[kill_dano]

Among many of the improvements that webOS 2.0 brought ages ago was that developers would be able to implement new synergy accounts into App catalog. A dev would be able to create a Facebook chat plugin and you would be able to hook it into synergy and chat with FB in the messaging app. Devs might have addded MSN, ICQ and many others. The idea was to allow the community to take over a lot of the work palm was being asked to do.

So what ever happened to this brilliant idea? It seems to still be implemented, being that when you add an account you have the option to 'find more...' in the App catalog, but there have never been any services available.

What are Palm's plans with this? Are they accepting submissions from developers? What's the hold up?! I want FB and MSN chat!

[jhoff80]

Someone needs to write the apps for it to work...

[jsgraphicart]

The option for developers is probably still there. My guess is that there aren't many developers around anymore to do it.

[Grabber5.0]

The truth is, the new implementation for synergy accounts is an ugly, buggy mess, so most devs are avoiding it.

[eblade]

I think most devs just don't understand the Synergy system, or aren't even aware of it. The docs make it seem pretty complicated, and if you're new to the platform, there's quite a lot to have to digest before being able to get there. Other than the "Sample Synergy Plugin" in the programming docs, I don't think I'd even come close to being able to get anything else working, at the moment.

I do like the rare integrations into Synergy that I've seen. Basically, so far, on sports calendars.

[Grabber5.0]

No, it really is a mess.

[eblade]

I assume that it just appears that way to me because I'm too newb to understand it. But I will hopefully soon, because I'd like to integrate it.

[crucialcolin]

It looks to me like its limited to the few protocols they already built into into the chat app. I was looking at the latest source code for imlibpurpletransport(which is the core of IM) from palm the other day and connecting only to aim, gtalk, icq, yahoo, and skype are fully implemented.

For example while google talk is in reality based off jabber its been limited in the code by Palm so it will only connect to google with a gmail username. Also they use some xmpp formatting tags that's google specific.

so my suspicion is while you can write code for new synergy accounts or services your limited to using one of those five protocols unless you write your own code in order to connect to a different protocol and then interface it with the chat/IM app somehow or compile another instance of libpurple to only be used with a given synergy account plugin.

It also doesn't make sense why Palm chose to strip down libpurple and limit it through coding practices like the google talk example as normal libpurple supports connecting to all protocols. Libpurple is the open source library behind many other multiprotocol IM apps such as Pidgin, Adium, Fitch, and Meebo.
http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple

[donniebaseball23]

With all of the people always asking when chat is coming to the facebook app, I would think someone could make at least a few bucks by coming up with it before the actual facebook people do. I know there's Mundu or whatever, but to have it built into synergy would be a huge bonus.

[johnnygewitter]

We have Synergy IM plugins. They have yet to be updated for the TP and the P3 though. I think NuttyBunny (who currently maintains the plugins) has no P3 yet and is busy with his "normal" apps.

[eblade]

Synergy can be used to connect to the existing apps. *As someone said above, though, it really is messy to figure out.

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities

[crucialcolin]

Yeah its quite difficult to figure out and documentation on it is pretty lacking.

Anyways adding to my previous post it looks like I may have jumped the gun a little bit with the chat or imlibpurpletransport. Actually its not that support is not there for other protocols as the libpurple library file itself is the same as it normally would be. Palm didn't modify that as far as I can tell although they may be using an old version. Its the code that Palm made that interfaces with libpurple.h and provides the UI functionality for the chat program that is extremely limiting.

If you were able to figure out how to reverse engineer some of that functionality and fix the limiting/missing parts then you could place it in your own synergy app as an individual plugin for each protocol. Again quite messy.

[sara.ramli]

I was on a similar path, trying to creating a Synergy plugin for Windows Live Services. While I agree that having to figure out, how I could write one for WebOS was itself a challenge (though I finally did), Microsoft did not make it easy either.

See this thread where I had given more details, as to why I (and probably others who gave it a try) dropped the idea.

http://forums.precentral.net/hp-touc...t-request.html

[eblade]

Sara, if you would be willing to share the basics in making a synergy messaging plugin, I think a lot of devs could use that as a springboard for lots of other projects.

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad using Communities