An important, controversial issue!

[Sean Egan]

On 4/26/07, Ethan Blanton <elb at psg.com> wrote:
> I don't think this is a good idea.  The logical Aim "away" state maps
> more closely to Jabber's "away", and not "extended away", in practice.
> This sort of special case breaks our "Principle of maximum
> uniformity", I think.

That totally depends on the client you use. Psi uses "extended away"
the same way we use "away." Google Talk uses "away" the way we use
"idle," and doesn't use extended-away at all. I'm not sure off the top
of my head what other clients do.

> We should pick one, and stick with it.  I think this has turned into a
> bike-shed issue; it's really not that important.  As was pointed out
> earlier in this thread, both symbols are essentially arbitrary, and
> have meaning only in historical context.  If someone comes forward
> with a symbol that makes people say, "THAT means away!", then by all
> means, we should take it -- but in the meantime, a clock is as good as

Luke's argument is that the clock has meaning other than its
historical context, that it's a symbol that makes him say, "THAT means
idle!"

-s.