IRC improvements (was: Group windows by account type)

[David Balazic]

Hi!

Just a few notes from me about IRC:

 - /help lists the "me" command twice ;-)
 - I miss the  "xxx set the topic on x.y.zzzz to xyz" line when
   joining the channel. Must other IRC lcients show it.

Regards,
David

> -----Original Message-----
> From: support-bounces at pidgin.im 
> [mailto:support-bounces at pidgin.im] On Behalf Of Ethan Blanton
> Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 3:22 AM
> To: Jo-Erlend Schinstad
> Cc: support at pidgin.im
> Subject: IRC improvements (was: Group windows by account type)
> 
> There were several things you liked; I'm glad to hear that, but
> there's not much to do there.  ;-)  These are the things you didn't
> like, or wanted to see different.
> 
> Jo-Erlend Schinstad spake unto us the following wisdom:
> >  There are some things that has to be changed or fixed in order for
> > Pidgin to be a good IRC client though. For one thing, notices _must
> > not_ be opened in their own windows. Notices are not usually very
> > important and the default behaviour in all other clients, is to not
> > open them in new windows. Also, there is a side effect; all ctcp
> > replies are notices and therefore also open their own windows. This
> > must be changed. Actually for IRC account types, numeric 
> messages and
> > notices should be sent to one dedicated window, and I think this
> > window should have the same name as the account in question.
> 
> I agree that the notice behavior is very annoying.  This standard
> "server window" solution was previously not reasonably possible due to
> limitations in the libpurple API.  Now that we have persistent
> conversations, though, there might be a reasonable solution to this,
> without writing a bunch of support just for IRC.  Someone should look
> into that.  Please create an enhancement ticket on the bug tracker
> (http://d.pidgin.im/) for this.
> 
> > Speaking of windows. It should be made possible to group 
> windows based
> > on account _types_ and not only by accounts or groups. This way, I
> > could have all my IRC channels, which are on several different
> > networks, grouped together in a window. I realise that I can
> > accomplish this by grouping the IRC channels together and open new
> > conversations in windows based on groups. However, this makes it
> > difficult to see which networks the different channels are 
> on, making
> > it easy to /join #channel on the WrongNet. That, of course, could be
> > worked around by giving all channels an alias, like 
> #Ubuntu at FreeNode.
> > But this feels awkward and requires quite a bit of configuration. In
> > any case, being able to group windows based on the account type is a
> > usable feature. I hope this will be implemented.
> 
> This is trivial to do, and a plugin could be written to do it in a few
> minutes.  In fact, I think there's already an extended conversation
> placement plugin floating around someplace, which may even do this.
> Does anyone know?
> 
> We're not likely to add this as a default placement option, as one of
> the goals of Pidgin is to *hide* protocol and account differences, not
> glorify them.  I don't see any harm in including an extended
> conversation placement plugin in the distribution, though.
> 
> > And of course, we need to have a way to see and set channel modes,
> > kick, ban, op and voice users, set topic, etc. Pidgin does have this
> > for XMPP Rooms, doesn't it?
> 
> /commands work normally in Pidgin IRC.  You can use /mode for bans,
> op, and voice, as well as /op and /voice for the latter, there is a
> /kick command, etc.  See /help in any IRC window for more information.
> The topic can be set by clicking on the room topic, or with /topic,
> either one.
> 
> There are not as many right-click menu options on the channel user
> list as people would like, and I intend to add a pile of those, but I
> haven't gotten to it.  See ticket #264 on the tracker.
> 
> > I think these changes should be fairly easy to implement, but they
> > would make Pidgin a really suitable IRC client for a lot of people.
> 
> You're right, most of them wouldn't take very long.  (The server
> messages window might.)  This would be a great place for a new
> developer to sink their teeth into Pidgin.  ;-)
> 
> Ethan
> 
> -- 
> The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have 
> no remedy
> for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
> determined to commit crimes.
> 		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
>