Gnome Telephony

With the rise of technologies such as VoIP and Bluetooth, Telephony is becoming increasingly desktop based. To keep pace with this growth and to allow for future developments, Gnome requires a Telephony framework.

The Gnome Telephony framework will cover all aspecs of Gnome's interaction with telephone systems, including by not limited to VoIP. Ideas already proposed include:-

  • tel: URI handler (RFC3966)

  • Incoming call notification
  • Addressbook lookup via caller ID

  • Dashboard integration

  • Bluetooth integration

Some of these, such as the URI handler, will take little work to implement, while others (Dashboard) are a longer term prospect.

A key theme in this proposal is the abstraction of the desktop - telephone interface. There are vastly different ways of accessing a telephone network from a computer, however Gnome should present a uniform interface for all of them. These range from VoIP (GnomeMeeting ,Linphone ) clients, bluetooth phones to modem dialers. In the same way that a user can click on a mailto URI and have their favourite email client opened, they should be able to click a tel: URI and place a call using their default call handler.

Similarly, a call recieved via the same system should trigger a response from the desktop:- displaying the caller's Evolution Addressbook entry or a Dashboard entry.

With this framework in place, new developments in both software and telephone systems can be integrate easily in the future.

First Steps

Having spoken to JeffWaugh and DavydMadeley at Canberra2005 Gnome-Miniconf, I apparently need to chase up the URI with GnomeVFS team.

Luis Villa wrote a quick plug for ProjectSoylent. This seems really well suited to make use of GnomeTelephony.

DavydMadeley (of GNOME Applets Fame) has expressed an interest in developing "Click-to-Dial" features for GNOME.

Davyd has also suggested developing a gnome.org SIP network, utilising LDAP, to enable Developers to call each other for free. This would also include the ability to make conference calls. GnomeMeeting, which now has SIP support, would be an obvious choice as a client, although any hardware SIP phone could also be used.

For more information or to offer assistance contact AdrianWoodley, <Adrian@ScreamingRoot.org>.

Comments

It might be worth considering integration with freesmartphone.org. -AndersFeder 2024-04-18 05:55:13

Attic/GnomeTelephony (last edited 2013-11-26 20:29:28 by WilliamJonMcCann)