unity-design team mailing list archive

[Andrew SB <a.starr.b@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Jan Claeys<lists@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Op maandag 07-09-2009 om 17:24 uur [tijdzone +0300], schreef Alex
> Lourie:
>> 1. MI will present me the simple *content*-based view of what I've
>> missed;
>> not applications. For example:
>>
>>     Email Messages
>>         Inbox
>>         Gmail
>>         Other Mailboxes
>>     Twitter Messages
>>         alex@twitter
>>     Identica Messages
>>         alex@xxxxxxxxx
>>     Jabber Messages
>>         alex@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <alex@xxxxxx>
>>     ICQ Messages
>>         987654321 - alourie
>>     News (RSS)
>>         NY Times
>>         Planet Ubuntu
>>     Phone
>>         Missed Calls
>>         Missed Messages
>>
>> 2. MI would be able to *present* me any messages I have missed without
>> me having application running (I only have IDE opened during coding
>> session, but I still would like to get email notifications).
>
> That sounds like you want to reinvent Telepathy...
>
> But maybe that's a good idea: why not build this indicator as a
> telepathy-based application instead of reinventing stuff?  That would
> also solve the current issue that for most people the indicator applet
> just duplicates information that's already visible elsewhere.


You snipped it out, but he explicitly said that there are libraries
that exist that can already pull this information. It doesn't sound
like he's talking about reimplementing a backend but simply using the
MI as a frontend for existing technology, be it Telepathy or something
else.

I certainly think there is some merit to this idea. I would have
suggested something like this before, but it had seemed like it might
have been out of the scope of the MI applet. Though as already
mentioned in other threads, the scope now seems a bit unclear.
Although this would require a configuration menu, which seems to be
the one thing that has been clearly stated as unacceptable.... Who
knows?

One issue I've had with the MI applet is that in its current state it
misses one of the largest messaging use cases, webmail.

- Andrew