When writing a new API it's quite annoying that one needs to specify both the type and the tp:type on all methods/properties/signals, especially for slightly more complex type that are used a lot. I just changed one type and then had to fix it in 5 other places :( The spec parser already has this information as it validates the type you specify manually..
I'm not sure that this is a good idea; it would mean that the Telepathy spec format was no longer a superset of D-Bus introspection. Would consistency checking (Bug #24085) be enough?
I don't think this is worth the cost (which is that our spec format is no longer a superset of D-Bus introspection). If we were going to make a more streamlined source format for telepathy-spec that dropped the superset-of-introspection property, it probably wouldn't be XML. In Bug #24085 I added proper cross-checking of type against tp:type; when that's merged, you'll still need to change it in all n places, but at least you'll be told if you missed one.
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