GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 674456
Choosing “Information” for a contact in Empathy shows a confusing Gnome Contacts window
Last modified: 2014-04-01 09:37:17 UTC
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #674392 +++ Right-clicking a contact on your Empathy contact list and choosing “Information” pops up Gnome Contacts with information on that contact. The first time I did this, I got a “what address book do you want to use?” window, which I didn't really understand. I don't want to choose an address book—I just wanted to check Jonny's birthday. So, I chose to use a local address book, and now Gnome Contacts shows me three contacts: Cosimo Alfarano, Thomas Thurman, and my own SIP phone number. I don't know why I only have these three. In Gnome 3.2 all my IM contacts showed up in Gnome Contacts. Right-clicking Jonny Lamb in Empathy and picking Information pops up Gnome Contacts with a card for Jonny, which shows me his avatar, name and JID, an “Add to My Contacts” button, followed by an ugly dark grey bar containing his avatar again, “Do these details belong to Jonny Lamb?”, [Yes] [No]. I don't understand why there is an “Add to My Contacts” button here. Jonny is already a contact. I just clicked on him on my contact list. And it's not at all obvious what the question being asked means. Of course these details belong to Jonny Lamb. What will pressing Yes do? What will pressing No do? (I believe that what's happening behind the scenes is: I have two Jonny Lambs on my roster, one on my corporate XMPP account and one on my personal XMPP account. So presumably what's being asked is, do I want to link these two copies of Jonny in Folks.)
Created attachment 212405 [details] Screenshot of the confusing Contacts window.
Adding Allan in CC as those are mostly design issues.
(In reply to comment #0) > +++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #674392 +++ > > Right-clicking a contact on your Empathy contact list and choosing > “Information” pops up Gnome Contacts with information on that contact. > > The first time I did this, I got a “what address book do you want to use?” > window, which I didn't really understand. I don't want to choose an address > book—I just wanted to check Jonny's birthday. We need to run that to ensure that there's a writable address book. It wasn't designed with people external activation in mind, so we'll need to review that. Please file another bug. > So, I chose to use a local address book, and now Gnome Contacts shows me three > contacts: Cosimo Alfarano, Thomas Thurman, and my own SIP phone number. I don't > know why I only have these three. Seems like a bug. > In Gnome 3.2 all my IM contacts showed up in > Gnome Contacts. Yes we changed it. > Right-clicking Jonny Lamb in Empathy and picking Information pops up Gnome > Contacts with a card for Jonny, which shows me his avatar, name and JID, an > “Add to My Contacts” button, followed by an ugly dark grey bar containing his > avatar again, “Do these details belong to Jonny Lamb?”, [Yes] [No]. Grey bar ugliness is a bug. > I don't understand why there is an “Add to My Contacts” button here. Jonny is > already a contact. I just clicked on him on my contact list. I think it should be clear that he's not in your contacts. There should be separate headings in the contacts list for 'My Contacts' and 'Other Contacts'. > And it's not at all obvious what the question being asked means. Of course > these details belong to Jonny Lamb. What will pressing Yes do? What will > pressing No do? ... Let's look at that in another bug. > (I believe that what's happening behind the scenes is: I have two Jonny Lambs > on my roster, one on my corporate XMPP account and one on my personal XMPP > account. So presumably what's being asked is, do I want to link these two > copies of Jonny in Folks.) You shouldn't get the 'do these details belong to' bubble in this context. That's only for linking personas with those that are in the writable store.
I've reported a couple of these bugs separately: * https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674588 * https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674590
In my case, I press "Information" in empathy, I'm presented with that choice. Really, I'm folks/telepathy/empathy developer and I've no clue what to tell, how are users expected to reply? Then it just display a perfectly white window. No contacts at all, no message telling why. Do we really want to continue this error of making a difference between local and IM contacts? Why can't we just display all contacts from folks? That's the whole point in having multiple sources of individuals in folks and merging them...
Oh, also, if I go to "Change address book" it shows only "local address book", so why did it ask which address book to use if there is only one?
Nowadays we do what we can to avoid showing the address book dialog on first run, however there are still some situations where it is hard to avoid. In these cases I think the best we can do is make it clear what the dialog is asking, and how your selection will affect the app. The other thing that would help here is if the string in Empathy read "View in Contacts" or "View Contact" - this would prepare the user for the switch to another app. If there's anything else we can do here, let us know. In the meantime I'm closing this.