Previously we had a ViewModel class which was responsible for little more than creating an ObservableScope. However, since this ObservableScope would be created implicitly upon view model construction, it became a tad bit harder for callers to remember to eventually end the scope (as you wouldn't just have to remember to end ObservableScopes, but also to destroy ViewModels). Requiring the scope to be specified explicitly by the caller also makes it possible for the caller to reuse the scope for other purposes, reducing the number of scopes mentally in flight that need tending to, and for all state holders (not just view models) to be handled uniformly by helper functions such as generateKeyed$.
This is a start at implementing the call layouts from the new designs. I've added data types to model the contents of each possible layout, and begun implementing the business logic to produce these layouts in the call view model.
As Element Call grows in complexity, it has become a pain point that our business logic remains so tightly coupled to the UI code. In particular, this has made testing difficult, and the complex semantics of React hooks are not a great match for arbitrary business logic. Here, I show the beginnings of what it would look like for us to adopt the MVVM pattern. I've created a CallViewModel and TileViewModel that expose their state to the UI as rxjs Observables, as well as a couple of helper functions for consuming view models in React code.
This should contain no user-visible changes, but we need to watch out for regressions particularly around focus switching and promotion of speakers, because this was the logic I chose to refactor first.
Timo K