Re: [ELPA] New package: jami-bot and org-jami-bot

[Hanno Perrey]

Hej Richard,

>   > org-jami-bot builds upon jami-bot and extends it with Org mode capture
>   > functionality for text messages and images.
>
> This feature will be useful.  I am not concretely sure what "capture
> functionality" includes, but if it provides higher-level communication
> between Emacs and Jami, that is a good thing.

glad to hear you are interested in the package and thanks for your
comments!

Just to clarify: jami-bot is not intended as a high-level interface,
that is to say a client for Jami; it is instead a "bot", a tool to send
automatic messages to predefined recipients or to respond to incoming
messages in a flexible way depending on message content.

Using jami-bot, it would be straightforward to e.g. send a message to
someone when a specific document has been edited or chat with the Emacs
doctor -- along those lines. My personal itch was note taking and
accessing information that I only keep in Emacs.

> At the same time, it seems to be implemented in a way that imposes an
> evitable restriction -- requiring use of Org mode.

Not quite, as this proposal is about two distinct packages, jami-bot and
org-jami-bot. The latter depends on the former and is the one that
depends on Org mode. It can also be seen as a demonstration of how
jami-bot can be used to interface to different aspects of Emacs.

As these packages are so tightly related, I made the decision to propose
them for inclusion in Elpa in one go; in retrospect, that might have
made it less clear where one ends and the other starts.

> Therefore, new features which make sense indepdently of Org mode
> should be usable without Org mode.

All the base functionality (e.g. sending messages, parsing incoming
messages and adding hooks for replies depending on any command found in
the message) is implemented independent of Org mode. Only the
note-taking (i.e. Org mode-specific) parts require Org mode. But the
principle is the same and could be extended to other packages as well.

> It would be good to change the name too, to a name that does not
> presume use of Org (though it could work with Org also).  Perhaps
> jami-message?

The base package is called jami-bot which I hope emphasizes that it is
not really a user-interface to Jami itself, but a framework for
automatic message sending and processing. In itself it is only useful
for someone familiar with Elisp but it can be used for packages (such as
org-jami-bot) that provide easy-to-configure functionality out of the box.

A full Jami UI would require a lot more work, however. If anyone wants
to go in this direction, the parts of jami-bot preparing the Dbus calls
could be refactorized as a starting point. I have documented my
exploration of Jami's Dbus interface here:
http://www.hoowl.se/exploring_dbus_from_emacs.html


Thanks and cheers,
Hanno