tech support

[Peter N. Spotts]

On Sat, 17 Nov 2007 11:14:56 -0500
"Joe Conway" <ccjoseph at email.unc.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I couldn't find any tech support contact info on the Pidgin website,
> so I posted here. 
> 
>  
> 
> I just installed Pidgin 2.2.2 on a Windows XP machine. I want to use
> it for my AIM account. The only way I can get any of my buddies to
> show up on my buddy list, in Pidgin, is to have AIM open first. If
> AIM is closed, the Pidgin buddy list comes up empty and I can't do
> anything. This defeats the purpose of having Pidgin because I have to
> have AIM and Pidgin installed, when I only want to use Pidgin. Also,
> I can't use tabbed windows in Pidgin. My conversations, all appear in
> separate windows. I'd like to have all my conversations be in one
> tabbed window. How can I fix this so I can use Pidgin, have it work,
> and uninstall AIM? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
> 
> Joe Conway
> 
> -------------------
> 
> Joe Conway
> 
> Email: ccjoseph at email.unc.edu
> 
> IM: JoeConwayR
> 
>  

Hi Joe,

And welcome to the main way to get tech support on open-source
software...via the mailing lists. It's not clear from your note how
much you've worked your way through Pidgin's menus, but if you prefer
to have your conversations show up as tabs in one window only, you can
set that from Preferences=>Interface. I'm assuming -- always dangerous
-- that Pidgin's layout on Windows is the same as it is on Linux. Once
in the Interface section, make sure you have "Show IMs and chats in
tabbed windows" checked. Then look a bit farther down the same settings
tab for "New conversations" and set that to "Last created window." That
should ensure that all conversations appear in new tabs but only in one
window.

As for having Pidgin pick up your buddy list, I'm not sure what may be
causing that problem. My version of Pidgin automatically picks up
my list, although when I ran it for the first time, I did have to
wait a few seconds for Pidgin to fetch the buddies from AIM's server.
Just out of curiosity, is there a setting in AIM's IM client that
allows you to choose whether to store the buddy list on your machine
only, or on AIM's servers as well? If so, that could be why the
server (and Pidgin) only picks the buddy list up when AIM is active --
your settings may be instructing the program *not* to store the buddy
list on the server. If that's the case, you might change that setting. 

I hope at least some of this helps...

With best regards,

Pete

-- 
Peter N. Spotts | Science reporter
The Christian Science Monitor
One Norway Street, Boston, MA 02115 USA
Office: 617-450-2449 | Office-in-home: 508-520-3139
Email: pspotts at alum.mit.edu | Amateur-radio call: KC1JB
www.csmonitor.com | www.peterspotts.net

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