Fw: [Spam] Re: Pidgin Refresh

Sat Oct 27 17:47:00 EDT 2012

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2012 20:19:53 +0100
From: "Dave Davenport" <dave.davenport at usa.net>
To: "'Shlomi Fish'" <shlomif at shlomifish.org>
Subject: RE: [Spam] Re: Pidgin Refresh

I tried Pidgin and passed it over in favour of Yahoo Messenger. The main
reasons were that YM supported:
	Many foreign languages, including Vietnamese
	The interface is reasonably intuitive and nicer than Google/MS
	No requirement to have any other online presence
		the Yahoo account is not intrusive
	Gmail, etc. moved toward integrated communications via email
platform
	Additional features such as -
		File/photo sharing (more than one method available)
		Web cobrowse (via Webex) - indespensible
		Scratchpad (simple whiteboad)
	Just simply tons better than Google & MS offerings

I understand that YM is drifting in the same direction as Google and that
might spell the end for my relationship with Yahoo. If you can clone YM and
support integrated web cobrowsing (as opposed to using a 3rd party plugin
like YM) then you could have a winner, but anything less is likely to be a
spectacular flop. The big bug in TM is that the sponsor adverts sometimes
cause the client to bomb out: it has been better with the latest (final
release) but for some reason cobrowse functionality disappeared at the same
time. (Fortunately I have several installations of YM so I left the others
at the previous version).

Anyway, you could dispense with the averts. Charge 100,000 people $5 for
life and you have a nice income for a few years!

Good luck
Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: support-bounces at pidgin.im [mailto:support-bounces at pidgin.im] On Behalf
Of Shlomi Fish
Sent: 27 October 2012 15:03
Cc: support at pidgin.im
Subject: [Spam] Re: Pidgin Refresh

Hi Steven,

On Sat, 27 Oct 2012 14:47:11 +0200
Steven Ferreira <steven.ferreira91 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Pidgin Project,
> 
> I'm a big fan of the Pidgin project but also of the elementary project
too.

What is the "elementary" project? This returns nothing:

https://www.google.com/search?q=elementary%20instant%20messaging

> Pidgin needs some kind of refresh because it's slowly losing all their
main
> users.

Citation needed. Right now it seems this mailing list is active with user
questions and people appear to be actively using it. I have switched from
Kopete to Pidgin a while ago, and I didn't look back - Pidgin is simply so
much
better.

> It should be rewritten and learn of his mistakes and perhaps follow new
> design guidelines.

Rewritten? Why? What is so wrong with the old codebase that requires a
write?
And what are those new design guidelines that you speak about, and why are
they
superior? I happen to like Pidgin's user-interface, and many people like it
too.

For why complete rewrites are a bad idea, see:

* http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

* http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000348.html

> The importance of Pidgin will become smaller and smaller.

We have a saying in Hebrew that after the destruction of the first temple,
prophecy was taken away from prophets and given to fools.

> On Windows nearly all users use Windows live Messenger, Skype and there
> will be so many other im clients in the Windows 8 appstore, so there is no
> need for Pidgin.

Well, Mainland Chinese users are primarily using
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ , and Pidgin fills the need for an
open-source client.

> On the linux platform we also have a lot of im clients like Skype, Emesene
> and even Empathy (which is very GNOME integrated), ...

Skype is proprietary and 32-bit only and is now owned by Microsoft (so its
future on Linux is uncertain). Emesene and Empathy are open-source as well,
and
competition is welcome. Personally, I didn't like Empathy too much - Pidgin
is
equally as fast, and much more usable, stable, and feature-rich.  

> 
> As Pidgin uses GTK as a toolkit it should only concentrate on the Linux
> platform. 

Why? Lots of people are using Pidgin on Windows and/or Mac OS X.

> It should use GTK3 and even follow a completely new design
> concept.

I suppose one can port Pidgin to Gtk+ 3. It does not mean it should run only
on
Linux though, because Gtk+ 3 is available on Windows and Mac OS X.

> I'm talking about the elementary design concept, it has no menu-bar and
the
> most apps are all simple to use.

Please no. I appreciate that desktop applications have a menu bar (including
Pidgin) and this is one of the reasons I hate Google Chrome/Chromium:

http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/46078.html

Regarding simplicity, see what I wrote:

http://shlomif-tech.livejournal.com/64318.html

> 
> At first Pidgin would start as a community project and later even as an
> official elementary project if it respects all the elementary guidelines.

Pidgin is already a community project.

> 
> Why i'm telling this ? Actually many GNOME distributions don't use Pidgin.
> Elementary is looking for volunteers to create a new im Client.
> They already started a provisional im client project called
> Graham<https://launchpad.net/graham>
> .

Well, GNOME have blessed Empathy as their official client (unfortunately if
you
ask me).

> 
> Features of this im client would be :
> 
> - Single window for the contacts and conversation
> - Conversation Themes
> - Super simple Interface
> - No Menu-bar
> - Using telepathy tubes
> - ...

Sounds really bad.

> 
> There are some of elementary mockups floating around like this
>
one<http://bassultra.deviantart.com/art/A-chat-app-293571950?q=gallery%3Abas
sultra%2F38618756&qo=23>
> .
> 
> I think actually there aren't a lot of elementary developers with an "im
> client developing experience" so please help elementary by contributing to
> Graham.
> Another possibility is to modify pidgin but for doing that it has to
follow
> the elementary standards like no menu-bar, the gui should be very simple
to
> use and it should be written as much as possible in Vala.
> 
> Please help the elementary project on creating an amazing im client which
> would be a serious competitor for Empathy.

We have one already and it's called Pidgin.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

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