Bug 70489

Summary:	generic mechanism for "server sent us random text"
Product:	Telepathy	Reporter:	Simon McVittie <smcv>
Component:	tp-spec	Assignee:	Telepathy bugs list <telepathy-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED MOVED	QA Contact:	Telepathy bugs list <telepathy-bugs>
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	medium
Version:	git master
Hardware:	Other
OS:	All
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:
Bug Depends on:
Bug Blocks:	26696, 39157

Description Simon McVittie 2013-10-15 10:01:30 UTC

Some XMPP servers send a "message of the day" (Bug #39157) or ad-hoc human-readable errors (Bug #26696).

IRC servers send all sorts of clutter (message of the day, etc.) during sign-in, although that's less "human-readable" and more "debug log".

If we send ad-hoc commands to an IRC server (Bug #70434) we can't reliably match responses to commands, because IRC is basically terrible.

We should have some sort of API for "the server sent us this, we have no idea what to do with it but perhaps the user is interested"?

Comment 1 Simon McVittie 2013-10-15 10:14:22 UTC

Past suggestions have included:

• a special channel type (Chan.T.ServerMessages?)

• a new handle type for Text channels (Handle_Type_Server?)

• treating the server's name as a contact handle without modification

  - for XMPP, more or less rejected, because if a user alice.smith@example.com
    types "bob.lincoln" into Empathy, we want that to mean
    bob.lincoln@example.com, and not a server called "bob" in the
    Ford Motor Company's proposed ".lincoln" gTLD[1]

• mangling the server's name somehow, e.g. "@collabora.co.uk"
  to represent Collabora's XMPP server instead of the correct
  "collabora.co.uk"

  - I suggested this but it's a bit icky, and I seem to remember people
    hating it

Any other ideas?

A new channel type would have the advantage that we could set some sort of "how likely to be relevant is this?", and loggers would refrain from logging the login spam from IRC servers.

[1] picking one of the sillier examples from
    http://money.cnn.com/infographic/technology/new-gtld-list/

Comment 2 Guillaume Desmottes 2013-10-15 14:02:22 UTC

I agree, I think  specific ChannelType is easier. At least current clients won't accidentally handle/observe it and be confused.

Comment 3 GitLab Migration User 2019-12-03 20:26:40 UTC

-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

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