KTp/Components/Chat Window/Plugin API Draft

From KDE Community Wiki

Making an API to create plugins for the chat window. These should be able to handle the following usecases:

  • Translator plugin - when messages are sent or received, it will translate them before they are displayed (or actually sent)
  • Image Embed plugin - when a URL of an image is received, it will display the image under the text
  • Grammar correction - a plugin that replaces "wont" with "won't" on messages to be sent
  • Youtube embed - embeds a youtube video in a chat


The stakeholders (components) are as follows:

  • UI - telepathy-kde-text-ui and chat-widget etc.
  • Plugin Manager
  • Plugin
  • Core (Telepathy)

<I'll upload the diagram for how they interact later>

The interactions between the components:

  • Plugin Manager and Plugin
    • Process Message
    • Return Message
    • Initialize
    • Loading
    • Destroy
    • Send-Message //still not sure about this
  • Plugin Manager and Ui
    • Display Message
    • Display Final Message
    • Send New Message //to be processed BEFORE being sent
  • Plugin Manager and Core
    • New Message Received
    • Send New Message

It will consist of the following classes

  • Interface Class : SendingPlugin
  • Interface Class : ReceivingPlugin
  • Plugin Manager - Every client that wants to use the plugin system will have a single, global, static instance of this.
    • signal: displayMessage(bool final);
    • slot: processAndSendMessage(Message message);
    • QList<SendingPlugin>
    • QList<ReceivingPlugin>