[Pidgin] #330: Emoticon inserting in conversations needs thinking about

[Pidgin]

#330: Emoticon inserting in conversations needs thinking about
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  Reporter:  bluemonki     |       Owner:  kstange           
      Type:  enhancement   |      Status:  new               
  Priority:  minor         |   Milestone:                    
 Component:  pidgin (gtk)  |     Version:  2.0               
Resolution:                |    Keywords:  emoticons emoticon
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Comment (by kstange):

 I can see what the problem is, but what is the correct fix?  Traditional
 emoticons don't need padding because they're a sequence of non-letter
 symbols, which never (or at least quite rarely) appear in the middle of a
 word.  The whole idea is that it ''is'' a pattern match.  I feel like this
 is just a matter of people picking ill-conceived patterns to be matched.
 I'm not sure "hi" is a special case we should be expected to have to
 handle, and I'm not sure what would be considered "appropriate" boundaries
 by which to break things up.

 I can envision the case where an emoticon is preceded or followed by other
 non-emoticon characters (or at least characters that aren't part of
 ''that'' emoticon).  People using the entry widget to select them are
 reasonably likely to enter more than one back to back, which would display
 fine in the input area, but would fail to parse in a receiving Pidgin
 client, unless we modified our input widget to forcibly insert spaces
 between emoticons.  (That may not be a horrible idea, as back-to-back
 textual emoticons are unreadable.)   We'd also introduce a complication to
 parsing emoticons we support now that actually contain spaces.  I believe
 ICQ defines *IN LOVE*, for example.

 Is there a way for recipients using Pidgin to block custom emoticons?  I
 think this is a better argument for that than anything else.

 Just for my own knowledge, if I define an emoticon for "hi" in a modern
 official MSN client, does it match "this?"

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Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/330#comment:2>
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