[Pidgin] #3956: Error Reading blist.xml

[Pidgin]

#3956: Error Reading blist.xml
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  Reporter:  noisyparker  |       Owner:  MarkDoliner                    
      Type:  defect       |      Status:  new                            
  Priority:  minor        |   Milestone:                                 
 Component:  libpurple    |     Version:  2.2.1                          
Resolution:               |    Keywords:  blist.xml, ubuntu, kubuntu, aim
   Pending:  0            |  
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Comment (by noisyparker):

 I had seen those in the 2.2.1 debug, but had hoped that the later version
 would give more information on where they were in the file. :(  When I
 eyeballed the file, however, I could see oddball characters at the end of
 one of the group names (instead if "iris" it says "irisè|"), so
 I figured they were it. They are not in the copy of my blist from my .gaim
 directory, but are added to the file by pidgin every time I run it. I
 assume that is because that is what AOL is sending, and that pidgin is not
 working around it the same way that gaim did. Personally, I would prefer
 that it provide the tools for fixing the problem but, if it does not, I
 would prefer that it keep working around it as gaim did. The current state
 is a bad compromise. I am going to run through what I did to get around it
 in my case, even though, in the end, it required that I use something
 other than pidgin to clean up the buddy list. I am hoping that it might
 indicate a place where pidgin is expected to be modifying the list on the
 AOL server, but is not, so that it might spare some future user all this.
 :)

 If I copy the blist from .gaim and start pidgin with it in place, pidgin
 starts properly... unless I have the AOL account that has that iris group
 in it enabled. If that is enabled then pigdin still starts w/o complaint,
 but displays a blank buddy list and has the message "Available - waiting
 for network conn..." in the status bar. I can disable and enable each of
 the accounts in the Add/Edit and they will connect. When I do that for the
 problem AOL account, it connects w/o complaint, but readds the funky group
 with the two characters tacked on the end to the blist.xml.

 In the buddy list, the funky group appears with a name that changes as I
 move my cursor over my buddy list (it takes on the name of various entries
 in my list). If I select rename on the oddball group name, nothing appears
 to happens. With some combination of selecting the option and clicking in
 the group again I can get it into the rename dialog. If I delete
 everything in the name, including the oddball characters, and type in the
 clean name again, I get a popup with no text and two buttons "Cancel" and
 "Merge Groups".

 If I cancel that and delete the copy of the group that doesn't have the
 characters from my buddy list, and then try to rename the funky version,
 it puts me in the rename  mode, and I can see the group name with the
 unexpected characters at the end. If I cancel that and instead rename it
 to some other group name ("foo"), it renames it. At this point, I noticed
 that the supposedly-deleted group was still in my blist file (which is why
 the merge group dialog popped up I expect). It is an empty group, though
 (<group name='iris'/>).

 If I restart pidgin at that point, it does that same "Waiting for network
 conn..." deal. When I disable/enable the problem AOL account, I see the
 renamed group "foo" and the version of group with the ever-changing name
 is back. I exited pidgin and edited the file to remove the renamed group
 "foo" and the empty version of the group that has the proper name, and the
 version that has the funky characters at the end of it. My hope was that
 the quasi-presence of of the properly-named group was keeping pidgin from
 reporting the name change to AOL. It was kind of a faint hope since it
 didn't report the change even when I changed it to some other name, but
 you never know. When I started pidgin it did the "Waiting for network
 conn..." behavior. Disabling and Enabling the problem account added the
 ever-changing name group to the buddy list but, checking the blist file, I
 saw both that group and the empty version of the group with the correct
 name had been readded... so, I thought it not unlikely that the empty
 correct-name group was also in AOL's list.

 I decided to try deleting the funky-named group (after all, I have many
 backup copies of the blist file with the list of who was in it at this
 point :/ ). It popped up a no-text dialog with the choices of "Cancel" and
 "Remove Group" and I chose to remove it. At this point the blist only
 showed the empty correctly named group, though that was not displayed in
 the buddy list. I quit pidgin and restarted it... same "Waiting for
 network conn..." behavior. Disable and enable the problem account and the
 group with the ever-changing name is back.

 So, I guess the upshot for me was that pidgin seems not to be able to deal
 with some funkiness in AOL's stored buddy list that gaim probably just
 ignored all this time. As a result, I used AOL's IM client for the first
 time evar... I downloaded and installed the debian package for their linux
 client, make a /usr/lib symlink to trick it into running, and fired it up.
 Sure enough, it showed an empty "iris" group, an "iris?" group and some
 other group that also looked odd (it might have had an empty group name).
 Probably all artifacts that had built up over my years of using gaim with
 AOL. The AIM client let me delete all of those and, when I restarted it,
 they were gone. So, now I will restart pidgin, remake the 'iris' group,
 and rebuddy all the people that were in that group.

 One thing that hadn't occurred to me to try in pidgin was to display empty
 groups, delete the empty "iris", then try deleting (or renaming) the
 "irisè|&#x15;&#x8;" group. the thing is, pidgin knows those are different
 names, so it should be able to delete (or rename) the funky one when I
 told it to do that already. IMO it should be considered a bug that it did
 not.

 I will leave the various backup copies of blist.xml that I made around. If
 you would like to see it in a particular state (and if that is one of the
 states I happened to save :) ), I will be happy to email it to you. I
 think this is not so much a problem of the file itself, however, with how
 pidgin deals with an unexpected buddy list entry from AOL, so I doubt you
 will need to see them.

 BTW, thanks for the work you guys do on pidgin... I hate the new name, but
 I still love that it lets me do all the IM things I need to do on multiple
 services, and that (aside from rough spots like this :) ) it does it so
 well.

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Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/3956#comment:7>
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