Pref Migration Summary

[Mark Doliner]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:03:12 -0400, Ethan Blanton wrote
> Kevin M Stange spake unto us the following wisdom:
> > Additionally, we have "smileys", "plugins" (probably not worth copying
> > since these will not load), and "icons" (are we going to disown the old
> > cache, or copy it?).
> 
> This sounds like a great time to leave the icon cache behind, and
> create an icon cache that doesn't suck.  That said, I don't want to
> hold up releases getting this right.  :-)  It is a *cache*, though,
> and we should be able to leave it behind with minimal, if any, bad
> effects.

I think it's used for caching the icons of your buddies as well as the icons
you've set for yourself.

For your buddies, I think most of the protocols will correctly refetch the
icon if the cached icon is missing.  However, Jabber doesn't have a widespread
standard for avatars yet and Gaim still only supports vcard-based avatars. 
And I don't think Gaim automatically fetches vcards for your Jabber buddies. 
Which means if the icon cache directory is deleted then users will need to
manually request vcards from their buddies if they want to see their avatars.
 It's pretty minor.

We cache the icons you've set for yourself in case a user moves or deletes the
file that was chosen as their icon.  This is also minor, but people would need
to set the icon again for their accounts.

-Mark