Jabber vcard icons

[Mark Doliner]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Ethan Blanton<elb at pidgin.im> wrote:
> Mark Doliner spake unto us the following wisdom:
>> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 6:16 PM, Richard Laager<rlaager at wiktel.com> wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2009-08-10 at 14:44 -0700, Mark Doliner wrote:
>> >> I kind of see the rationale for wanting to have a
>> >> different icon in each location where you log into your jabber
>> >> account, but you really only have one vcard, and it is meant to
>> >> describe your person, not your location.  It seems like Pidgin should
>> >> inherit the vcard icon from the server, instead.
>> >>
>> >> What do other people think?
>> >
>> > I don't know anything about the Jabber protocol, but if we "inherit the
>> > vcard icon from the server", how does a user change their vcard icon?
>>
>> You would have to set the icon while you're logged in.  Which means if
>> you try to set it while you're not logged in, your change is lost,
>> which is sad.
>
> So ... how about this.  It's consistent, but complicated.  It's sort
> of a riff on the Adium trick of keeping a notation that the icon was
> set offline.  I'm not actually sure I like it.
>
> When setting the buddy icon while online, just do the normal thing,
> and update the server to match.  No big deal here.
>
> When setting the buddy icon while offline, do the Adium thing and set
> a flag that remembers this, then update the server at next signon.  No
> big deal here.
>
> When signing on when the buddy icon has *not* been changed locally,
> but the vcard is changed, pop up a dialog that displays both icons and
> says "Your buddy icon has changed.  Do you want to keep the new icon,
> or revert to your locally stored icon?".  Put a "remember this
> decision" checkbox in there someplace.  Update per the user's
> preferences, and if the user chooses to remember the decision, store
> the hash of both icons and the user's decision.  Don't prompt again
> until one of those hashes changes.
>
> I don't think I would actually recommend this, but it seems to solve
> the problem in a logical fashion.

I agree with all of this.  I think something along these lines would
indeed solve this problem.  And yeah, I'm not sure it's worth it.
It's a pretty minor problem ad I'm a slave to simplicity.

-Mark