libpurple theme support improvements

[John Bailey]

On Sat, Jan 17, 2009 at 12:32:41PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > If you would read how any of this is implemented.  You'd know that there
> > are loaders so it can load themes in any format that a loader has been
> > written for.
> 
> Good, but it's still not supporting the sound theme spec, right?

If you want it to support the sound theme spec, write the loader for it.
Gary already covered why it's currently not implemented.

> I've no stomach to follow everything that happens in the Pidgin
> project, but it looks like you designed your own format. What would
> you think if Sun decided to implement their own format instead of
> using the standard ODF?

They did.  It predates the existance of ODF.  Note also that ODF was not
a "standard" format when it was created.

> I would think that's wasted effort, and not playing well with others,
> and that's exactly what I think of libpurple's own format.

Following the sound theme spec would be wasted effort, as it's still in
draft and still very new.  It can and probably will change before
becoming final, and not all changes are backward-compatible.

Supporting the theme format with the library you mentioned means that
we would have to add yet another external dependency, of which we have
far too many already.  Considering that this library is also relatively
new, this causes problems with distribution inclusion for Ubuntu,
Fedora, RHEL, etc.  While I don't really care much about what
distributions think of our dependencies, there is the point that it
takes time for new libraries and applications to be accepted into
distributions.  We also have Windows to contend with, which means we'd
have to keep up with and distribute yet another library there too.

I also don't like the idea of Pidgin using the same sounds as all other
applications on my desktop, as it then makes it unclear if, for example,
the responsible application is Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, or any
other application I might have open.  The theme spec seems to indicate
that supporting the theme format requires that all supporting
applications use the exact same sounds.

I've also on numerous occasions stated my distaste for XDG-related
specs, particularly their components that deal with $HOME, and that
distaste applies here too.  If that means we don't "[play] well with
others," then so be it.

John
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