Let's Push Things Forward

Sven just posted the draft for the libsoylent API (the soon-to-be-rockin' "People library").

Basic design goals

• People cohesion!:
  
  • Consuming applications won't have to manually associate peoples' accounts on various protocols (which is actually a lot tougher than it sounds)
  
  
• Make it trivial to:
  
  • Read and (where applicable) write contacts' attributes
    
  • Start a synchronous or asynchronous communication channel with any contact
  
  
• Base around libebook's EVCard:
  
  • Gets us vCard's flexible support for arbitrary key/value pairs
    
  • Brings the benefits of vCard's wide adoption in software in general
    
  • Shares the standard Gnome addressbook with Evolution and the rest of the desktop
  
  
• Simplicity:
  
  • Should be easier to use than EVCard directly yet avoid EContact's inflexibility
    
  • Leverage Telepathy's power while limiting its exposure to the libsoylent-consuming app

We'd really appreciate any and all constructive feedback (preferably on the mailing list, but comments in either of our blogs are, of course, welcome).

If you work on an app that could be enhanced with simple, powerful access to people and their metadata, I've got some questions for you:

• Is the API missing anything that you would expect you'd need (convenience functions included)
  
• Do you see any fundamental design flaws?
  
• Does some function just plain look weird? Let us know! :)