Regarding the protocol/status icons...

[Casey Harkins]

James wrote:
> I see a lot of new features and changes as well.  However, the fact that 
> I can no longer see the protocol icons of my buddies on the buddy list 
> is a bit disappointing.  I have read about others' opinions on this at 
> the links below, and I do understand both sides' views.

I don't think you read carefully enough. The justifications you make for 
having protocol icons on the buddy list were addressed in ticket #414.

> is using is similar to what most other users said.  A lot of my buddies 
> have both AIM and MSN accounts, and both their icons either appear at 
> the same time when they are online, or not appear at all when they are 
> not online.  I also tend to use short aliases for their names as well, 
> such as their first name.  So now when I see both "John" status icons on 

Have you tried using the contacts feature of pidgin? Right-click on one 
of John's accounts and select "Expand". Then drag John's other account 
into the expanded list. Now this buddy will appear once on the list. 
Pidgin will try to do the right thing when working with this buddy. If 
you initiate a conversation, it'll choose whichever of his accounts is 
most available. Eventually, Pidgin could choose which every protocol 
best supports file transfers when you try and send a file.


> After reading the "uniformity" design guidelines 
> at http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/DesignGuidelines , my question to you 
> is why are you removing something that no user has complained about?  

from http://www.pidgin.im/~seanegan/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/momentum.html

"There was just as similar a vocal minority about introducing protocol 
icons as first-class citizens as there now is about removing it. People 
dislike change."

> Why are you fixing something that is not broken?  The concept of 
> uniformity is great, but like all other concepts involving going from 
> more complexity to simplicity, you lose information, specifically the 
> "What IM is he/she using?" in common chat terms.  Furthermore, 

This information is not useful to you in the buddy list. If you think 
there is a reason that its useful, file transfers for example, the 
problem really lies elsewhere. Relying on the user's to know which 
protocols work better than others for transferring files is certainly 
more confusing than removing the protocol icons.

> I hope you don't take these comments in a negative way.  I wanted to 
> give you a truthful opinion and offer suggestions on how Pidgin could be 
> made better for everyone as a whole.  GAIM has been the only IM program 

Thanks for your opinion and I certainly don't consider them negative. 
However, there isn't anything new in your comments than has been 
addressed previously. As has been mentioned in previous discussions, if 
someone really needs this behavior, they certainly could try and write a 
plugin to add the behavior.

AS you've only been using Pidgin for a day now, I suggest you try it out 
for a while and see if you get used to it. I also highly recommend using 
contacts rather than having 3 separate buddy list rows for "Joe" and 4 
for "Jane".

-casey