At the Desktop Summit, 2011, a libgdata BoF was held to work out where to go for the 0.12.x releases. Here are some notes from that BoF, and some follow-ups to what was discussed.
Much of the discussion was based around the Google Documents API, since all those present (who weren't libgdata developers) were primarily interested in using the libgdata's Google Documents API. Consequently, the focus of the 0.12.x series will be on Google Documents, and on implementing version 3.0 of the Documents API.
It was discussed which features would be most important to get in with that Documents work. They're roughly listed in descending order of importance here:
- Thumbnails for Google Docs — bug #656970
- Caching for viewing documents offline — not in the scope of libgdata
- Improve documents API re. not having to switch cases between document types — bug #656971
Label support in Google Docs — already exists using <category> elements and the existing folder API
- GDataDocumentsDocument → non-abstract, deprecate its subclasses — bug #656971
- Also see about tidying up the export_format for downloading documents
- Look into storing arbitrary metadata with uploaded documents (perhaps abuse labels?) — can't find a way to do this
- Add support for favourites — already exists as the “starred” GDataEntry categories, see bug #656973
- Add support for sharing/collaboration (see GNOME Documents mockups)
- Changelogs — bug #656974
- Tidy up IDs of documents — bug #656972
- Merge eds and GNOME Documents authorizers into libgdata — bug #656976
- See if Google Docs has notification support — bug #654652
We also discussed other APIs which libgdata could potentially support. There weren't many ideas proposed, but of those which were, the Google Geocoding API received some interest. Unfortunately, its license terms prevent it being used unless in conjunction with Google Maps, which rules out most uses for it on the desktop. Aside from this, the API is simple, doesn't use Atom and doesn't require authentication, so is somewhat outside the scope of libgdata.
It was questioned whether the Geocoding API has support for type-ahead predictions. It doesn't, although Google have a paid-for Prediction API which seems relevant.
The only other suggestion was a weather API for use in the Shell clock. Google don't have an official weather API, but they do have an unofficial one which is used by their iGoogle stuff. Unofficial reverse-engineered documentation exists for it on the internet. However, the API is simple, doesn't use Atom and doesn't require authentication — so again is outside the scope of libgdata.