ticket #414

[Ethan Blanton]

louis roskind spake unto us the following wisdom:
> I have friends and co-workers that have both sametime and other accounts,
> sometimes one account will be set to status "away" and another will be
> "active" for the same person, or they will be logged in with only one
> account at a time. this lets me know if I can contact them only for
> business purposes or also for recreation. I can also use it to tell
> whether specific co-workers are logged in from home (using aol or jabber)
> or in the office (using sametime) with just a glance at the buddy list.
> If this could be brought back as an option that is disabled by default it
> would help me a great deal as well as make many people happy.

I don't understand from this post how your buddy list is set up, but I
see two good solutions to this problem under the current system,
depending on how your buddy behaves.  Assuming that your buddy sets
the appropriate accounts to away when they should be away, and the
appropiate accounts to available when they should be availalbe, you
could do the following:

+ Buddies
  + John Smith
    . johnsmith (AIM)
    . ur_daddy_1234 at hotmail.com (MSN)
    . john_smith at bigcorporation.com (XMPP)
    . John_Q_Smith (SameTime)

Pidgin will automatically show the "most available" buddy in the
contact named "John Smith", and you will never have to think about,
nor worry about, this again.

If your buddy does not set away/available appropriately, then you can
do the following:

+ Buddies
  + John Smith (Home)
    . johnsmith (AIM)
    . ur_daddy_1234 at hotmail.com (MSN)
  + John Smith (Work)
    . john_smith at bigcorporation.com (XMPP)
    . John_Q_Smith (SameTime)

Either one of these seems to solve your problem in a more elegant and
correct way than messing with protocol icons.  As has been mentioned
*numerous* times in #414 (not that anyone who comments on it actually
reads it, of course), the fact that your buddies are using different
protocols at home and at work is an artifact, not a rule.  It could as
easily have been:

+ Buddies
  + John Smith
    . HotTeenGirl18 (AIM)                               - Home
    . JohnQSmith (AIM)                                  - Work



-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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