Use case for per-protocol icons

[Luke Schierer]

On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 11:46:28AM -0400, Josh Williams wrote:
> 
> See, I really don't mind losing the protocol icons so much. What
> bothers me is the rude responses I've gotten and the fact that it was
> released _without_ these alternatives you speak of. It reminds me of
> when Microsoft decided to remove the "classic toolbar" from a lot of
> programs by default, such as IE7. They did not introduce _any_
> alternative; they simply removed functionality from the default
> settings (and they totally screwed up the placement if you *do* turn
> it on, but that's beside the point).
> 

Microsoft spent several years working on Vista in secret.  When they
released betas, late in that process, they realized their design had
issues, and vista was delayed for a very long time.  MSN is the least
reliably set of IM servers out there.

*shakes head*  Open source works differently.  We make our mistakes in
public, and we release things that aren't quite done yet.

If we have been rude, it is because you have been slow to listen to
things we have said many times.  This is said to excuse neither of us. 

We released in an unfinished state, yes.  That has been true of *every*
release in this project's history.  We did so because it was not so bad
that it could not be used, and we were fustrated with our very long gap
between releases.  We also did so because we were unsure precisely what
we did need to do for the next step in finishing the changes we had
made.

For example, file transfer improved alot with the 2.0.0 release, what
bugs remain?  Or another issue, we chose 6 states for the menu somewhat
arbitrarily, are more needed? Fewer?

We just consolidated the formatting toolbar.  Did we do so well? (it
seems that the answer is mixed in this case, there has been at least one
change since the 2.1.0 release to try to fix that).  

The info pane is incomplete, but should it be finished, or scrapped.
The old placing of the buddy icon was badly broken (if you did not leave
it to size itself), so what 3rd UI should be implemented if we do scrap
it?

These are all questions that have been and are being profitably
discussed on this list and in the irc and jabber channels. 

luke