Bug 25120

Summary: Account: clarify expected behaviour of Nickname
Product: Telepathy Reporter: Simon McVittie <smcv>
Component: tp-specAssignee: Telepathy bugs list <telepathy-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED MOVED QA Contact: Telepathy bugs list <telepathy-bugs>
Severity: normal    
Priority: medium CC: xclaesse
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: Other   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:

Description Simon McVittie 2009-11-16 05:53:31 UTC
13:35 < Zdra> smcv, The spec says that MC must keep the value of nickname 
              property on Account and set it after each connection. Is it also 
              true if I set alias on self handle?
13:36 < Zdra> smcv, I mean, setting alias on self handle should probably be 
              defined to have the exact same behaviour than setting nickname on 
              account? or not?
13:36 < smcv> Zdra: I don't know
13:36 < smcv> Zdra: quality-of-implementation issue
13:37 < smcv> Zdra: I believe MC picks up self-alias changes and stores them in 
              Nickname
13:37 < Zdra> smcv, you don't think that's something we should force at the 
              spec level?
13:37 < smcv> Zdra: it's not something I've thought about in enough detail to 
              have a rationale either way
13:38 < Zdra> smcv, atm empathy set alias on self handle. but if MC does not 
              store that, I should change to set nickname on account
13:38 < smcv> Zdra: if you do, please file a spec bug asking that it be 
              clarified, and explain which interpretation you think is better 
              and why
13:38 * sjoerd would like the demands for a minimal spec compliant 
          AccountManager to be not too high
13:38 < sjoerd> In practise we know which implementation we'll use on the gnome 
                desktop, so that's fine for us
13:38 < smcv> Zdra: please consider nickname changes from other resources when 
              clarifying
13:39 < smcv> I think that might be a good rationale for MC's current behaviour
13:39 < smcv> suppose I'm logged in using Telepathy on N900 and Pidgin on laptop
13:40 < smcv> and I change my nickname in Pidgin
13:40 < smcv> MC on the N900 should pick up the change for next time, ideally?
13:40 < sjoerd> does the alias-before-connect override the server alias? should 
                it ?
13:40 < smcv> but then there's also an interaction with changing your nickname 
              on the laptop while the N900 is offline, and then logging in with 
              the N900
13:40 < smcv> sjoerd: yes exactly
13:41 < smcv> I think the right thing for Empathy to do is to set Nickname and 
              let the AM propagate the change, tbh
Comment 1 Simon McVittie 2010-08-06 06:36:21 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> 13:40 < sjoerd> does the alias-before-connect override the server alias? should 
>                 it ?

I think it should override what's on the server if you've changed it while offline, or the server should override the local setting if the local setting has not changed since the last time we connected (this is the same logic we use for avatars). Unfortunately, Aliasing makes this impossible, because we can't tell for sure whether the alias is server-stored; we should fix this in Names.

That means that (to continue the example from IRC discussion) if you alternate between Pidgin on laptop and Telepathy on N900, with one at a time connected, occasionally changing your name on the current device, the right things will happen.

> 13:39 < smcv> I think that might be a good rationale for MC's current behaviour
> 13:39 < smcv> suppose I'm logged in using Telepathy on N900 and Pidgin on laptop
> 13:40 < smcv> and I change my nickname in Pidgin
> 13:40 < smcv> MC on the N900 should pick up the change for next time, ideally?

Implementation detail: it does, mostly in mcd-connection.c.

> 13:40 < smcv> but then there's also an interaction with changing your nickname 
>               on the laptop while the N900 is offline, and then logging in with 
>               the N900

However, this is currently mis-handled in MC due to deficiencies of Aliasing. The N900's MC will override what the laptop set:

    /* FIXME: ideally, on protocols with server-stored nicknames, this should
     * only be done if the local Nickname has been changed since last time we
     * were online; Aliasing doesn't currently offer a way to tell whether
     * this is such a protocol, though. */
Comment 2 GitLab Migration User 2019-12-03 20:20:27 UTC
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

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