[Pidgin] #12680: Buddy list disappears

[Pidgin]

#12680: Buddy list disappears
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Reporter:  nyh    |        Type:  defect      
  Status:  new    |   Component:  pidgin (gtk)
 Version:  2.7.3  |    Keywords:              
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 Every once in a while, when I start Pidgin (on Linux, fedora 13) nothing
 appears to happen. After I did some investigation, I realised that Pidgin
 does start fine - it just doesn't show the buddy-list window. I discovered
 that in prefs.xml there is a "list_visible" parameter, and strangely it
 was set to 0. When I set it to 1, everything returned to normal.

 I couldn't figure out why this was happening - what changed this parameter
 to 0. I didn't ask this to be set (I haven't even been to pidgin's
 configuration screens in ages), and frankly I don't know who would -
 what's the point in running pidgin without the buddy list window???

 It happened to me 3 times in the last few months, and I couldn't find
 anything in common or anything that I did to cause these events.

 I consider this to be a bug, because less experienced user completely
 helpless facing it: He won't be able to start pidgin, and *nothing* he
 does (upgrading, reinstalling, rebooting, etc.) will ever bring it back -
 from now on, until the end of time, pidgin will start up without any
 window and therefore unusable...

 I think that pidgin shouldn't at all have an option to come up without any
 window. If somebody doesn't want to see the buddy window, he can iconify
 it. But at least he'll have the option to un-iconify the window and
 disable this option... As it stands, when no window comes up, I don't even
 have any way to see the options. I was lucky that a Google search brought
 up this "prefs.xml" file.

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Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/12680>
Pidgin <http://pidgin.im>
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