[GSoC 2012] Planned API changes - RFC

[Mark Doliner]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 12:58 AM, Elliott Sales de Andrade
<qulogic at pidgin.im> wrote:
>> Many new users doesn't know, where to type in gg number, because
>> "Username" (translated to "Name of user" in Polish) and "Alias" are
>> both good candidates.
>
> That sounds like a translation issue.

In English you can kind of overload the word "username" to mean "gg
number."  But what if there is no Polish equivalent?  What if there is
no word in Polish that can be shoe-horned into this interface to mean
both "username" and "gg number"?

> If the user has already added an
> account, then shouldn't it be obvious which field to use in this
> dialog? (I suppose you could argue adding an account is a rare
> do-it-once thing though.)

You're asking users to remember that "in Pidgin I'm supposed to
provide a gg number in any field that asks for username."  I'm sure
some people will remember, but there are certainly casual Pidgin users
or less computer-savvy folk who will forget.  If we change the label
here then users won't need to do that mental mapping.

>> Another solution would be just setting focus to protocol selection
>> input, instead of username field.
>
> This dialog doesn't even appear to display the hint anyway, so the the
> widget with the initial focus is just a red herring. Changing the
> focus and adding the hints here as well is certainly a possibility.

Isn't that what we're talking about?  I think Tomasz is proposing that
he'll add it (or improve the label, if we decide to go that route).