[Pidgin] #8400: Alias/IM account relationship

[Pidgin]

#8400: Alias/IM account relationship
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 Reporter:  sfsdfd  |           Owner:  lschiere    
     Type:  defect  |          Status:  pending     
Milestone:          |       Component:  unclassified
  Version:  2.5.4   |      Resolution:              
 Keywords:          |   Launchpad_bug:              
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Changes (by sfsdfd):

  * status:  pending => new


Comment:

 deryni:

 My apologies for the misused terminology. Your interpretations are
 correct, and I'll use that terminology for future replies here.

 With regard to issues #1 and #2:
 You wrote above that "this is working as intended." This might be logical
 from a designer's perspective, but from a user's perspective, this is
 really unfortunate. Here's my train of reasoning:

 a) A user enters a first contact (let's call it John Doe) with a first
 account (let's call it john12345 at Google Chat.) The user gives the
 contact the alias of "John Doe," and according to this "by design"
 behavior, the account is also aliased to "John Doe."

 b) The user enters a second contact (Jane Smith) with two accounts (jane_1
 at Google Chat and jane_1 at Yahoo IM.) The user then sees a contact named
 "jane_1" with two accounts: "jane_1" and "jane_1." In order to avoid the
 confusion, the user renames the first "jane_1" as "Jane @ Google Chat" and
 the second "jane_1" as "Jane @ Yahoo." The user is then disappointed to
 find that the contact is now aliased as "Jane @ Google Chat." The user
 then collapses the contact and renames it "Jane" - but upon next expanding
 the contact, the user finds accounts named "Jane" and "Jane @ Yahoo."

 c) In order to promote consistency, the user goes back to the first
 contact and renames the account to "John @ Google Chat." Again, this
 renames the contact to "John @ Google Chat."

 See why this is frustrating? It's surprisingly difficult to establish
 aliases for accounts that uniquely identify the account for the contact,
 while also giving the contact a plain alias that only identifies the
 individual.

 With regard to issue #3: I understand. I guess this is a side-effect of
 the peculiar manner in which the Pidgin config/log-file location is
 established and moved.

 With regard to issue #4: I'll try to replicate this behavior and possibly
 grab some screenshots. Let's consider it settled for the moment.

 Regards,

 David

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Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/8400#comment:2>
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