This is just a random topic for keeping track of plugin ideas. Feel free to comment with your plugin ideas so others can discuss them!
A “smart-link” plugin might be nice. For example, here I can enter RR 4657 and it’ll turn into a link. For example: RR 4657.
This would need a fair amount of plugin configuration which is a bit lacking at the moment, but could also be managed via commands.
A “quotes” plugin where the user can add random quotes and then send a random one. It would be nice to be able to have groups as well.
I recently discovered that the 8-ball plugin in the plugin pack had something similar but the quotes/phrases were all statically compiled in. Making them user modifiable would be much more fun.
I’m thinking the main interface would be via sub commands, which means this could be a libpurple plugin.
Something like /quote random would pick any random quote and send it. Likewise, /quote random <group-name> would be a random quote from the named group.
Groups would be created with /quote add-group <name> and removed with /quote remove-group <name> although that should have a flag if it’s going to delete quotes.
Likewise, quotes would be added with /quote add <group-name> <text> and removed with /quote remove <group-name> <text>.
And of course we’d need to be able to list groups with /quote list-groups and quotes /quote list-quotes <group-name>.
A stats sub command could be nice too to display how many groups and total quotes are stored.
Multiline quotes might get weird here, but we’ll have to see how that’d work.
Storage would probably just be a GKeyFile stored in the user’s config directory something simple like:
[star wars]
0 = well hello there
1 = sith lords are our speciality
[star trek]
0 = resistance is futile
1 = Sir, I protest, I am not a merry man!
[doctor who]
0 = Bow ties are cool
1 = ASSIMILATE!
i hope file transfers as they exist in pidgin 2(XEP-0096) won’t be in plugins but in core functionality?
i really prefer that to the http_upload way. i understand that i am a minority here, and i use that http_upload myself, and people use it, and it will be like that.
but i use XEP-0096 file transfers whenever possible, it is so convenient to just send a file, it was sent, it was received, that’s all.
http_upload has the following problems:
- uploaded files get stored for unknown amount of time on someone’s server. unencrypted. i think people exchange with http_upload even important documents. getting access to such a server that stores years of uploaded files may expose lots of private data.
http_upload is misleading because people think their xmpp message is e2e encrypted while the http_uploaded file is not.
- when other person accesses the uploaded file, the server gets to know about the activity patterns of that person.
usually xmpp server protects our activities. it got the message for us, and the sender server doesn’t know when that message was read, or if it was read, if we don’t enable read receipts. http_upload exposes also an ip of the person who accessed uploaded file.
so yes i prefer old good XEP-0096 file transfers.
This thread is meant for discussing plugin ideas not core features. To quote my response from devel@conference.pidgin.im
(05:17:19 PM) grim: modern omemo will not be a plugin, it should have always been built in and we’re not making that mistake again
(05:17:40 PM) grim: audio-calls should also not be a plugin and will be built in directly, we’re getting there slowly but surely
(05:18:34 PM) grim: to be clear, the days of adding core protocol functionality via plugins is something we’re trying to very much avoid in purple3/pidgin3
(05:19:33 PM) grim: and yes i’m considering omemo and media as core protocol functionality
Likewise, file transfer methods that are part of a protocol should be built in and not a plugin as well.
To reiterate in a more generic fashion, if something is part of a protocol, including standardized extensions like XEPs, they should be part of the protocol themselves and not implemented via a separate plugin. It seems like I need to write a post on how we came to this decision so I can point people to it in the future.
1 Like