Showing tab bar when there is only one

[Shreevatsa R]

I'm sorry to dig up an old issue, but I hate Pidgin's behaviour of not
showing the tab bar when there is only one conversation.

I have not been complaining, because the workaround is simply to keep
open a dummy conversation with myself, but I'm wondering why I have to
do this and why the default is so. I think there were comparisons to
Firefox and gedit earlier, but I think both of them (Firefox at least)
provide an option to keep the tab bar displayed always, and many people
turn this on very quickly. 

More importantly, the tab bar in Firefox and gedit is only cosmetic, so
it doesn't matter much, but in Pidgin the tab bar is how I get the "is
typing" notifications (its changing colour), and with the tab bar gone I
have no way of telling if the other person is typing. (The tiny graphic
in the far right which I have to stare at for several seconds to see if
it is being animated or not doesn't count.)

So actually, this is not so much a complaint about the tab bar, as a
plea to have some useful typing notification even when there is only one
tab open. Maybe the infopane could change colours, but a Finch/Gtalk
style line of text near the input window would be even better. But
failing that, the tab bar would be nice.

Thanks,
-- 
Shreevatsa R