Re: [Telepathy] rework of the UI

On Sun, 2006-09-10 at 23:33 +0200, Xavier Claessens wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm working on the telepathy branch. I think the UI for accounts
> displays too many information to the user. I don't understand why we
> can't keep the normal user interface. So I'm cooking a patch which
> removes
> 
>   src/gossip-accounts-dialog-telepathy.[ch]
>   src/gossip-new-account-window-telepathy.[ch]
>   ui/telepathy.glade
> 
> and merge changes in the normal code. I think there is not too many
> changes to justify a fork of those modules.
> 

I chose to put telepathy ui stuff in separate files because the user
experience will change fundamentally when the account parameters are not
known ahead of time. It is probably possible to put ifdefs in the
original UI, but I am afraid it will be hard to maintain and understand.

> Patch attached is a work in progress. I still have to modify
> account_manager_parse_account() and account_manager_file_save() because
> they don't uses account's properties. With telepathy all informations in
> the account is saved in a GHashTable but I think common informations
> that already are in the GossipAccount object should still be used and
> not ignored like now.

Like I said above, the account parameters are not a given. when you are
saying "telepathy" you mean "gabble", which is a jabber connection
manager, so it is very easy to overlap it with GossipAccount's
properties. But just keep in mind that there will arise one day extreme
cases that we can't predict today, maybe someone will write a connection
manager that communicates with their toaster, the parameters will be
very un-jabber like. Already today we have IRC and SIP connection
managers that have very different parameters than jabber. Just open
xchat and ekiga, and see for yourself :)

We have to find a way to make the UI look good and understandable even
when it is laid out on the fly. A patch that I would appreciate _very_
much would make the parameter names prettier in the UI, and
translatable.

> 
> I attach the patch here to have feedback, maybe I'm completely wrong ?

Thanks for the patch, I am going to look for some good ideas you have in
it :)

> 
> Thanks,
> Xavier Claessens.
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