book' style examples like you're wanting.

I still think explaining the architecture is important. Lots of people
fail to understand the architecture of Telepathy, and as a result make
assumptions, and thus mistakes, when writing their clients.

On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 11:44 -0400, Mystilleef wrote:

> Apart from the documentation problems (documentation should
> emphasize "how" to do things as opposed to explaining
> architectural designs and contain plenty examples), it
> seems as if some interfaces available in the documentation
> don't even work. See this bug for example.
> 
> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35314

This bug is a mistake in how someone is using the API, not a mistake in
tp-python.

> QT does a fantastic job with their documentation it can be a
> source of inspiration for the Telepathy framework.

Have you considered Telepathy-Qt4?

> Anyway, back to Telepathy Python. Is it still maintained? Is
> it wise for us to use it to build an SIP client or should I
> look elsewhere? Also are there any Free Software Python
> apps that have been written with Telepathy?

If you're simply writing a SIP client, you may be better served simply
using a SIP library, such as sofiasip, directly. telepathy-rakia does
not support everything you can do via SIP. You can still use libraries
like farsight/farstream without Telepathy to connect between GStreamer
and your media streams.

On the other hand, if you want to use the ability of
communications-as-a-service, and support many protocols, Telepathy is
the perfect choice.

--danni

-- 
Danielle Madeley
Software Developer, Collabora Ltd.                  Melbourne, Australia

www.collabora.co.uk