My Google Summer of Code Ideas

[Etan Reisner]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 01:42:53PM -0700, Cory Brassington wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> I'm a student interested in contributing to Pidgin for a GSoC project. I've
> used Pidgin for MSN quite a bit recently and I've thought of a few ideas
> that I'd like to implement.
>
> 1. MSN status messages. - getting/setting status messages in Pidgin. As far
> as I know, Pidgin currently doesn't support these.

As Felipe indicated the work necessary for displaying these exists but is
not yet deemed ready for general usage, working to help clean up that code
so that it is ready is a fine goal (but as you indicate later on, and for
reasons I'll explain then, we aren't much looking for MSN projects this
summer).

> 2. MSN Plus sounds support. - make a plugin that allows "MSN Plus" sounds to
> be heard and possibly also sent in Pidgin.

The question with MSN Plus is whether or not MSN Plus "abuses" the MSN
protocol. pidgin has a policy of doing our best not to send things that
the official clients can not send (or in some cases even understand)
because it makes us easier to detect (among other reasons).

> Then again, I've also heard that MSN projects are not exactly a high
> priority for this year's SoC. Still, I really miss having the status
> messages or an MSN Plus sounds plugin and I'd love to be able to implement
> them over my summer break.

We have had an MSN project in both of the previous two years neither of
which has resulted in any usable code yet (for various reasons). The only
MSN project I would personally give my vote to would be a project designed
to fix up the current MSN code so that it is usable. Such a project
however may or may not be easy and has a significantly higher (in my
opinion) skill requirement from the applicant.

> Any feedback is appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Cory

    -Etan