Chat
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Launchpad Entry: mobile-chat
Packages affected:
Summary
Mobile-chat is a chat application customized specially for use on Mobile Internet Device. It's based on Empathy which uses telepathy-mission-control and connection manager for each supported instant message protocol with help of telepathy spec.
Scope
Currently mobile-chat supports only gTalk due to license issue. Supports for AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo is under plan. Even with gTalk, due to limitation of telepathy spec which is under heavily development, no file transfer function is available now but will be added. The features to be added are:
- File transfer
- Voip on gTalk
- Integrates with dbus based EDS.
- Support for other IM protocols.
Rationale
Mobile-chat is based on Empathy application. Empathy UI is designed for use on a full-feature PC. Moblin-chat made a lot of changes including hildonization and user experience improvements to get it works much more user friendly in a MID device using Hildon application framework.
Use Cases
If user launches moblin-chat for the first time, accounts edit dialog is presented. Once done successfully, he can switch to contact window and begin chat with his friends. Chat window is separate tabbed window. User can talk with multiple contacts at same time in one chat window. He can view chat history with one friend by click "Chat history". If new message arrives, chat window will be present to user. User can add a contact and receive a pending request from another user. If user lanches with account enabled, contact window is presented.
Design
Mobile-chat is built on telepathy. It talks with mission control and connection manager for each supported protocol to connect with IM server. The Telepathy project aims to provide a unified framework for all forms of real time conversations. It uses the D-Bus messaging system to provide a simple interface for client applications, allowing them to quickly benefit from Telepathy's functionality.
Implementation
Mobile-chat involves hildonizatation of one application that's covered in http://moblin.org/documentation_howto.html. It also involves heavily use of telepathy glib api and mission control api.
Code Changes
Migration