An important, controversial issue!

[Nathan Walp]

Sean Egan wrote:
> So, my question for Nathan and Dennis (and I guess Mark, even though
> he apparently doesn't use Pidgin :-P ) is: does your belief (which I
> share) that "clock" is a stronger metaphor for "idle" than it is for
> "away," hurt your ability to use Pidgin? Does it legitimately confuse
> you? Is it important enough to come up with some other icon without
> any existing metaphor?

I'm using Pidgin here at home, and Gaim 2.0.0 beta 6 at work (until some 
kind soul wants to build me a win32 snapshot ;-))

The switching back and forth certainly causes me a bit of trouble, but 
no worse than switching operating systems.  I've gotten used to the blue 
meaning away.  I haven't gotten used to the clock, but to the blue.  And 
then there's extended away, which some of my Jabber contacts use, which 
have the paper.

I don't know how important any of this is.  I've "gotten used to" a lot 
of things in my life, but that doesn't make all of them good changes.

Now that I think about it, reversing the 2 icons almost makes the most 
sense to me.  The one thing we all seem to agree on is that 
extended-away means gone for a significant amount of time.  Why isn't 
that the clock?

-Nathan