Pidgin Refresh

[Tres Finocchiaro]

I'd like to add to this discussion.

Pidgin's popularity is affected directly by the popularity of in-browser messaging as well as the popularity cell phone SMS-style messaging.

The UI is pretty f****ing good when compared to other GPL products.  If you'd like it improved, please contribute constructive advice (screenshots, code snippets, GPL cross-platform UI libraries that ate available to make it more modern).

One of the easiest things in the world is to speculate and criticize. I've used corporate instant messengers that come with a vey hefty licensing fee.  They suck in comparison to pidgin.

Pardon for being so frank.

-Tres

On Oct 27, 2012, at 3:23 PM, Kevin Stange <kstange at pidgin.im> wrote:

> On 10/27/2012 07:47 AM, Steven Ferreira wrote:
>> It should be rewritten and learn of his mistakes and perhaps follow new
>> design guidelines.
> 
> In our development process, we rewrite parts of the application
> periodically as new features require it, though some code that has
> worked well hasn't been touched in a long time.
> 
> We are not planning to rewrite the entire application.
> 
>> The importance of Pidgin will become smaller and smaller.
> 
> In the time I've worked on Pidgin we haven't been terribly concerned
> with the "importance" of Pidgin so much as that it's a good IM client
> that does what our user base and developers like it to.
> 
> We are not driven by sales or marketing and don't really care what our
> competition is doing, unless something they do strikes us as worth
> bringing over for the benefit of our users.
> 
> We have never been a GNOME application and have always resisted the
> suggestion simply because it put constraints on how we design and
> develop Pidgin.  For that same reason, becoming part of any other
> desktop environment is unlikely to happen.
> 
>> As Pidgin uses GTK as a toolkit it should only concentrate on the Linux
>> platform. It should use GTK3 and even follow a completely new design
>> concept.
> 
> The 3.0.0 release of Pidgin will support GTK3.  I can't recall whether
> we finalized the decision to make this a requirement or an option.  I
> think stability of GTK3 for Windows is a part of this decision.
> 
>> 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
>> - ...
> 
> Our user interface is about as simple as I can stand without losing
> functionality.  Putting the contacts and conversation in the same window
> does not seem like a good design decision.
> 
> Removing the menu bar would require removing functionality or just
> covering the windows with buttons for various features, which is
> certainly not a simpler UI.
> 
> Conversation themes will be coming with webkit integration in version 3.0.0.
> 
> At the core of Pidgin is libpurple which is already a robust framework
> for supporting IM services.  Dumping all that work in favor of using
> telepathy seems awful.
> 
> It would also not be a nice thing to do to several other projects that
> depend on libpurple.
> 
>> 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.
> 
> There is no chance of Pidgin moving from plain C to any other language.
> 
> Kevin
> 
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