text formatting in coversation window (and new layout#@!)

[Wes Morgan]

There are a couple of tickets (#1718, #1873) on this issue, but I haven't 
seen any discussion or comments on them... I had been tracking the 
monotone version of pidgin, but yesterday I installed the FreeBSD port 
instead. Now I find that pidgin cannot bold, italic or underline 
formatting to any fonts inside the conversation window or the input box. 
Going back to the monotone version doesn't fix the problem. I've been over 
my system with a fine-toothed comb and *nothing* has changed. However, 
looking at the source, obviously nothing has changed there either. Somehow 
the bold tags (I'm guessing as applied in gtkconv.c:5267-5393 or 
thereabouts) just don't work any more. I'm very hesitant to say it's a 
pidgin problem, but through what underlying packages does this text go to 
be rendered? GTK obviously, but where else could the problem creep in?

On another note (way off topic), the new conversation box layout is 
terrible. I don't use a buddy icon and most of my contacts do not either. 
I don't use tabs either, and what I have is a window with the title bar 
having a small version of the state and my alias for them, the directly 
below it yet another state icon and then their actual IM name. Why this 
duplication in such close proximity? I'm losing a good 10% of the window 
to what is likely useless information. Throw in tabs, and you have a tab 
with their name on it, so now you have the information practically in 
triplicate. Why not put the buddy icon and some other information on the 
tab itself, so disabling tabs disables it altogether. Anyway... Even 
without tabs on, right clicking on the "pseudo-tab" brings up a 
tab-related menu, which makes no sense (and is probably a bug?)

Please, please, make an option to disable it altogether!