Scopes on the 16.04........

rubencarneiro

Lately I've been receiving messages about scopes, asking me why i didn't release the scopes like i released on 15.04.
So there goes the answer:

Ubports Dropped scopes on the 16.04 " you may notice that simple scopes like my music and photos are missing".
Is was not my decision, there's a foundation and a team behind the development that made that decision.
If you love scopes you should make a feature add on the source code repos of the project.

So this is project driven by community to the community so make it count, and make you voice been heard by the developers.

For me scopes brings life to Ubuntu.
That's my opinion.

A Former User

@rubencarneiro

I can't say that I love scopes, but I can see the potential in them. And I agree, they certainly bring a dynamism to the system.

Gerd

@rubencarneiro I am about to update now to 16.04 by OTA-4. I will surely miss the scopes, especially the today scope, that was a bit of a game changer and made my Uphone outstanding from 2015 on. Thank you for your work in 15.04. I am no programmer, so I cannot estimate the amount of work to relaunch the scopes. I will propose the return of the scopes.

dobey

Scopes are not yet dropped in 16.04, though they are however deprecated, and will be removed at some point in the future.

Scopes infrastructure is difficult to maintain, and writing new scopes is not easy. They were also growing in complexity to the point of practically being apps, but of course they are not apps. This only adds to the confusion, and pushes to increase complexity until the point where scopes actually are apps. It is not easy to maintain such a thing, especially when the whole of Ubuntu Touch is being maintained by very few people now, rather than the hundreds who were developing it before.

Please do not suggest people to spam the GitHub issues in support of any specific feature request.

That some people are fond of certain scopes is recognized, but scopes as a whole as they stand today, are not good for Ubuntu Touch. We need to make some compromises and sacrifices in order to get the platform into a more maintainable state, where things can really move forward. Removing scopes will help greatly with that.

jezek

Hey, we are smart people here (I hope :D). I think we can figure it out, so the sheep is fed and the wolf stays whole.

Idea that attacks me first:

make app, that runs scopes (something like launcher, but only scopes)
make a possibility for user to decide which app is "default/home". That means which will be focused if we unlock the phone, make some home gesture, use home button, ...
fun

A Former User

I seem to've been mulling this all day today.

I guess if Scopes are to survive, they really need to be distinct from apps. Maybe their USP is the ability to draw multi-disparate pieces of information together onto a "page"...

The thought I had was: in the same way as we have app, libertine and anbox "scopes", perhaps we could have a container in Scopes where we could easily configure multiple rss feeds (and pull data from other places in other ways too). BUT customizing a scope would need to be as easy (says he) as building a webapp.

rubencarneiro

@dobey Why Not if it could be a feature request. Look i've been arround where since fairphone 2 was not the fairphone you know today running ubuntu touch, and since the begining marius wanna to do something amazing with the os, and we all did, but always taking in mind what user "cummunity" would like, thats why we creted something on github code " repos " called a feature request ".
There are people that wanna to develop and use scopes. Why shouldnt they?

I recomend people that want scopes to be free and add feature request on github.

Lakotaubp

I think for now that @dobey has explained the current situation fully and whether we personally think that is right or not the future and success of the project as a whole has to come first. Which will benefit everyone in the end.
I for one, and have said so before , really enjoyed the today scope and appreciated the time and effort @rubencarneiro put in to keeping these scopes going for so long. I don't think however repeatedly bombarding github with requests is going to help or change the situation.
From the responses to this thread already it is clear people like the feature and have ideas and spins on the theme of scopes. Why not therefore create a new thread in the Off Topic section of the forum to discuss it further and see what happens and where the ideas run. Maybe @rubencarneiro you would like to start that.

Pulsar33

@rubencarneiro said in Scopes on the 16.04........:

For me scopes brings life to Ubuntu.

Hello,

For me, absolutely not. What brings life to Ubuntu (Touch) is the (developper) community, the native root status of the user and the ability that he has to modify the system himself, thanks to the Terminal application and the "rw remount" capability. And finally the "no google" choice ...

I never use scopes and they won't miss me. You launch every App in one (or maximum two) click(s). But you have to make several drags to find the scope you want, then when you click on what you search, it will often open an App (video or such ...) What is the benefit ?

Scopes don't disturb me, I only ignore them. I have removed the Today's scope and my phone opens on the App launcher. But if maintaining scopes is difficult and time consuming for the developpers, I prefer that they give their time to more important features !

Best regards
Pulsar33

A Former User

@pulsar33 I think you put your finger on the essence of Linux & the whole UBports project: it's all about enthusiasts tutuing around with things and making things that they want.

Lakotaubp

I have moved this thread to Off Topic. I think it is just going to keep going round in circles and not achieve anything further, also I want to avoid a repeat of the bluetooth thread issue.
Please feel free to carry on this discussion here or probably better for someone to start (as mentioned earlier) a new thread in Off Topic to discuss further scope options. Thank you for your understanding.

Sconio

All right, I prefer to stay on vivid.

dobey

@rubencarneiro I don't have a problem with you making a feature request issue on github.

My concern is when you make a post on here calling for others to follow suit. We don't need a hundred feature request issues to be filed for the same thing. We don't need a hundred useless "me too" comments on the same issue. Spamming developers with notifications will not produce your desired outcome.

It's not the correct way to handle any situation. It's rude and abusive, expecting developers to cede to the demands of a few people who want something to remain, that the core developers have all already agreed to remove for the furtherance of the project.

What the "community" wants only matters when the community is doing the work. If there's no community doing the work, but only making demands of the developers in charge, then that is an abusive and toxic community that I would certainly not want to be a part of, and would advise others to not be a part of it either. Scopes have a significant number of problems for building a converged platform.

If there are certain features you wish to see remain, which were a part of what scopes brought to the platform, then please organize those thoughts into concise points of data. Make a survey to find out what scopes people used most, how they used them, and which they would want to keep around. Take that data and try to organize it to separate things on a technical level. Come up with some alternate ideas that preserve the most meaningful bits for users, while discarding the underlying complexity and difficulty of maintenance. Find some way to bring back the actual features people want, rather than just ranting about how bad you think it is to remove "scopes" when nobody can even precisely define what exactly a "scope" even is.

Lakotaubp

I think now that all that can be said has been said on the general theme of scopes as they existed before. There may well be new ideas or projects that come out of this discussion but this one has I feel run it's course.
Please feel free to start a new Off Topic thread on what may be pulled from scopes with an aim to the future.
Thanks again to @rubencarneiro for their work on scopes and to everyone else for their thoughts and input on scopes and lets see what may develop in the future.