[ticker-dev] Elvin presence specification draft

[David Arnold]

-->"Martin" == Wanicki, Martin <Martin.Wanicki at Australia.Boeing.com> writes:

  Martin> Firstly, the status field should not be a string, or else
  Martin> why do we have a status text field. I understand the concept
  Martin> of making it readable *but* its only readable in English :-)
  Martin> Sooooo to that end I put forward that the status field
  Martin> should be a machine readable value (a number) that has the
  Martin> same meaning in any language.

i don't really care either way here.  both are defined patterns of
bits.  if one particular language group can benefit from simpler
recognition of that bit pattern, that's fine with me.  but not having
that is also ok if there's some benefit.


  Martin> This leaves us with an "online" status change and an
  Martin> "off-line" status change with "online" being one of
  Martin> available/unavailable

if you rename "available" to "online" here, don't you have the same
thing?  


  Martin> Status becomes a number. Negative One (-1) = off-line Zero (
  Martin> 0 ) = Available Positive Non-Zero (1..???)  = some
  Martin> "Unavailable" status event

what is the expected benefit of having machine-readable variations on
"unavailable"?

  Martin> Appointment|Lunch|Coffee|....more.....

the only thing i can see being actually useful, from a
machine-readable point of view, is an expected duration of the lack of
availability.

i don't see any benefit in having different codes for "meeting" vs
"lunch" (for example).


some thoughts ...


for my usage, "offline" is useless.  i'm never (or so infrequently as
to be insignificant) offline.  one or more of my sessions (and
therefore presence tools) is running at all times.

i'm happy that some people have a different usage pattern which might
make this value meaningful, but i'm not sure i want my client programs
sending an "offline" by default when they exit, because it's not
necessarily true.

i think explicitly set textual status messages, with an explicit
indication of "available/online" or "unavailable" are useful.  i will
do that at least some of the time.

i think automatic "unavailable?" and "available?" status values are
useful.  i am very likely to walk away-from/up-to my machine and
forget to set the status text.  

imagine that at midday, you want my status, and get

    last status:    in meeting @ 10:55am
    last activity:  11:54am

that would be kinda useful.  you can reasonably guess that i'm back
from my meeting but haven't set my status yet.  not that we'd
necessarily want all presence tools to have to monitor key/mouse
activity.  it could also be construed as an invasion of privacy ;-)


i don't know what's best here.  i need to play/think more :-(





d