"Office Hours" plugin for pidgin/purple - published & linked.

[Kyrian]

Etan,

Thanks for all this info, much obliged.

In general, assuming I read it right, you are recommending an approach 
of disconnecting as I currently do, but setting the user's status within 
Pidgin (but not in the now-disconnected protocols) to be eg. 'Offline 
Office Hours' instead of 'Away' or 'Available' using the "Status" and 
"SavedStatus APIs", as a means of indicating what has happened, rather 
than producing a pop-up message, or appending into each conversation 
that it's happened. I like the idea, as it's not intrusive, even if the 
implementation is more complicated. However I also like the idea of a 
pop-up dialogue that says 'Reconnect' or 'Ignore' when this has 
happened, although I'm not sure there is a justification for it if 
changing your status back to 'Available' will accomplish a re-connection.

I also take your comments in regards not closing windows when the 
protocol account is disconnected to mean 'yes, it will continue to 
behave that way, even though it is not a documented "feature"'.

In the context of this plugin, I am a little concerned about what would 
happen with accounts that the user has configured but disabled, and in 
other esoteric states, but this may turn out not to be a problem to 
begin with, after all a disconnected account won't show the 'Offline 
Office Hours' status to remote users anyway. Obviously I'm not using any 
connect/disconnect methods that affect all accounts, as that would just 
be asking for trouble, conversely I would hate to think of the plugin 
being used by burglars to determine when someone's office is empty ;-)

That being said, there's a lot to digest and test in your email, so I'll 
come back if there are any further queries.

K.