libpurple theme support improvements

[Felipe Contreras]

2009/1/17 John Bailey <rekkanoryo at rekkanoryo.org>:
> 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.

It's not about what *I* want, it's about what *you* (pidgin developers) want.

You don't seem to thrive for freedesktop compliance.

>> 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.

So? The point remains valid; it would be stupid to create a new format
when there's already a standard.

note: this was a hypothetical situation

>> 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.

Yea, maybe, it depends on much applications like Pidgin collaborate in
order to improve it.

> 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.

Bullshit. Distributions know the value of good libraries like
libcanberra, and it has been included in all major distributions:
Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE since a while ago.

Moreover, GNOME 2.24 includes libcanberra. So chances are most Pidgin
users already have libcanberra installed.

Windows support is a valid concern. It takes 61K in my machine, that
doesn't seem to be a huge burden.

> 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.

If you bother to read the spec you would see sound names like
"message-sent-instant", is it really a problem that there's only one
sound shared by all IM applications to send a message? If that's the
case you can always create custom sound names like
"pidgin-message-sent" although that would defeat the purpose of a
desktop theme.

> 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.

Excellent. You are accepting my premise; you don't play well with others.

-- 
Felipe Contreras