Re: Messaging - SMS API draft

On 10/25/2012 03:01 PM, Poussa, Sakari wrote:
> On 10/24/12 8:51 PM, "Kis, Zoltan" <zoltan.kis@intel.com<mailto:zoltan.kis@intel.com>> wrote:
> 
> - IMO we should design this API together with MMS, email and p2p IM API's, in order to align them as much as possible, since many attributes and use cases will be common. Should I send proposals for these?
> 
> In Tizen messaging API we managed to combine all of the above under one API. We can at least try to do the same here and get feedback if it is sensible of not. So I am suggesting that f.ex Zoltan would propose an API which includes more than just SMS. Then we can at least see how much overhead that would bring in.

I agree that MMS should be included in this API but we could likely make
this happen in two steps. However, the first released document should
definitely include MMS.

Regarding email, P2P, IM and all other protocols, I strongly disagree
with including those in this specification. As usual with Mozilla, my
opinion isn't the official Mozilla's position but the deeds prove that
this isn't the way we are going. In the phase 1 of the charter [1],
there is the Raw Sockets API. Google and Mozilla have an API and an
implementation for that. With such an API, there are enough tools to
build an email application (there is one in Firefox OS), a P2P client,
an IM client or whatever is needed regarding messaging trough the Internet.

Email is something that was very controversial inside Mozilla at the
beginning of the project with people requesting an API for it but as far
as I can tell, there are already specifications (IMAP, POP, SMTP) and
there is no hardware or system requirements except being able to connect
to a server which, as said above, will be solved. What should happen is
libraries like imap.js, smtp.js (or even pop.js for people living in the
previous decade). We shouldn't bloat the Web Platform.

In my opinion, the main difference with SMS and email (or any other use
case listed above) is that the former is something that require system
and hardware requirements. There is no way for a web application to
access the RIL. In addition, users will expect that two SMS apps will
access to the same SMS so we need a system-wide storage. Emails already
have that on the server-side.

[1] http://www.w3.org/2012/09/sysapps-wg-charter

Cheers,
--
Mounir

Received on Friday, 26 October 2012 10:41:50 UTC