Image chat over XMPP and better UI for custom smileys

[Ma Xiaojun]

Hi, all.

I love Pidgin, XMPP and Linux quite a lot.
But it seems that some proprietary alternatives have better UX currently.
Check the following links for inspiration:

http://line.naver.jp/
http://www.wechat.com/
http://www.whatsapp.com/

Regardless of the superficial styling difference, I find Pidgin and
XMPP combo is particularly weak in two aspects.

1. Image chat is not supported.
I noted an old ticket: https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/10056

2. custom smileys UI is naive.
I guess we can reference WeChat in particular:
http://www.wechat.com/en/features.html#emoticons

Put it in another way, we need features:
A. To support the concept of smiley package.
Check the following page for an example of smiley package, Onion Head
smileys; smileys based Onion Head character.
http://blog.roodo.com/onion_club/archives/cat_109038.html
A bigger collection:
http://comic.qq.com/z/qqface/

B. To handle the case when there is 10,000 smileys.
This is indeed possible if we allow smiley package to be installed or
the smiley manager is as good as Firefox bookmark manager.

C. To make shortcut optional (I don't know whether the shortcut
requirement is imposed some protocol detail of XMPP)

Cheers,
Ma Xiaojun