[Pidgin] #3801: Change status for various accounts

[Pidgin]

#3801: Change status for various accounts
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  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>
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