GObjectified Conversations

[Darryl Pogue]

On 22 July 2010 11:47, Mark Doliner <mark at kingant.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 10:48 AM, Paul Aurich <paul at darkrain42.org> wrote:
> > On 2010-07-22 08:56, Sadrul Habib Chowdhury wrote:
> >> I thought about the toggle-bit approach, and we would need to determine
> >> a few things:
> >>
> >>  * Should a conversation always maintain a userlist? When it's an IM,
> >>    should it return NULL or a list with me and my friend in it? If my
> >>    friend is included in the returned list, can it be inferred
> >>    (mistakenly, of course) that he is still in this conversation (i.e.
> >>    he has his window open)?
> >
> > I'd say yes to maintaining it for an IM, with documentation noting it's
> > not useful for an IM, and should not be interpreted as any indication of
> > his/her still having the window open.
>
> I agree.  And if your buddy is offline then the list would be empty.
>
> >>  * What happens with the logs when the conversation type is toggled?
> >
> > Keep them (maybe with a magic "message type" divider indicating this was
> > the point at which it changed?).  I can't speak for MSN, but XMPP's
> > 1:1->MUC conversion (http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html#continue)
> > allows for sending the history to the room, which would leverage this.
>
> For MSN multi user chats you could maybe do fancy stuff like store a
> log of the conversation for each user in the chat (or have a hard link
> or sym link), so that the user could look up the log based on either
> buddy in the chat.
>
> --Mark

In terms of MSN specifically, being able to toggle between an IM and a MUC
would be a huge benefit. It's currently a well-known fact that MSN MUCs are
somewhat strange, and confusing.

One thing to consider while discussing this is "topic-less" chats. (ticket #353)
An IM -> MUC should support not having a name/topic, especially for MSN
but probably also for the XMPP spec. There are also some 3rd party prpls
that connect to "unnamed" MUCs that would potentially benefit from this.

~Darryl