Persistent chat rooms

[Sean Egan]

This is an idea that has been requested a bunch in one form or another
for a while now. I described it in #pidgin yesterday and want to
formalize it here and see what people think.

Right now you can add a chat room (IRC channel, Jabber conference,
etc.) to your buddy list, where double-clicking it will join the room.
Additionally, if you right-click it and select "auto-join," that room
will be automatically joined when the account connects.

I'm proposing changing "Auto-join" to "Always-in," or "Persistant," or
some word that actually describes what's going on.

When this setting is on, Pidgin will join the chat when it connects
and stay in the chat as long as the setting is on. When you close the
chat window, you will not leave the chat. Double-clicking the icon in
the buddy list will merely re-show the window, with the full backlog
and everything. You'll get alerted when someone says your name in the
chat. We'll probably want at least one more blist icon to represent
the different chat states. We'll also show the chat topic in the buddy
list.

I think this sounds like a generally useful idea, and think we should
do it. Is it worth over-riding the "Auto-join" functionality with this
entirely, or just adding a new option in addition to it?

-s.