[Pidgin] #7840: usability - add option to sort buddies alphabetically and by status in the same time

[Pidgin]

#7840: usability - add option to sort buddies alphabetically and by status in the
same time
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 Reporter:  RomanIvanov  |        Owner:              
     Type:  enhancement  |       Status:  new         
Milestone:               |    Component:  unclassified
  Version:  2.5.2        |   Resolution:              
 Keywords:               |  
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Comment(by tylla):

 OK, so here is my use case, maybe I can clear up things a little bit.

 I have only one group in my buddy list but I have 89 Buddies in it (most
 of them have multiple accounts but thanks God and Pidgin they are grouped
 together :).
 Mostly I like to have the online Buddies before me, so I keep my list
 sorted "By status". This gives the first problem, because there is no
 "Online/Offline" type status, but there is Online, Away, Busy, Not
 available, Offline and so on. Now each of these categories has some
 sorting. Initially. But after a few hours of people entering/leaving, all
 these categories contain the contacts belonging to them, in a great big
 mess. If I want to find somebody, I have to look at each entry in the
 list. Or alternatively I could resort the list "Alphabetically", find the
 needed Buddy, then resort the list "By status". This is a little bit
 painful.

 The problem would be solved if I would keep my Buddy list sorted
 "Alphabetically". At least partly. Because from my 89 contacts most are
 offline almost all the time, so I couldn't tell by a glance that my
 searched Buddy is online on not, I would have to search for it in the
 whole list instead of the 10 or so online buddies list. This is painful
 too.

 I could hide my offline buddies. But than there's a new problem. Sometimes
 I want to send message to an offline buddy. Then I would have to tick Show
 > Offline buddies, then search for it... back to no. 1.


 By separating offline buddies from online ones (no matter whether they are
 actually Online or Away or anything like this) and sorting alphabetically
 these two categories separately, makes life much easier.
 One has to search only maximally two times, but on average only one time
 and the list that it has to search through most of the time is much
 smaller than the total list of buddies.

 Certainly, there are lots of people who will not be satisfied with this
 modification (especially those with lots of Buddy groups), but they
 wouldn't have to enable this.

 Btw. I know that this is not really an argument, but lots of other clients
 (Trillian, MSN, Skype) make it this way, and its comfortable, people are
 used to it, so they can get the familiar functionality.

 I hope I succeeded in getting you closer to why this feature would be
 good.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/7840#comment:7>
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