This is my new constructive idea.

[Luke Schierer]

On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 12:28:43PM -0400, Evan Schoenberg wrote:
> 
> On May 19, 2007, at 8:12 PM, Andrew Rodland wrote:
> 
> >It's about tearing out the "send" button,
> How often do you type a message and then click send?  Me, I hit  
> enter.  That button is a waste of space.
> 
> >refusing
> >to map keys like any normal app
> Key mapping is handled by GTK+.  You can remap your keybindings to  
> pretty much anything.

You do realize that the definition of "normal app" is not standard
across our user base, right?  That a KDE user's idea of "normal" or
"standard" key bindings is not precisely the same as a GNOME user's, and
that neither precisely match a Windows user's.  I suspect, seeing this
here, that you are either a Windows user or a GNOME user.

Most, but not all of Pidgin's keystrokes match GNOME.  This puts it at
strongest varience with Windows and OSX.  But for all such speciality
environments, my strongest suggestion is and has been for many years
that we finish the core/ui split (which we now have with 2.0.0), and
that a dedicated UI be written around libpurple for that environment.
While the GNOME one might be rather similar to the Pidgin one, the
Windows and KDE ones might well be markedly less similar.  For OSX, of
course, there is Adium already, and it *does* differ in noticable ways
to meet the needs of OSX users better than the Pidgin UI would. 

> 
> >, sending people to text config files for
> >tasks that should be easy,
> I can't recall seeing anyone directed to manual editing of  
> preferences in the past year on this mailing list, anyways.  Perhaps  
> you could explain which preferences are 'hidden' such that they can  
> only be modified via text editing?

There are one or two "hidden preferences" most notably for the tooltip
delay, which Windows users hit because of a GTK+ bug.  We also send
people to edit a text file when they want to modify their GTK+ theme,
since no other way really exists to do so.

For the older Unix people in our user base, this is something neither
new nor intimidating.  For the newer users, it is more likely to be
intimidating and confusing. 

> 
> >replacing _all_ of the icons with indistinct pastel blobs that give no
> >hint as to their meaning (ooh, it's a square and a circle!),
> Only a subset of icons was changed to "pastel blobs".  At some point,  
> any visual representation of an abstract concept is arbitrary; so  
> long as it is arbitrary and consistent -- as it is in Pidgin --  
> that's perfectly fine.

I can't agree that this is what we have done. We have a door, a clock, a
notepad, a couple chat bubbles, and a few other icons.  We have only one
or two highly abstract shapes.  This is in marked contrast to Adium,
which uses colored circles; I am not sure if trillian still uses a
similar UI.

> 
> >replacing "Send As" with the less capable "Send To"
> No idea what discussion surrounded this change, but in general this  
> is consistent with Pidgin getting things done in the most direct way  
> possible.  If you are one person, you should be concerned with the  
> destination of your messages; the source should be handled as  
> automatically as possible.

This was done in direct responce to bug reports.  While you might
dislike the change, the Send As menu confused significant numbers of
users.  Many thought, looking at it, that you could send a message to
any buddy from any account.  Others wondered why it was there at all,
because it "doesn't do anything" (such users tend to only have one
account of a given protocol).  The Send To menu on the other hand does
something much more intuitive, it gives you the option to send to any
buddy in the contact.  It should result in significantly fewer bug
reports and questions.

> 
> >replacing "Auto Login" with "Enable"
> >without considering whether it could be painfully tedious on a shared
> >profile
> Sounds like a problem with how you've set up your computer to me.   
> All modern operating systems, and windows XP as well, let you set up  
> multiple users whose preferences won't be shared.  You should do this  
> if multiple people use your computer.
> 

Pidgin has _never_ handled shared config directories well at all.
Groups have _always_ beeng global for example.  The move from "Auto
Login" to "Enabled" perhaps forces you to realize this, to deal with
it, but it reflects no _change_ in the way Pidgin works, or in the fact
that shared config directories have _never_ been supported. 

> -Evan

luke