Thread: [Announce] The One Ring
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epage is offline epage
2010-02-13 , 04:55
Posts: 1,684 | Thanked: 1,562 times | Joined on Jun 2008 @ Austin, TX
#285
Reminder for those reading this, this is heavily Maemo 4.1 specific

I don't mean this to argue against you about which is better, there are use cases for each, I was using Dialcentral exclusively earlier today on my n900, I'm just interested in us both understanding how we use each app. This could possibly improve our experiences with each and help guide me in improving both.

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
Likes:
- Stand-alone app that launches relatively quickly,
- With one click I see all my SMS messages, Transcribed voicemails - or both,
- I often reply to a text more than to a person/contact so I like that I just click on the SMS I want to reply to and I can immediately start to type away.
TOR Benefits
  • Better notification support
  • Always in the background, so when responding to apps its faster to load
  • There is some load time when you bring up the contact list, probably per person whether its faster or slower than loading Dialcentral

I admit, I don't use my chat history all that much and when I do I go to the GV website rather than using Dialcentral or RTComm's history. I'm not a heavy texter and never really developed a dependence on it but it sounds like some do since I think I heard a lot of people clamoring for an optional traditional SMS history viewer for the n900.

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
- I often reply to a text more than to a person/contact so I like that I just click on the SMS I want to reply to and I can immediately start to type away.
I'm not sure I understand this Dialcentral Benefit. A new message comes in with RTComm, I read it, reply, and then if its a one-shot message, I close it. For either, if I want to create a new message I go the contacts list, dialpad, etc.

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
Dislikes:
Still some odd formatting in the SMS text entry page. I can never see how many characters are left without scrolling down - and the text doesn't wrap/stop at the right edge of the entry window.
The wrap is a really annoying behavior that a bug has been filed to me. I think its a GTK issue and is reproducible on my desktop. I thought I created a work around for it in the latest version...

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
Dislikes:
- I'm sure this has nothing to do with OneRing but the IM Log Viewer app that got installed with RTComm shows the very first vmail to be from today - when in actuality it's nine days old. Already then I think I started to distrust the whole package.
I believe its an RTComm issue

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
- When I am in the Chat application I can see the list of my contacts. If I select one of them I am taken to a screen to enter a text message - with two 'tabs' on the left (one with my phone number) and one the name of the contact.
I don't understand why my phone number is shown there nor do I understand if I will be issuing an SMS if I am in that 'tab' and an 'IM' if I am in the other 'tab'. Also, the screen always defaults so that the full phone number/contact name is never shown and I have to drag the divider out a bit every time.
The left side isn't a set of "tabs" but a list of participants. Selecting them doesn't really do anything. You see your callback number because that is the "alias" I made associated with your account so there wouldn't be any ambiguity of what phone you made calls from.

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
- When I double-tap my phone number as mentioned above I get a message pop-up saying 'Not available'. So, ok?
I believe so, unsure what is support to happen there

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
- I have both IM and SMS capabilities for many of my contacts in this app I am lost as to what feature in the app does what.
If you are "chatting" with a contact on your GV list, it sends a text. If its on your GTalk list, it sends an IM.

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
- I sent a friend what I THOUGHT was an IM and her reply back was 'who is this?' I later saw that message in DC so I can only assume it was an SMS but since she didn't know who sent it I (and I text her a lot from DC) I can only assume that it looked different on her end.
Unsure what was going on with the sender phone number. It might be a GV thing.

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
- When closing the instant messaging window - I always close the whole app.
I just tried it and it left the contacts list open for me. I'm unsure what the discrepancy between our use cases was.

Originally Posted by silvermountain View Post
You're a great developer and I'm just sad that you have to put your work into a ****-application like the Nokia-chat one instead of doing something own like the great DC app you developed.
Its one of those trade-offs: should I and every other protocol implementer work on our own imperfect UI to handle things or do we leverage a common imperfect UI and save a lot of work.

I'm not a heavy texter and haven't been interested in drastically improving Dialcentral's texting interface. I considered that outside of its scope and have asked people if they were interested, to go ahead and write one. I think I even brought up the idea of doing something like TOR before (I just never had the idea of integrating the phone calling till last September which is what kicked off TOR).

For me, the benefits of Dialcentral are
  • When TOR is messed up
  • Support for CSVs (I don't like importing my csvs into the Maemo 5 contact list because it makes it annoying when I download a new one)
  • Call history

Uggh, too many long posts in one night, I'm off to bed.
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