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Decibel is a new communication framework for KDE4, the next major release of the K Desktop Environment. Decibel aims to integrate all communication protocols into the desktop. As of now they have all their contacts in different applications: AOL, MSN, E-mail, Skype, etc. Decibel wants to put all contacts in one place and make it easier for the user to manage and communicate with his/her contacts.
For example Alice wants to talk to Bob. Alice requests to start a connection to Bob and a service manager takes in the requests and choose the best way to communicate to Bob (depending on telephone number, e-mail address, etc), and opens up a connection to Bob. This way Alice can contact her friends no matter what protocol they are best contacted with.
[edit] Features
Decibel functions as a desktop agnostic daemon that uses the Telepathy protocol for communication protocols. But Decibel adds features on top of Telepathy to reduce effort and complexity needed in integrating real time communication into applications. Like Telepathy, Decibel uses D-Bus to offer services through, meaning any D-Bus aware application can take advantage of Decibels services. Decibel is able to manage desktop specific actions, protocol configuration and account management. Desktop specific actions would including launching GUIs written in the desktop native toolkit, like Qt or GTK+, or using the desktop's Personal Information Manager to store passwords and other account information.
[edit] Use in KDE 4
Decibel wasn't ready for 4.0 release. It's planned to be used fully in Kopete by KDE 4.2. Both Kopete and Pidgin will be making their current protocols available through the telepathy specification while official telepathy components mature.
[edit] See also
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