[Adium-devl] libpurple: personal message != status message

[Peter Hosey]

On Sep 10, 2008, at 06:27:03, John Bailey wrote:
> I still see no reason to treat this as anything other than a status  
> message…

Reading the MSN-pecan ticket, it sounds like some users (perhaps  
coming from one or both of the official Microsoft clients) are used to  
a “personal message” field, and are looking for and not finding the  
same thing in Pidgin/Adium.

It's a case of different expectations. You and I are used to status  
state and status message together in a single status record; the MSN/ 
Windows Live expatriates are used to status state and personal message  
separate.

Conceptually, I think the Pidgin/Adium is better: you are either  
available doing something (Available, “Eating at my desk”) or away  
doing something (Away, “At In-n-Out”). Adium provides UI to edit the  
current state (and save it or not) if the user wants to change either  
property alone; it could be more obvious, but I think it's a solid  
foundation.

Aside from “user expects everything to work like MSN”, what's the use  
case for separate editors?