empathy integration with the desktop

From: Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>

To: desktop-devel-list gnome org

Subject: empathy integration with the desktop

Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:09:22 +0200

Our integration of empathy is pretty nice these days, you set up accounts in the global settings, you can control presence via the user menu, get nice notifications, etc. However, to a normal user, just logging in for the first time none of these things actually work. You won't get notifications from people even if you switch to "Available", and the control center applet will always keep showing your accounts as offline, with no obvious way to go online. In order to go online and have the integrated stuff work in the background you must first start a weirdly named application ("Empathy") and then close(!) its window (this will not actually quit the app). This causes you to go online and start using the integrated messaging systems. There is something weird with this... If IM is supposed to be integrated with the shell it should just work, not be dependent on starting some seemingly external application. We could automatically launch empathy by default on login, but people might not like to automatically go online as soon as they are at the computer. Another alternative is to add a "offline" entry under available/busy in the user menu and start with that active, then autospawn empathy if needed when you switch to available or busy. -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Alexander Larsson Red Hat, Inc alexl redhat com alexander larsson gmail com He's a fiendish vegetarian cyborg on a search for his missing sister. She's a brilliant mute stripper with a knack for trouble. They fight crime!