I think its instructive to see how Pidgin is trying to streamline the concept of an "Identity". They have hired a professional designer for the UI, which probably helps, but the general idea is the same -- we are concerned with identities, and not the details behind them. So when I double click to chat with a buddy, I usually don't care which protocol I use for the communication.
Some more details and notes can be found here: http://www.pidgin.im/~seanegan/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/identity.html http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/DesignGuidelines What do people think? On 8/1/07, Gustavo Pichorim Boiko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello > > After some hacking I got some news on the identity support for kopete. > Every account now is assigned to an identity. > By default, there will be only one identity (the "default" one), which will be > created by the time you configure the first account in kopete, but more > identities can be created in the identity configuration interface. > > The Kopete::Account now has a identity() method which returns the identity > assigned to the account. This method always returns a valid identity. If no > identity was configured, it will create a default one and assign the account > to that identity. > > Account properties such as nickName, photo, will become now identity > properties. They should be read from/written to the identity assigned to the > account. > > As I don't know the protocol implementations, I need some help on that: any > place where user information is required should use the identity() now, by > doing identity()->property() to get a property value, and > identity()->setProperty() to set the value of a property in the identity. > > It is still undecided how to handle synchronization, but my idea is to always > use properties from the identity, never from the accounts themselves (unless > an identity has only one account assigned to it, this would allow using the > data from the account, but for all other cases, the identity data has > preference). > > Property changes are already being notified by the identity, so if the account > supports storing information server-side, it can use that to always have > up-to-date information from the identity. > > I have created a dialog for configuring identity properties (which is > accessible from the configuration dialog), but for chaning properties that > are offen changed (like photo, nickname and so), I have created a inplace > widget in kopete contact list window, which can be seen at: > http://people.mandriva.com/~boiko/kopete/identity/kopete_identity_status.png > Besides Bille not liking the underlined texts (which is something pretty easy > to fix), I would like to know your opinion about that. > > The identity icons are shown in the status bar for now, and don't have (yet) > status overlay. I still think there must be a better way for showing the > available identities than using a small icon on the status bar, but that is > what I have for now :) > http://people.mandriva.com/~boiko/kopete/identity/identity_menu.png > The final version of the context menu won't have the accounts as submenus (as > the account individual options can be configured in the inplace widget), it > will only contain identity things, like configuring the identity and setting > its online status. > > So the next steps are: drop all account-specific user info dialogs (leaving > just the ones that are used for contacts for now - those I'm planning to > handle later), and make sure accounts are using the information from the > identity and not from themselves. > > Like said before, the work is being done on a separate branch. Now it is time > to decide if this is going to be on 4.0, or if we leave that for 4.1 (giving > us more time to better clean up our UI and doing bigger changes like this, or > the contact list, status manager, etc) > > Questions? Suggestions? Complaints? :) > > Cheers > > Gustavo Pichorim Boiko > ----------------------------------- > KDE Developer www.kde.org > Mandriva Labs www.mandriva.com > _______________________________________________ > kopete-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kopete-devel > -- http://floatingsun.net/ _______________________________________________ kopete-devel mailing list [email protected] https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kopete-devel
