[Pidgin] #2067: Support for Animated GIFs (MSN, AIM, ICQ, YAHOO) Buddy Icons

[Pidgin]

#2067: Support for Animated GIFs (MSN, AIM, ICQ, YAHOO) Buddy Icons
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 Reporter:  praveenmarkandu  |           Owner:              
     Type:  task             |          Status:  closed      
Milestone:                   |       Component:  pidgin (gtk)
  Version:  2.0.2            |      Resolution:  wontfix     
 Keywords:                   |   Launchpad_bug:              
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Comment(by deryni):

 1. From a quick look at the source it would appear to be
 ~/.purple/custom_smiley though that may or may not only be for locally
 created smileys. (And in fact from a slightly more in-depth look it
 appears like remote custom smileys may not be saved to disk at all.) Also
 this ticket is specifically about buddy icons and not smileys.

 2. Correct, that indicates why we can't at the moment have it Just Work.
 It would appear (assuming I read things correctly) that in fact your
 surety would be misplaced. And direction as to how libpurple might be made
 to save them has in fact been presented, the idea would be to copy the
 file out of the cache rather than re-write the data from the GdkPixbuf
 (which you know is the proposed "solution" since these questions pre-
 suppose that knowledge).

 3. We have pointed you (collectively) in the right direction, that
 direction is to write a patch which copies the raw saved cache file
 instead of re-writing the GdkPixbuf when someone attempts to save the icon
 locally (or much more appropriately, to fix the gdkpixbuf library to
 support writing animated gifs, though that is likely a much harder patch
 to write and will take longer to be effective). We have not explained how
 image writing works because pidgin and libpurple don't write images, we
 write raw data to the cache file and we trust GdkPixbuf to do the right
 thing when we ask it to.

 There isn't a simple "the problem is in file X at line Y" for this issue,
 as we've explained multiple times. But if you want to know where the buddy
 icon saving code is located you can find it by tracing the code that
 generates the Save menu entries. You can also try searching for
 "gdk_pixbuf_save" (which you could have found as a likely candidate for
 searching by looking at the gdk-pixbuf library reference documentation on
 library.gnome.org).

 No one said you need to modify GTK+, what we have said is that the correct
 way to solve this problem is to update gdk-pixbuf to support writing gif
 images and specifically animated gifs. That was, is, and will remain the
 correct solution. And we are in no way capable of giving you more specific
 information as to where to look or what to do as we are not GTK+
 (specifically gdk-pixbuf) developers and so have no inherent knowledge of
 the code of that library. You can look at the code as easily as we can.

 The number of duplicate tickets opened on this issue has absolutely no
 bearing on how easy it may or may not be to work around the currently
 missing feature.  Zero. What it mostly has bearing on is the difficulty
 most people have searching for existing tickets before posting new ones, a
 difficulty that is largely the fault of trac (though some fair amount of
 fault can be ascribed to the posters of the duplicate tickets) but this is
 an entirely irrelevant discussion at the moment.

 If you want more specific help or have more specific questions feel free
 to join the #pidgin IRC channel or the devel at conference.pidgin.im XMPP MUC
 room and ask them, but don't feel like you can insinuate that we have not
 been helpful in indicating how this should be done because we have at
 every step of the way.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/2067#comment:21>
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