Person Item
Well, 2.0 is starting to mature… Soon it will be time for release.
The only big ticket item remaining is PersonItem. Basically, it is a stronger clustering method with Address Book sync. Some of the code already exists, and Alan and I are busy at work getting the rest done. Once this is complete, it will be time to go through a feature freeze, and do bug testing as well as localizations.
Some detail about how PersonItem will work (comments welcome):
- You can only have one person of a particular name. It should be noted that only the name after a certain character (maybe a colon) will be displayed, so “Work: Jack” will display as “Jack” but won’t conflict with a different person named “Jack”
- A person can exists in multiple groups, but a buddy within a person must exist within at least the groups for its person
- A buddy can belong to multiple persons
- A buddy within each group must exist within a person. This can be multiple persons, or the same.
- The user can choose which icon is displayed for the person, and the priority for which buddy is displayed as the primary buddy
I am sure there is more, but you get the idea…
April 19th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Is this PersonItem feature [still kinda confusing] going to interfere with the pre-existing Buddy List settings I already have in place ? Aside from any normal revision / update defaults ?
May 20th, 2006 at 11:38 am
How stuck are you guys on the name “Person”, anyway? “Person” isn’t lexically different enough IMO from “buddy” to avoid a lot of confusion for new users. I’m trying to wrack my brain and think of something less similar but can’t, so maybe “Person” actually is a good descriptor.
I like the parsing of the name WRT colons; that’s a great idea, but traditionally the modifier would follow after the name (ie, ‘Jack:work’)?
If a buddy belongs to multiple persons, would a user somehow see a new incoming message on multiple persons when a single buddy receives a message?
June 2nd, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Pyrrho:
We figured that “Person” was the best name.
The persons are for display within the buddy list only. It does not affect how messaging is handled. It effectively replaces the clustering within the buddy list.