Protocol icons - bring 'em back.

[devilkin]

This is a request for enhancement to Pidgin. (You could look at it as being a request to fix a regression, but since according to the developers this is the way to go, let's ask for an enhancement.)

What I want to ask, is, for a way to bring back the good old protocol icons to the Pidgin buddy list.

Why? Because we like them. Some people feel they need them. It's been a feature of Gaim for a long time, and many people got used to it. Don't force one way on people, give them the choise.

See also: http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/414

If not in the main code, make it a plugin?

[theBlackDragon]

Seconded. There are a lot of reasons why people would find them useful.

Not everybody uses Pidgin in the same way and forcing a way of working unto somebody is just plain counterproductive.

So please, give us our protocol icons back.

[datallah]

Duplicate of #414

[devilkin]

I beg to differ that this is a duplicate.

It's about the same issue, true.

It's a _feature request_. Not a defect report!

[datallah]

Replying to devilkin:

I beg to differ that this is a duplicate. It's about the same issue, true. It's a _feature request_. Not a defect report!

Yes, there is nothing here that hasn't been fully discussed in #414.

[devilkin]

Then please reopen ticket 414 so that it can be discussed further there.

[lschiere]

no. There is no reason to. Nothing new is being added to the "discussion," rather, our replies are being ignored, while you all repeat the same insufficient ideas over and over again.

[devilkin]

Replying to lschiere:

no. There is no reason to. Nothing new is being added to the "discussion," rather, our replies are being ignored, while you all repeat the same insufficient ideas over and over again.

In a way, you could say the Pidgin developers are doing the same to a part of their userbase. Censoring the discussion is not really going to convincing people.

[lschiere]

We cannot convince people when by their replies they demonstrate they are not reading what we write. We are not censoring a discussion, we are ending a rant.

There is no discussion here. That is not our choice, but yours. A discussion requires that users actually read and consider what we say. There is manifestly no intention of doing so. Rather, users are so convinced that they are right, that they feel that there is no need to consider what we say, if we disagree, we (apparently) must be wrong.

[theBlackDragon]

To me it appears morelike you are not even considering the arguments being made and with that assuming that everybody uses the application in the way you envision, which is simply not the case.

Firstly, you presume in your counterarguments that everybody uses the expand feature while I know a lot of people that don't use it, some don't know about it, some actively dislike it. I'd even go further, I'm pretty sure about 50% of your users don't use it, if not more.

For example, the filetransfer argument was pretty valid if you ask me, why would you have to jump through hoops if you can see something in one eyelash? This same argument goes for user profiles, a person might have one for one protocol but not for another.

The same is true for the collegue at work/not at work issue, why would you suddenly have to click if you could just see it in the past?

So can't we live without it? No. But then again, I can live without X too, but it would make a lot of things more cumbersome, the same goes for this change.

[lschiere]

I would say that YOU IN PARTICULAR have not read what we have said. I'll give examples.

For the file transfer argument, we ADMITTED that something should be done. We said what we want to do to address that. Did you read that?

For the work/not at work issue, we explained how complex states can negate this situation even without running pidgin twice (I'm not sure where Sean got that idea from). Did you read that?

The "but we don't know about expand" is new. It is also bogus though. If users do not know expand exists, then they can be told.

The "we don't like expand" is also new. But we have freely admitted that we will not and cannot please everyone, and do not aim to. Did you read that?

[theBlackDragon]

"...assuming that everybody uses the application in the way you envision, which is simply not the case."

For the file transfer you admit you have created a problem by removing what we are here asking you to put back in.

For the work/not at work issue I have no clue what you are talking about and I couldn't find anything about it either, which might be because I don't have a clue as where to look for it.

I DID know about expand, but I know quite some people who didn't know about it before I told them.

Of course it's new to you that some people don't like the expand feature, because they have/had the choice not to use it if they chose not to do so.

[bgelb]

Here is a patch to add this feature (fix the regression).

-- BEGIN PATCH --

Comment out line 3132 in pidgin/gtkblist.c

-- END PATCH --