Notes on Gaim: Instant Messaging for the Desktop User

Presentation by Sean Egan
Notes by Louis Villa
Editing and HTML convsrion by Ben FrantzDale Plan:

libgaim->gaimd->gaimfe
             |            ^Unix socket here, TCP sockets in future
             |->possibly evo, other stuff

They are currently busy with the port to GTK2 and with supporting file transfer.

Possible future things (see below for more):

• Evolution integration (See who's online in your addressbook)
• File manager integration (right click -> send to...)
• Support for aim:// URIs
• mrproject integration

questions/issues/notes for sean:

• Lifecycle/other issues — talk to Havoc about it (because of his experience with gconfd).
• When do we exit (lifecycle in more detail) — do we live across logout/login? When do we start it? [login, gaimfe startup]
• Currently core broadcasts info but does not have any way to receive info from front-ends.
• Need both API for libgaim and messaging protocol for gaimd
• Joe discusses first crack at evo component:
  • done as standard bonobo evo component
  • had notion of identity
  • needs to know what gaim thinks about identity—currently known as ‘persons’
    • identity is complex — what if someone does not already have an identity but messages you or you want to message them? According to Joe, it makes most sense to say ‘send to identity’ not ‘send to handle X on protocol Y’.
• Jim pointed out that, for IPC, each app should not have to know about N other apps — That they need to tie in cleanly/simply to a global infrastructure.
• Discussion about how heavyweight/lightweight this needs to be. (From bonobo which seemed overkill, to ‘gaim --send-message-to foo’ which would be quick and dirty.)
• API/protocol for IPC probably needs to be determined after analyzing list of potential uses:

  Nat's list o' cool ideas:

  • Right click, “IM this File” [API needs: file transfer, identity]
  • In Galeon, handle “aim://” links. [simple command line for gnome-url-handler] [add-buddy, join-chat, etc.]
  • In Evolution, add a column to mail summary for “person is online via IM.” [API: ‘is identity online?’]
  • In Evolution, add a way of telling if a buddy is online from their contact.
  • In Evolution, “IM this contact” — pops up gaim window.
  • In Evolution, when composing a mail, check to see if recipients are online; offer option of IMing them.
  • Drag and drop buddys/contacts between Gaim and Evolution, also programatic interface on both sides for this.
  • Bookmarks/IM link. [url-handling]
  • integrate with bugzilla. e.g., “The maintainer of this bug is online.”
  • Have a buddy icon on the desktop for a user [what about interpretation of icons? drag/drop of files to a person's icon?]
  • Integrate with screensaver [goes away when you get messaged,maybe?]
  • GDM/login time possibly? [has someone messaged while you were away?
• How do we get Gaim more actively in GNOME?
  • tell them we're interested :)
  • send money :)
  • Peter W: more concretely, how do we communicate? sean: tell us what you need :)
  • Louis begged for better GTK/GNOME/HIG/a11y/i18n compliance. Sean says we're working on that. Joe reminds that we have resources and can provide help, and Jim reminds that sean has leverage because sean has code. :)
• Michael and Jim and Joe suggest glade/libglade for a large number of reasons
• Jim reminds straight port first, then fix things like glade
• http://gaim.sourceforge.net/roadmap.png <- very cool graphic :)
• Simple command line client that many people think would be nifty quickly before the frontend/backend split:
  • Launch chat to user [handle uri stuff] [optionally, have message]
  • Test if user is online [test for presence, i.e.] wishlist: get list of buddies who are online, add/remove from buddy list then tell desktop-devel-list@gnome.org and watch integration happen :)