Status of main branch, and debugging on Windows

[Jean-Sébastien Guay]

Hello Jorge,

> On the MSN side, IIRC, the problem is the change from MSNP15 to MSN18 
> which changed all the mechanism used to send data. Here, we have a 
> dilema, invest time on MSN knowing it is dead and it is just a matter 
> of time for MS to shut down the servers or fix the issues and hope 
> they don't kill the servers soon?
>
> You can guess I have been on the "it is dead, it doesn't worth a 
> minute" side. =P
>
> Anyway, it would be nice to get that fixed but... the time... and MS, 
> and MSNP is really really undocumented and it is a pain.

Yes I've read about this. I wanted to see for myself. Because sending 
from Pidgin to Pidgin (still through MSN) the smileys show up fine. So I 
think that explanation doesn't fit... (unless there is something I don't 
know, which there is only a 99% chance of :-) )

I guess that would happen if Pidgin used MSNP15 all the time for 
example... but then why would that prevent Pidgin from displaying 
smileys that are already downloaded locally? It's just a replace the 
string with the smiley kind of thing in that case, isn't it?

I'm sure I can have a look, see if I can deduce something... We'll see 
if anything comes out of it.

As for MSN shutting down their servers, as far as I know they have no 
plans to do that. They have discontinued the MSN client, not the 
protocol or the servers. When you log in to Skype using a Windows Live 
ID / hotmail address (as opposed to a Skype account), you are still on 
the MSN servers using the MSN protocol (at least that's my understanding 
from reading what I could on the subject).

But in my case, my motivation doesn't even take that technical fact (or 
speculation) into account - I have a group of users who would rather 
continue using MSN as long as they can, than find an alternative (Skype 
is a no-go because of the client mainly, and other services I have 
suggested such as Jabber seem even less reliable than MSN...). So I 
would like to fix the one problem they have using MSN through Pidgin 
(the smileys when communicating with the official MSN client) because I 
personally hate having to keep them on the 2.7.4 version (I know - 
ancient!).

I know it's a minor thing, and again, I wouldn't have this problem if 
they just all accepted to use Pidgin but some stubbornly prefer to use 
the official MSN client... Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.

J-S

-- 
______________________________________________________
Jean-Sebastien Guay              jean_seb at videotron.ca
                     http://whitestar02.dyndns-web.com/