Fwd: [Pidgin] #552: Description disappeared from field bottom of the contacts list

[Nathan Walp]

Sean Egan wrote:
> On 5/2/07, Luke Schierer <lschiere at pidgin.im> wrote:
>> On Wed, May 02, 2007 at 11:49:36AM -0700, Sean Egan wrote:
>>> deryni doesn't remember but recalls it being an "overwhelmingly
>>> popular move." I think it was a dumb move. Discuss.
>> One of the frequent complaints with the early betas was that you could
>> not return from away.  In tracing this, we discovered that people
>> actually could and were returning from away, they were confused by the
>> fact that the status message was preserved.  changing this behavior
>> fixed this "bug" for significant numbers of users.
> 
> Probably more AIM users unable to disassociate "away message" from
> "away." /me stops before this turns into another "paper vs. clock"
> debate. :)
> 
> The problem with the change is that it makes the behavior I
> prefer---status messages distinct from status---inordinately
> difficult. You have top copy (explicitly, just highlighting won't do
> the trick), the status message, change the status, then paste the
> message back.
> 
> The old behavior made it impossibly easy for me, and really trivial
> for others (hit delete). Is the concept of an available message really
> so confusing to people that this change is warrented?
> 
> -s.

Can this be a plugin?  Honestly, the old behavior irritated me greatly. 
  I don't think it's a common occurance to change your type of status 
w/o changing the message.  You're not going to go from "Away/In a 
meeting" to "Available/In a meeting" or "Available/Anyone want to chat?" 
To "DND/Anyone want to chat?"  it just doesn't make sense.

-Nathan