A blog about someones first time with a Linux desktop which mentions Pidgin

[Etan Reisner]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:16:25AM -0700, Sean Egan wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 9:27 AM, Etan Reisner
> <pidgin at unreliablesource.net> wrote:
> >  I remain very much against intentionally breaking the uniformity we've
> >  been working on improving here simply because we can't agree on a good way
> >  to handle this (which I think we may actually have found, more on that in
> >  a minute).
>
> As I said, not everyone agrees with me :)
>
> I don't think it's necessarily non-uniform to have each protocol
> specify the sanest way to describe an account. We already do this all
> over the place: an AIM account is described by a screen name; an XMPP
> account is described by a screen name, domain, and resource; an IRC
> account is described by a screen name and a server. I just don't
> understand what's so sacred about a user name such that it must
> *always* be called "username" no matter how many "domains" and
> "servers" and "resources" you have after it.

Most people, myself included don't think requiring separated input fields
for XMPP and IRC is a good thing. Ideally I'd say we wouldn't have such
entry field distinctions (it would certainly simplify things). The only
reason I've so far been against doing it for XMPP is that it makes parsing
the entry somewhat more annoying and may or may not contribute added
confusion for users with bizarre username portions of the JID.

This isn't a question of being sacred it is a question of avoiding
needless complexity, complexity which has potential repurcussions in other
parts of the interface, when we can come up with something that doesn't
need it.

Not to mention that it makes talking about it easier. It is infinitely
easier to say "Put your username/UIN/email in the Username box." or "What
do you have in the Username box?" than it is to say "Put your
username/UIN/email in the username/UIN/email box." or "What do you have in
the username/UIN/email box?"

    -Etan