Contacts API functionality

[SteveC]

Folks;

I just saw this posting in the Google Contacts discussion group:
"....As announced yesterday, the v2 support for Contacts, including a
new
object model was checked in yesterday, but not yet incorporated into
a
setup. There is also support for YouTube Subscription lists in the
new
YouTube object model checked in.

I will work on Documents support next and hope to have that done in
the next two weeks. That is a slight departure of what i thought
about
yesterday, but the new functionality in the Google Documents API
warrants an inclusion in the next release....."

This was from Frank Mantek concerning the .NET API.
This makes me wonder whether either YouTube subscriptions nor
Documents might be added to the v2 support of ObjC?
If Frank can discuss this planning publicly can't we expect the same?

Thanks!
Steve

[Greg Robbins]

v2 has a variety of meanings (core Google Data API protocol version, service releases, and other less formal usages.)

In general, all the available functionality should be in the Objective-C APIs fairly soon after their public release. But sometimes I'm not aware of what's been released, or releases have been done quietly or in stages. For example, occasionally new API versions are live on servers before they're publicly documented so the API changes can be tested before wide developer adoption.

If there's a released API that needs better support in the Objective-C library, just ask about it here. In most cases, if we know there's a need, we can get support out reasonably promptly. Trying to keep up on all the APIs takes a big effort, so it helps to focus on those that developers really will use.

In general, Google employees avoid talking about unreleased products or about product plans. That's not because we're particularly secretive. Rather, it is just due to any statement by us about future products invariably leading to someone considering that statement a promise or a guarantee. If bugs, design changes, legal issues, or resource constraints cause changes in our plans, as quite often happens, some users will end up disappointed.

[Frank Mantek]

Just like to comment on this.

These are open source projects, and each maintainer communicates with
the community in a way that he feels is appropriate. This has a lot of
factors, one of them is the frequency of updates. My motivation is
primarily based on trying to get the community involved, something
that seems to be the hardest part about maintaining an OSS project.
For .NET i normally try to release a new library in the 6-8 week
cycle, pending requirements and bugs found etc. It is now 8 weeks ago
(i released shortly before christmas the last time), and as it will be
another 2 weeks or so until i am done with this release, i like to:

a) let the people know what is going on, so that no one feels abandoned.
b) give them a chance to look into the svn trunk and give some early
feedback.

You need to realize that the .NET community is distinctly different
from the obj-c community. The SDK is delivered using a setup, most
developers do not use the svn repository. So i need to be more vocal
if I like to get feedback about new functionality.

Greg luckily does not have that problem. This user group has nearly 3x
as many posts, get's more views etc. So you guys are, by that measure,
a great community, given feedback voluntarily. And that is despite
the fact that the .NET lib is rather popular in terms of usage. Which
does not imply, with reverse logic, that if you guys start being
silent, he would start publishing his plans :)

To conclude, each community is different. And we each have our own
style doing things.

Frank Mantek
Google