Use case for per-protocol icons

[Sean Egan]

On 8/7/07, Josh Williams <yurimxpxman at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm actually starting to like this idea, believe it or not. For those
> protocols which don't support it, perhaps you it could send a message
> like "**I WANT YOUR ATTENTION**" or some such message =)

Of course you're starting to like it. It's a much better idea than
remembering you have to type /nudge on MSN and /buzz on Yahoo.
Abstracting away the differences in which protocols – making it
totally irrelevant which protocol your buddies are using – is a design
goal of Pidgin.

> I mentioned the smiley shortcuts in another thread, but none of the
> developers seem to care about the fact that the smiley shortcuts are
> different from one standard (meaning the proprietary) IM client to the
> next. For instance, in AIM, the surprised face is =-o but in MSN,  the
> shortcut is :o . I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've gotten
> these messed up since you removed the protocol icons.

That's a good point; the toolbar menu helps a bunch, but if you can
come up with another solution, that'd be great.

> Okay, then I have a suggestion for the emoticons. The shortcuts should
> be automatically replaced if they're incorrect for that protocol, such
> as the surprised smiley that I mentioned above.

Oh, you do have another solution! That's a good one; we can probably do that.

> 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.

I'm sorry. I don't know where I got the idea that you thought removing
the protocol icons was a terrible idea and should have never been
done.

We've done a whole lot as far as introducing these alternatives, and
2.0.0 represented as far as we could get with our own use patterns.
Naturally, after release, we get to see how other people use it, find
out what problems they have, and address those. It's impossible to
foresee every problem everyone is going to have.

Complaining that you want the old way back, without considering any
other, better, way to do what you want does not help us with that.

Glad to be on the same page,
-Sean.