On Cerebro, Telepathy, yokes and whites (was Re: cerebro in sugar)

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 2:01 AM, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at laptop.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 7:51 PM, Marco Pesenti Gritti
> <mpgritti at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 7:05 PM, Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos
>> <ypod at mit.edu> wrote:
>> * The abstraction layer needs to be accessible to non-python
>> activities. Unless you want to expose it through DBus, you will have
>> to write it in C (with python bindings). And if I'm not mistake
>> Cerebro is written in python.
>
> So expose it through DBus.  This is done already, if I understand correctly.

I was talking about the additional abstraction layer over
telepathy/cerebro which Polychronis was requesting. But it's good to
know that Cerebro can be already access through DBus.

>> * I haven't seen any concrete technical argument against telepathy *API* so far.
>
> I've got a concrete non-technical objection: kids at gamejams
> invariably want to write a multiplayer game.  Almost none succeed.
> This tells me we need a better collaboration API.
>
> You can argue that this "simple" API should be *on top* of the
> lower-level telepathy (or cerebro) API, and I won't argue.  But we
> need *something* which a 12-year old can use.

Yeah I agree we need a 12-year-old-safe API. I tend to think it should
be a layer above telepathy/cerebro and most likely implemented in pure
python. DBus would make it too difficult to use and as long as we have
a low level API that non-python activities can access I think we are
fine. It would be great to see prototypes+tutorials of it before we
commit to ship one in the core...

Marco