#4043 HIGH First D: [discussion] Group support in gabble and salut (was: Group support in gabble and salut)

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#4043: [discussion] Group support in gabble and salut
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  Reporter:  kimquirk         |       Owner:  smcv                  
      Type:  enhancement      |      Status:  new                   
  Priority:  high             |   Milestone:  First Deployment, V1.0
 Component:  telepathy-other  |     Version:                        
Resolution:                   |    Keywords:                        
  Verified:  0                |  
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Changes (by smcv):

 * cc: morgs, Eben, walter (added)


Comment:

 We can't really comment on the implementation difficulty of "groups" in
 Salut/Gabble without some idea what the UI/concept requires from us.
 Adding Cc Eben (for UI/requirements) and walter (since he seems to have
 some interest in groups).

 If a less generic name could be chosen, that might be helpful, since
 Telepathy already has at least two concepts called "group". If you can't
 come up with anything more specific we'll call it an "OLPC group" or
 something when designing the API. On the other hand, depending on your
 definition of "group", we may need to split it into several orthogonal
 concepts at the API level.

 Discussion already started in #3310. In the comments on that bug I
 explained what primitives are available without additional server support
 (= more easily).

 So: just what is a group, conceptually? It sounds as though you have some
 working definition in the 1CC office that I'm not fully aware of. Use
 cases?

 And some more concrete questions, on the assumption that my view of what
 you mean when you say "groups" isn't a million miles from the truth:

 * Who can be in a group? Am I right in assuming a group contains (only)
 contacts?

 * Are groups determined per-user (the user chooses to put Alice, Bob and
 Chris in the group "my bestest friends"), or imposed by others (the
 teacher chooses to put Alice, ..., and Zack in the group "class 12a" and
 all their laptops automatically pick that up), or both?

 * Do you need to still be aware of groups while offline? (Assuming they're
 server-stored, that would mean PS would have to save them locally, since
 Salut obviously can't store anything on its lack of a server)

 * When can you edit groups? Only when connected to the server, or while
 offline with synchronization later, or what?

 * Who can see who's in a group? Is it public information, or available
 only to members, or available only to privileged members (e.g. only the
 group creator), or does it need to be switchable?

 * Do groups need an associated chatroom? If so, how is it used? Would it
 be sufficient if it was implemented as "start the Chat activity and invite
 all the people in this group" or does it need special-casing?

 * Can there be more than one group with the same human-readable name?

 * What are the priorities of the above considerations, on a scale from
 "meh, don't really care" to "1.1 blocker"?

 (In each case, the obvious assumption about "which option is harder to
 implement?" is probably right.)

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4043#comment:3>
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