GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 655116
Add a user avatar backend (like Gravatar or libravatar)
Last modified: 2018-08-04 08:30:01 UTC
It would be great to have as many photos of contacts as possible, as such it would be awesome to have a gravatar backend to retrieve avatars of users based on a hash of their email address. http://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/ We may think that this is better dealt with in a downstream project (such as libsocialweb) and just use a generic backend for there. If so, feel free to close and redirect.
Further note, this may rollup: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=625658 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=525027 and https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=570124
Created attachment 200612 [details] Postler gravatar support
That could be a great idea for gnome-contacts. The mail client Postler already supports it : http://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-commits/2011-July/021225.html
*** Bug 655117 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 674624 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
^ These two bugs are about adding gravatar and/or robothash support to gnome-contacts. The main goal here is providing a consistent default for contacts not having any avatar. I'd really like to have that in Folks for 3.6 as Empathy's new roster looks pretty sad if you have a lot of contacts without avatars.
Btw, https://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/Avatars is an interesting reading.
Copying my comment from bug 655117: I discussed this with Jon and Jimmac a little while ago, and we agreed that something more in the style of http://vanillicon.com/ would make sense - it's simple, fun, and doesn't carry the semiotic baggage you get with robots :) .
Are we mixing two separate issues in this bug? One is generating avatars for contacts that don't have them, the other is pulling existing avatars from Gravatar.
(In reply to comment #9) > Are we mixing two separate issues in this bug? One is generating avatars for > contacts that don't have them, the other is pulling existing avatars from > Gravatar. Yeah. I guess the best way to do this with folks’ current architecture would be to add an Individual.default_avatar property which returns the Individual’s avatar if it exists, and (deterministically) generates one otherwise. No need to make this a separate backend, but it would mean standardising on a *single* service for providing default avatars. There would be no means to choose between Gravatar, Robohash and Vanillicon, though perhaps a fallback system could be used which uses Vanillicon if no Gravatar exists.
Could it be considered to not depend on an external service? There are multiple reasons (they do not apply for everyone, and in every situation), such as reliability, privacy, or depending on a proprietary service. Ideally I'd prefer for folks to generate avatars by itself, but alternatively an option to opt off would be nice.
(In reply to comment #11) > Could it be considered to not depend on an external service? There are multiple > reasons (they do not apply for everyone, and in every situation), such as > reliability, privacy, or depending on a proprietary service. > > Ideally I'd prefer for folks to generate avatars by itself, but alternatively > an option to opt off would be nice. Is there any of such service using a free implementation we could use locally?
The advantage of using an online service is that contacts will look the same across machines. It might suck if that isn't the case.
> The advantage of using an online service is that contacts will look the same > across machines. It might suck if that isn't the case. Of course it would run the same avatar generation code across machines, to get identical results.
(In reply to comment #14) > > The advantage of using an online service is that contacts will look the same > > across machines. It might suck if that isn't the case. > > Of course it would run the same avatar generation code across machines, to get > identical results. Sounds good.
I'm going to highly push for Gravatar, at least as an option. It's a closed service, yes, but it's a useful one. It's now the de facto place for updating that little icon that goes with your email address. I implemented Gravatar on extensions.gnome.org and haven't heard any backlash.
Created attachment 231797 [details] Google does a simple Initial + Color background for fallback Another possibility for avatar-less contacts is to do a simple color hash + overlaid initial.
gah, why don't I have an image? I should have an image.
*** Bug 704855 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 278020 [details] initial-based avatars for empathy. After talking to Allan and Jakub I have made some mockups. This is a mockup for empathy's contact list. See also: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/Avatars#Objectives
Created attachment 278021 [details] Revamped system avatar ..a mockup of the new system avatars. More info at: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/Avatars#Objectives
Because Gravatar is a user tracking service, I would be very disappointed if its use was enabled by default anywhere in GNOME, where we are otherwise working hard to protect the privacy of users. E.g. if Contacts starts showing Gravatars, then Gravatar is going to know who is in your address book.... There is an alternative. Libravatar uses the same Gravatar API, is already well-adopted in the open source community (e.g. Fedora infrastructure), and avoids this major privacy issue.
(In reply to Michael Catanzaro from comment #22) > Because Gravatar is a user tracking service, I would be very disappointed if > its use was enabled by default anywhere in GNOME, where we are otherwise > working hard to protect the privacy of users. E.g. if Contacts starts > showing Gravatars, then Gravatar is going to know who is in your address > book.... > > There is an alternative. Libravatar uses the same Gravatar API, is already > well-adopted in the open source community (e.g. Fedora infrastructure), and > avoids this major privacy issue. Agreed, although it’s unlikely any progress will be made on this one for a while.
Today also got acquainted with libravatar and it deserves more attention than Gravatar for this application. Of course, if you want, Gravatar could still be offered as a secondary service for those who want and understand the risks.
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/folks/issues/26.