[Sugar-devel] Collaboration API (was Re: HTML5 Activities page on the Wiki)

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 2013-04-30, at 14:13, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 30 April 2013 14:00, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
>> It is indeed the implementation details I'm talking about. The Javascript API could use an identical Python API. And that API could then be used both by Javascript activities and other activities, too. This would simplify the development process for all, because activity developers would not have to talk to Telepathy directly.
>> 
>> You have to implement the new API anyway. The question is simply, where to put that code. If you put it in the Sugar Shell and expose it via DBus, it will be available to all activity developers. The Javascript API would simply be a very thin layer that use it. OTOH, if you put that code only into the HTML activity support, you now have created two different ways to implement collaboration in Sugar. You will have to document separately, learn separately, maintain separately.
>> 
>> One problem with that approach is that we don't have a way for javascript to talk dbus directly. We could perhaps build one but it's probably going to be non trivial.

If you google "javascript dbus" you will find several bindings. But since you are implementing the HTML activity framework in Python anyway you wouldn't even need that.

> It's also worrying that one of the reason to deprecate the old Presence Service seems to have been avoiding the extra IPC layer, which we would be reintroducing here. 

So how would your Javascript API work, if not via IPC?

- Bert -