[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kopete-devel
Subject:    [Kopete-devel] [Long] next release
From:       Andres Krapf <dae () chez ! com>
Date:       2002-04-29 0:34:05
[Download RAW message or body]

hello,

since Daniel has brought up the topic, let's start a discussion about the next 
release.
may be we should try to get a better idea of what we want before the release.

 * irc is a bit special because people use it differently then the other IMs. 
the following only applies to aim/icq/msn/yahoo/jabber.

 - one-to-one chat working well and consistently across all plugins. to 
achieve consistency, all plugins should be using the KopeteChatWindow (and 
the KMM, if possible... this brings extra stuff like queuing and notification 
for free to the plugin writers). a basic chatwindow will do, no need to 
address the KCW subclassing issue yet.

 - one-to-many should be left for after the release. why ? because of the 
added complexity. we should concentrate on doing one thing well. or else the 
different plugins will be in different shapes when release time comes. that's 
very unsettling for the user. ("what ? i can use this on icq and not aim ?"). 
plus, there's the fact that some protocols don't support one-to-many, and the 
infrastructure work will take longer (for exemple, KopeteMessage would have 
to be redesigned to have toList() instead of to()...). Additionally, the 
rewards of still doing it aren't that great, because i believe the primary 
use of IMs these days is one-to-one chats.

 - storing the msn contacts locally and the icq contacts on the server. these 
are listed in the TODO file. why is this important ? once again, because of 
consistency. the user expects that basic functionality (group management, 
one-to-one IM...) will work consistently across plugins, so it should :-)

basically, just porting all the plugins to KMM is a great, great win. there 
might be some loss of functionality at first from the user standpoint, 
because of the subclassing problem. so we won't be able to support, say, AIM 
warning or ICQ sendThroughServer at the gui level. nevertheless, kopete will 
become far more intuitive and look more integrated. and also, once a feature 
is developped for KMM, all plugins instantly benefit from it!
for example, i've started porting AIM to KMM, and i can now be notified with 
the balloons and the wav sound. this is very good, because it addresses some 
of the issues mentionned on the list like "hey this window doesn't popup and 
i didn't know i received a message".

consistency is my very first goal for kopete's next release. i do understand 
that some of these items might be out of control (like when the kxengine is 
ready for server storing of the users) or some might be hard to do, but i 
just stated here what i thought would be good for the next release, not what 
will actually be done :-).

what do you guys think ?

-- 
Andres
_______________________________________________
Kopete-devel mailing list
Kopete-devel@mail.kde.org
http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kopete-devel
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]