13:00:03 <stickster> #startmeeting Workstation WG
13:00:03 <zodbot> Meeting started Mon Apr 27 13:00:03 2015 UTC.  The chair is stickster. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
13:00:03 <zodbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic.
13:00:07 <stickster> #meetingname workstation
13:00:07 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'workstation'
13:00:11 <stickster> #topic Roll call!
13:00:18 * Capesteve waves
13:00:29 * mclasen_ clocks in
13:01:15 * kalev waves to everyone
13:01:21 * mcatanzaro yawns
13:01:25 <stickster> cschalle: juhp: jwb: rdieter: o/
13:01:44 <jwb> hi
13:01:47 * stickster realizes he's pinging jwb out of habit :-D
13:01:51 <jwb> yes :)
13:01:59 <stickster> PING PING PING
13:02:03 * rdieter waves
13:02:51 <mcatanzaro> For the agenda, we should also discuss the symbolic icon issue....
13:03:00 <stickster> mcatanzaro: We can do that for sure.
13:03:06 <stickster> #chair mclasen_ kalev mcatanzaro rdieter
13:03:06 <zodbot> Current chairs: kalev mcatanzaro mclasen_ rdieter stickster
13:03:33 * jwb missed the symbolic icon issue
13:03:58 <stickster> mcatanzaro: I'm going to insert that in the first slot, since it's F22 release related.
13:04:08 <stickster> #topic Symbolic icons
13:04:12 <mcatanzaro> jwb: Half our applications use symbolic icons in the app menu, the other half use shrunken hicolor icons that look horrible.
13:04:31 <jwb> oh
13:05:12 <kalev> mcatanzaro: why do the hicolor icons they look horrible, is that a regression with downscaling? or do you mean that they've always looked horrible?
13:05:30 <stickster> #info Quite a few apps are missing symbolic icons for the app menu
13:05:44 <mcatanzaro> kalev: Well they used to use nice big hicolor icons; now they use the smallest 16x16 icons that don't really belong.
13:05:52 <stickster> e.g. Geary
13:06:49 <mcatanzaro> I think roughly half the apps we install by default are missing symbolics. For most of them Jakub Steiner has prepared patches to add symbolics, but not for all, and the ones he has prepared are rotting in upstream Bugzilla.
13:06:51 <charlesbwhite> samba crashes a lot more now than 3 years ago. whats up with that?
13:07:21 <stickster> charlesbwhite: Hi -- thanks for the feedback, but since we're in a meeting now, can you take your question to #fedora ?
13:07:54 <cschalle> maybe Fedora maintainers can pull in those symbolic patches?
13:08:04 <charlesbwhite> k whats the topic today? I have been away for a while.
13:08:07 <mclasen_> mcatanzaro: if you think this is a huge concern, we could look at carrying those patches downstream
13:08:23 <mcatanzaro> So we can (a) just start pushing the patches upstream, I've done this for a couple modules and nobody has complained yet, (b) pull in symbolic icon patches downstream, (c) revert the change.
13:08:47 * rdieter agrees with kalev, why do hicolor icons look bad?  should that be fixed too?
13:08:52 <mclasen_> but personally, I', not that concerned about this - I don't think the inconsistency is a big problem
13:08:58 * stickster would rather see us push forward than revert the icon change
13:10:08 <stickster> mcatanzaro: I'm not opposed to (a), but is there a list of apps that exhibit the issue, so we could reach out to maintainers for (b) (in case of pushback on (a))?
13:10:35 <mcatanzaro> stickster: It's being tracked at https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/GnomeGoals/HighContrastAppIcons
13:10:44 <stickster> mcatanzaro: awesome, thanks
13:11:27 <mcatanzaro> rdieter: The hicolor icons are really teensy in order to match the symbolic icons. Since we can't overlay text over the symbolic icons, they have to be smaller. But teensy hicolor icons don't look good in the app menu.
13:11:55 <rdieter> that's unfortunate
13:12:01 <charlesbwhite> the icons still look better than fedora 9
13:12:14 <mclasen_> mcatanzaro: I can offer to help getting some of those icons landed for 3.16.1
13:12:34 <mcatanzaro> mclasen_: For 3.16.2, that would be dandy.
13:13:34 <mcatanzaro> Of course non-GNOME apps are not tracked there: firefox, setroubleshoot, devassistant.
13:13:43 <stickster> So I'm guessing that means we have at least a few +1 for advocating/pushing changes upstream.
13:13:44 <mcatanzaro> abrt...
13:14:01 * stickster wonders if any of the ABRT guys are in this channel
13:14:02 <kalev> I already fixed setroubleshoot
13:14:07 <stickster> kalev++
13:14:11 <mcatanzaro> kalev: Thanks :)
13:14:47 * rdieter agrees "fixing stuff" moving forward is preferable to reverting
13:15:05 <stickster> mcatanzaro: mclasen_: It looks like a few affected apps are in the default shipping WS, would it be possible to prioritize those?
13:15:13 <kalev> anyway, I'm happy to put in some effort too to make sure we land the patches that are available
13:15:22 <kalev> both upstream and downstream where applicable
13:16:29 <kalev> mcatanzaro: any chance you could do a report what apps are missing the icons?
13:16:41 <mcatanzaro> Sure.
13:16:45 <kalev> based on today's nightly iso compose or something
13:17:04 <mcatanzaro> Based on what I have on my F22 desktop :p
13:17:09 <kalev> http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/ has links to latest isos
13:17:18 <mcatanzaro> OK
13:17:22 <kalev> sure, that's fine too, as long as it's roughtly what we ship on the images :)
13:17:35 <stickster> #action mcatanzaro report apps with missing icons to list, so we can figure out where we need to push changes
13:17:40 <mcatanzaro> I'll just use an ISO since you made it so easy.
13:18:21 <charlesbwhite> upstream sounds good.  I think change is great and would love to see the ratio be in line for the most common 16:9 computers.
13:18:24 <stickster> Does anyone know if there's an icon created for firefox or devassistant?
13:18:56 <mcatanzaro> We would have to ask Jakub but my guess would be: firefox yes, devassistant no. (Just guessing.)
13:19:13 * mclasen_ will ask jimmac
13:19:30 <bochecha> is mozilla going to be ok with us using a different icon for firefox?
13:19:55 <mcatanzaro> Oh good point, we need to get approval....
13:20:16 <stickster> mcatanzaro: OK. I want to help somehow, but with no useful commit access where it counts, I'll ask the devassistant guys if they can be ready to patch for a new package, and/or pull in for next release
13:20:49 <kalev> stickster: can you talk to the firefox people too?
13:21:00 <kalev> stransky et al
13:21:53 <stickster> kalev: I'll ask. The TM guidelines from Mozilla are pretty clear but they may be able to make an exception.
13:21:53 <mcatanzaro> The risk is that Mozilla might really not like us playing with their logo and just say no. But if we explain that Firefox will look bad without the change, hopefully they will be accommodating....
13:21:59 <stickster> Correct.
13:22:41 <stickster> #action stickster Contact stransky to ask whether we can include a high contrast firefox icon
13:23:01 <stickster> #action stickster Contact devassistant folks to ask if they can be ready to pull in a high contrast icon
13:23:27 <stickster> #action kalev mclasen_ mcatanzaro coordinate other icon fixes upstream and in packaging as needed
13:23:33 <stickster> Anything else before we move on?
13:23:47 <mcatanzaro> I think we can move on.
13:24:07 <stickster> #topic IM client input
13:24:30 <stickster> aday mentioned that input from this WG would be useful for GNOME upstream in figuring out strategy for IM integration
13:25:33 <aday> i reached out to the empathy/telepathy maintainer today to get his input
13:26:27 <mcatanzaro> Based on the mailing list discussion, support for more protocols (telegram, tox, lynx) would be good for users. But there is a manpower issue: nothing's going to happen unless someone gets paid to make it happen, TBH.
13:26:28 <stickster> There's quite a bit of disparate input, and not sure if we have a summary or consensus -- but it does seem like it would be a huge task to try to replace telepathy backend with something else
13:26:30 <kalev> aday: if we're planning on phasing out empathy, would it be ok to remove the bit in gnome-software in F22 that makes empathy unremovable?
13:26:58 <kalev> so that people who want, can customize their installations and replace empathy with something else, if they so choose
13:27:12 <stickster> One thing that *was* clear from jeischmann's blogs was that a lot of people are using nonfree platforms for messaging (first and foremost, Google Hangout)
13:27:25 <mcatanzaro> Here's why: Google Hangouts just works.
13:27:53 <stickster> AIUI their XMPP support (such as it is) may be vanishing, too :-(
13:28:28 <mcatanzaro> stickster: It already vanished for voice and video calls, only text chat remains.
13:28:47 <cschalle> yeah, as things are going atm the most used IM client soon on any platform is going to be the web browser
13:29:11 <jwb> or your phone
13:29:19 <stickster> Probably inevitable since the mobile market is driving this now
13:29:22 <stickster> jwb++
13:29:37 <jwb> the only "IM'ing" i do on any computer is IRC
13:29:43 <stickster> jwb: same here.
13:30:04 <jwb> and even that can be moved to a phone if you want (though it sucks and there's no FOSS irccloud afaik)
13:30:37 <stickster> So the question is, what does this mean to our (Fedora Workstation) providing input on IM integration?
13:31:07 <stickster> Or does this really come back to the issue of web app integration on the desktop?
13:31:22 <jwb> i kind of think the latter
13:31:32 <mcatanzaro> I think the ideal solution would be to pay people to work on Empathy and Telepathy.
13:31:51 <cschalle> well I think the input we need to provide is that either telepathy/empathy needs to get a lot better quickly, or we will just ditch it in favour of pidgin and disable and shell features using telepathy/empathy
13:32:05 <jwb> mcatanzaro, to what end though?  to reverse engineer a bunch of proprietary protocols that already work fine in firefox and chrome?
13:32:08 <mcatanzaro> Pidgin is even worse, IMO. :(
13:32:32 <mcatanzaro> jwb: That would not be worth it, but we could add support for telegram and tox.
13:32:36 <aday> my personal view is that a chat client probably isn't needed by default
13:32:38 <cschalle> ok, maybe the solution then is to just stop providing any IM functionality by default
13:32:41 <mcatanzaro> The ones we don't have to reverse-engineer.
13:32:51 <jwb> cschalle, aday: agreed.
13:32:52 <aday> but that there should be one available
13:33:13 <aday> that might mean that empathy gets turned into a 3rd party app
13:33:24 <cschalle> I assume we have multiple available in the Software store already?
13:33:27 <jwb> in my brain, IRC isn't really IM.  so maybe a client that focuses on that is fine.  but the rest...
13:33:35 <mcatanzaro> My personal view is that text chat integrated into gnome-shell used to be a killer feature. It was super convenient. But nothing is good enough to install by default right now.
13:34:39 <mcatanzaro> *It still is super convenient
13:35:33 <stickster> I hear a lot of people thinking ;-)
13:36:06 <kalev> so, my two-step proposal:
13:36:26 <kalev> 1) make it possible to remove empathy in F22 (it's currently marked as one of the unremovable apps in Software)
13:36:40 <kalev> 2) plan on not shipping empathy by default in 3.18 / F23
13:36:43 <cschalle> +1
13:36:46 <mcatanzaro> +1
13:36:56 <mclasen_> the reason why we need empathy hardwired is that it is needed as the app behind shell chat notifications
13:37:03 <kalev> ahhh
13:37:20 <aday> if we do that, we should probably un-integrate empathy
13:37:20 <mclasen_> so if we want to stop shipping empathy (and we should), we need to make gnome-shell stop doing chat notifications
13:37:26 <aday> mclasen_: right
13:37:39 <mcatanzaro> mclasen_: How could you get a chat notification is empathy is not installed?
13:37:52 <mclasen_> the shell is doing them on its own
13:37:54 <mcatanzaro> If gnome-shell is getting these straight from telepathy, why is Empathy needed.
13:38:09 <bochecha> mcatanzaro, click on the notification, that opens... Empathy
13:38:57 <aday> we pretend that the notification comes from empathy, even though it doesn't really :)
13:40:26 <aday> another way of looking at this - if a bunch of people wanted to revive empathy (or create a new telepathy-based chat client), would we be interested?
13:40:39 <stickster> aday: Such as https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Chat ?
13:41:09 <aday> stickster: something like that, yes
13:41:15 <mclasen_> I don't think there's anything wrong with a maintained empathy, but it needs some serious work
13:41:43 <stickster> Agreed.
13:42:16 <stickster> It's difficult for me to imagine a "successful" chat client that doesn't have some way to interoperate with mobile devices (e.g. telegram)
13:42:28 <mcatanzaro> I've sort of been hinting that maintaining Empathy would be a good project for Red Hat. :)  If we don't have to drop support for chat from gnome-shell, that would be great....
13:42:56 <cschalle> mcatanzaro, sorry, don't have any free people to put on it
13:42:57 <stickster> I just don't see people being that interested in most computer-to-computer only services these days.
13:43:06 <mcatanzaro> cschalle, OK.
13:43:30 <aday> and another thing to consider - if telepathy is unmaintained, what are the implications for polari and our irc story?
13:44:00 <aday> that's somewhat important for developers
13:44:09 <rdieter> who says telepathy is unmaintained?  (I thought we were only talking about empathy here)
13:44:24 <kalev> I guess it could be switched over to whatever pidgin uses for irc?
13:44:31 <aday> rdieter: well, it's not actively developed
13:44:51 <mcatanzaro> Telepathy is unmaintained, except for the telepathy-qt layer.
13:44:51 <mclasen_> rdieter: git history tells the story
13:44:51 <cschalle> rdieter, it more or less is unmantained these days, since Collabora stopped getting paid by Nokia to maintain it, its been in life support mode
13:44:55 <rdieter> still conflating telepathy with IM clients muddles the conversation
13:45:06 <rdieter> but ok
13:46:11 <aday> kalev: it would be good to have an evaluation of the irc backend options, i suppose
13:46:18 <mclasen_> tp-qt seems the sole repo that is active
13:46:37 <mcatanzaro> kalev: libpurple is a security nightmare. I guess anything maintained would be an improvement over telepathy-idle though (last commit: 11 months ago)
13:46:46 <mclasen_> I think the main reason for polari to use telepathy is to participate in the shell chat notification support
13:46:50 <cschalle> rdieter, fair enough, but empathy is in some sense just a thin UI on top of telepathy, so its functionlity and quality is quite directly tied to the state of telepathy
13:47:17 <mcatanzaro> cschalle: For some value of "thin," yes. :D
13:47:38 <aday> mclasen_: and that wouldn't be possible with a different backend?
13:47:43 <rdieter> OK, though much of the criticisms here seemed to be about the UI (and notifications)
13:48:23 <stickster> aday: What different backend?
13:48:24 <aday> rdieter: that's a fair point. i have to confes that i'm unsure about the overall picture wrt telepathy
13:48:29 <mclasen_> aday: thats a question for fmuellner, but I think if we're ready to give up chat notifications, you could easily strip telepathy from polari, and just have it issue regular notifications itself
13:48:31 <mcatanzaro> Note: I tried Ubuntu 15.04 yesterday. The latest version of Empathy is the default client there and it is integrated very nicely into Unity. The shell shows your status, you reliably get notifications of new replies....
13:49:06 <rdieter> per the 2 step proposal before, maybe tack on a 3: pick a dedicated/good irc client to ship
13:49:23 <rdieter> (if we care about supporting irc that is)
13:49:46 <mclasen_> given that this meeting is held on irc...
13:49:52 <kalev> I am not sure this is something to be shipped by default, but we should have a good story available for people who want to install an irc client
13:49:53 <mcatanzaro> I don't think we should install an IRC client by default. You can just get one via gnome-software if you want one. The value in Empathy is that it can handle many protocols.
13:50:20 <rdieter> and silly followup question/comment: why aren't the chat applications handling notifications themselves?  (why is gnome-shell essentially doing it for them)?
13:50:45 <mcatanzaro> rdieter: So that you can reply in-line without leaving the notification.
13:51:24 <rdieter> shrug, ok, I guess.  seems to be a lot of extra work for little gain
13:51:27 <kalev> the notification protocol we have is essentially one way, doesn't support text entries like inline chat needs
13:51:52 <rdieter> so -shell is a baby chat client now.
13:52:02 <kalev> yep :)
13:52:07 <mcatanzaro> rdieter: It's actually a lot of gain. Like I said, integrated chat was a killer feature. It worked relatively well in F21 but got much worse in F22. But it would be a shame to lose entirely.
13:52:27 * mclasen_ has to drop out - dentist
13:52:32 <mcatanzaro> Still, I don't think we're getting anywhere here. We're just wishlisting: wouldn't it be nice if this was maintained.
13:52:34 <rdieter> mcatanzaro: <shrug>, I'll take your word for it.  I personally don't find it compelling
13:52:56 <stickster> mcatanzaro: That's kind of what I'm getting out of this too.
13:53:05 <rdieter> (well, it's nice, but the side effects have unfun implications)
13:53:07 <stickster> I'm still +1 on kalev's proposal.
13:53:33 <mcatanzaro> I'm still +1 too... best of bad options
13:53:40 <potty> sorry for interrupting but have you considered pidgin and its extension? #link https://github.com/muffinmad/pidgin-im-gnome-shell-extension
13:54:33 <stickster> My understanding is pidgin/libpurple code is notoriously un-fun from a maintenance POV.
13:54:34 <mcatanzaro> Somebody posted on the mailing list the other day that the pidgin extension is mostly broken in F22. But it doesn't matter because pidgin looks terrible; I'd be opposed to installing that by default. And it uses a tray icon....
13:55:00 <stickster> mcatanzaro: +1. I wouldn't want to see it as a default in Fedora.
13:55:06 <rdieter> <nod> pidgin needs work too
13:55:25 <potty> understand
13:55:37 <kalev> re my proposal, I am not sure I am +1 myself, now that it turned out that shell needs empathy's icon for the chat notifications
13:55:37 <rdieter> +1 to kalev's proposal too
13:55:45 <kalev> maybe it should stay unremovable in Software for now because of that
13:56:22 <stickster> So what I get from all the unresolvable sighs over IM'ing is that (1) there's not a lot of energy in this space and (2) it's hard to imagine a compelling reason to invest in it
13:56:36 <rdieter> I'd guess: anyone who uninstalls empathy isn't using the telepathy chat features anyway
13:56:51 <aday> stickster: i agree, although you never know... people sometimes stand up in these situations
13:57:05 <stickster> kalev: Ha, I guess you're withdrawing your proposal then :-)
13:57:13 <kalev> does anyone know if uninstalling empathy breaks polari's chat notifications? :)
13:57:22 <aday> voluntary resources aren't fungible
13:57:30 <stickster> *nod
13:57:32 <mcatanzaro> kalev: I think gnome-shell actually prefers polari for IRC
13:57:44 <mcatanzaro> So that should be fine
13:58:22 <stickster> Well, we are coming to the end of our time, and I need to depart for another meeting
13:58:37 <mcatanzaro> The technically correct thing would be to make it uninstallable and add a Requires to the gnome-shell package. But the only people who would notice are those using non-empathy, non-polari telepathy clients in GNOME. telepathy-qt is the only one I know of. I suspect we can get away with removing it.
13:58:44 <mcatanzaro> Doesn't matter either way, IMO.
13:59:36 <stickster> #info kalev had a proposal, but we still need to see if we can remove empathy
13:59:44 <stickster> We'll have to close here, guys.
14:00:00 <kalev> just one thing before you close
14:00:02 <stickster> Thanks for coming, everyone. Next time we *will* discuss F23/24 game plan
14:00:16 <kalev> the next meeting is after F22 is already in the final freeze
14:00:31 <mcatanzaro> Do we have anything more needed to discuss before freeze?
14:00:39 <kalev> one thing I forgot to do earlier (sorry!) was to send out a report of new apps / leaf packages, compared to what we shipped in F21
14:01:06 <kalev> I'll do that today and would be great if some people could go through it and make sure all the additions / removals are actually wanted
14:01:28 <stickster> Thanks kalev
14:01:29 <kalev> comps is free to edit for everyone and sometimes people just put things in there  that don't make a lot of sense for workstation
14:01:32 <kalev> eof :)
14:01:50 <stickster> #info kalev to send report of new apps/leaf packages vs. F21 -- for list to review/check
14:01:52 <mcatanzaro> Definitely a good idea to do this every 6 months. Sometimes weird things happen with Requires....
14:01:56 <stickster> *nod
14:02:02 <stickster> OK, we need to vacate :-)
14:02:08 <stickster> Thanks again everyone!
14:02:09 <stickster> #endmeeting