[Pidgin] #3801: Change status for various accounts
Pidgin
trac at pidgin.im
Thu Nov 1 14:18:27 EDT 2007
#3801: Change status for various accounts
---------------------------+------------------------------------------------
Reporter: neok | Owner: lschiere
Type: enhancement | Status: closed
Priority: minor | Milestone:
Component: unclassified | Version: 2.2.2
Resolution: invalid | Keywords: status
Pending: 0 |
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Comment (by deryni):
dmitriid: Managing anything more than a global status is *not* a simple
action, not if you want to be able to save them, name them, reuse them,
and
have the saved statuses store the status of each account separately. And
it
only took me five lines because I was repeating myself in an attempt to be
extraordinarily clear, and to explain the wording we used which you seemed
to
think didn't explain what it was for.
It takes exactly one dialog to set a custom status for just one account,
the
New... dialog. The thing you need to note (and I think this is part of the
issue behind your confusion/annoyance) is that pidgin is not designed to
be
used for a disjoint set of accounts all of whose statuses change at a
whim. It
is designed to be a multi-account multi-protocol client for a single
person
who is generally in a single status, while simultaneously allowing people
with
more complex status requirements to express them. The New... dialog (and
this
is the real key) does *not* apply a status to only one single account, it
was
not designed for that. If you want *that* ability then you want the
mystatusbox plugin, or a similar plugin that you make yourself.
"Miranda, SIM (insert your favorite IM here): Protocol context menu ->
Status
-> Offline" and "Pidgin: Open up global status menu -> Click 'New...' (new
global status? new custom status? what?) -> Click 'Use a different status'
->
Select required protocol -> Select offline -> Click OK -> Click use" are
*NOT*
identical usages. This is the key point I brought up a minute ago. In
miranda
and sim you are changing the status of *exactly* one account simply to
sign it
off, *that* usage in pidgin is Accounts->account->Disable. The pidgin
usage
above is how you apply a new (or copied from the current status) global
status
to *all* of your accounts while adding a new exception to one account. See
the
distinction? It is this distinction in usage that is causing you your
confusion and frustration.
"Set a new custom status for a single account" is not an action the New...
dialog performs, there is no interface for doing that action in pidgin by
default. If you want that you want the mystatusbox plugin. Having now
realized
where your confusion about the New... dialog lay I would like to suggest
that
you go back and re-read my comments about it again and see if they make
more
sense now.
The '"status as an icon" paradigm' as you called it fails horribly to
scale to
multiple accounts on the same protocol, let alone to scale to the numbers
of
accounts that are typically used by pidgin users. This is essentially a
non-starter of an idea as far as pidgin is concerned (though a handful of
plugins over the years have added support for it).
The mystatusbox plugin is exactly the feature you want but not in the
interface you want, you are free to create a different plugin with the
interface you want that does the same thing that the plugin does.
pidgin is not interested in adding the complexity of instantaneous per-
account
status changes to pidgin itself, especially given the fact that very few
people actually ever need it, if you want it you are free to create a
plugin
for it and host it anywhere you would like (maybe the plugin pack people
will
even take it). Plugins are perfectly reasonable ways to distribute and
enable
features that the majority of an applications users do not need, will not
use,
and which feature would only confuse them. (Yes, it really will confuse
people, it happened. Not to mention the addition of the global status
stuff
being almost universally praised as a good addition to pidgin.)
The fact that your distribution of choice doesn't include the plugin pack
is
your distributions fault, not ours. pidgin should not incorporate every
feature or plugin everyone asks for, it is a burden of work on the
developers
that we are not interested in taking on as well as making for a mess of an
application.
I hope some of my comments above clarified where exactly things were
getting
all muddled for you, I fully welcome any specific suggestions you might
have
as to how to make things in pidgin clearer or easier to use, and I want to
thank you (since this really has overall been a pleasant exchange) for
being
generally reasonable about this discussion and not devolving into yelling,
flaming, insults, and the like.
--
Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/3801#comment:14>
Pidgin <http://pidgin.im>
Pidgin
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