No Proticol icons

[AishaDracogryph]

I loved gaim, but now that the name has changed seems like at least one major thing was taken away. Protocol icons, As it is I have little way to tell what network many of my contacts are on. I have been told to simply mouse over the contact or right click none of witch actually tells me what IM network they are using. It tells me what account the nick is under but that is useless as I have the same name for my yahoo and aim accounts.

It seems insane to think that they were taken away, and not at least left as an option, their are many reasons i'd need to know what network a person is on. Maybe I want to send an offline message to my friend's yahoo nick, maybe I want to send a file to someone.

I went onto the IRC chat and was met with a verry rude and inappropriate response, the developer that was their who talked to me was extreamly rude and ignored everything I was saying. I gave him ample reasons why I needed them, but he continued to ignore everything I said.

It seems very counter intuitive to get rid of usefull features and not even allow one to use them anymore at all. I'm very disappointed and rather upset with the horrible time I had trying to get an answer to this problem. This dose not give me a good impression of what open source software is like. It seems open source means you can ignore your users, since you have no legal obligation to your customers (since you offer it for free).

I'm still using it for now, but see myself rapidly running back to my old gaim installation, I cringe at the thought that this problem might never be fixed, and I may have to use a program that I can never update and could become out dated.

[ibrahima]

Umm, if I hover over the buddy's name I see a little protocol icon, not sure why you don't. For people on multiple protocols, I see multiple entries with each account name and each one has their protocol icon next to it too.

[rlaager]

I wasn't around for the IRC conversation, but it seems this ticket is more about that and less about the issue. If you have actual reasons why you want it, please outline them here. Be aware that you need a better explanation than "I want it." or "It used to be that way." You need a rational justification to override the reasoning in the Uniformity section here: http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/DesignGuidelines

I'm closing this ticket for now, but I'll re-open it if you provide justification.

[AishaDracogryph]

"While Pidgin is a multiprotocol IM client, the goal is to hide protocols from the user as much as possible. Obviously users have to know about individual protocols when they create or modify accounts, but in day-to-day communication and usage, the intent is that users don't have to think about protocols at all."

that is exactly my point. We don't have to but what if we want to? I gave ample reasons in my initial ticket, I need to know who I can send files to, who is on yahoo and can accept offline messages, I also need it so I can very easily scan through my buddy list for people, I also have multipul contacs for the same person, and they often use the same IM nick for both networks. I need to be able to see what network a given nick is on. Mousing over to see a protocol icon is all well and good but I need to be able to tell what network someone is on at a glance.

This uniformity thing is a good idea, I'm not bashing it, but for those of us who use the protocol icons we should have that option. no reason to take it out completely. you could of simply had the option to show only status icons as the default but a retro option in the user preferences.

[AishaDracogryph]

Also I think the biggest reason to make display of protocol icons optional again is simply, Pidgin should also be about option, about the user's choice as to how he/she wants their IM program, If it were not for all the choices and options and such in gaim/pidgin why not just use trillian?

[sadrul]

To add to what has already been said, the use cases you mention for the old behaviour (send a file, send an offline message to a yahoo account) are relatively rare, at least for a huge majority of the users, and so they do not justify reverting the new behaviour.

You will note that all the mentioned behaviour are still doable, and quite simply too. Instead of 'right-click|send file', you would now do 'right-click|select account|send file', or switch the account the message is sent to from the 'conversation|send to' menu. The steps are simple enough to keep the current behaviour. And as someone who didn't like the new behaviour at first, I can tell you that you will get used to it rather quickly, if you give it a chance.

... I need to be able to tell what network someone is on at a glance.

Apart from the above mentioned reasons, what other reason do you have?

[lschiere]

do not at all understand your attempt at justification? Why do you need to know who you can send files to? is it not much more important to know if you can send a file or files to a *particular* person (yes that person will change from time to time, but in any one instance of needing to send a file, you need to send it to *one* particular person)? If you want to argue that some protocols send more effectively than others, then use the submenu to pick the one you want.

Why do you need to know who you can send offline messages to? Is it not far more important to know if you can send an offline message to *this* person? There is a bigger point here though. If you have a contact, and if that contact is completely offline, and you double click it, Pidgin will *automatically* pick a protocol that can send offline messages if any can. That is, you DO NOT HAVE TO KNOW what protocol is active, because it is ALREADY the right one (if any one exists that can).

There is another key here: you are mistaken about how much has changed. The protocol icon only ever represented which buddy was "on top." However, in any version since contacts were first introduced, it has NEVER been the case that the "top" buddy was the only one you could interact with. You ALWAYS have the ability to pick the particular buddy inside that contact you wish to reach from the right click menu.

Having removed the protocol option forces you to think a little and realize how broken your behavior in previous versions must have been. From what I read, it seems that you previously thought that you could only send a file if the "top" buddy happen to be a protocol where file transfer would work. You previously thought that you could only send a message if the "top" buddy happened to be a protocol where offline messages were supported. You apparently never realized that all of this functionaity was *always* right at your finger tips, waiting for you to access it. You apparently never realized this because the protocol icon caused you think of that *contact* as a single buddy. It was not and is not. At all times, then and now, you needed to right click to send files. Nothing has changed except now the need to right click is apparent, and so you can actually now send files *more frequently* than before.

As we continue to implement greater and greater subsets of the functionality of the various protocols, this will become increasingly true, as the number of protocols that do not support file transfer and offline messaging is reducing.

The "option" you are talking about would be a decidedly complex option, leading to a 2 options controling 4 possible states. That's a significant amount of additional code complexity for us to have to support. Thus it takes a *significant* reason to justify it. Not just a whim.

[lschiere]

hhmm. i copied and pasted badly. ahwell.

Anyway, in responce to the comment "04/30/07 19:59:58 changed by AishaDracogryph?": Your reasoning is bogus, and if you expect that, then Pidgin is the wrong client for you. An unlimited number of options and choices leads to unmaintainable code, and very buggy code at that. It is not and has not been our idea to be the client for those who want lots of choices for far longer than we have been thinking about this release.

[AishaDracogryph]

xtop buddy bottom buddy bla bla bla.

Not so sound immature but that makes no sense to me all my buddys in one list. I do not group buddys by user or anything they are all separate. I like my old ways. it works for me and I like it. I kept my old sounds from gaim 1.50 because I could not stand the new ones.

Bottom line is if this is not fixed, (or some kind soul makes a plugin) I'm most likely going back to gaim 2.0.0beta6 and staying there. or finding another program to use. is it even possible to offer another version for us people who do not want to chance our ways. I'm not upset so much as I'm feeling a bit alienated here.

This is my IM program and now it's changing and not in ways I am able to deal with.

[AishaDracogryph]

P.S. I send files by dropping them on the convo window so the idea I need to right click is bogus

[lschiere]

I hope you are happy with your choice of client going into the future, or in your efforts as you decide to fork Pidgin.

[AishaDracogryph]

Replying to lschiere:

or in your efforts as you decide to fork Pidgin.

What is that suppose to mean?

All I'm asking is for something that seemed pretty intuitive. you love ignoring your users it seems, that is not good, it's good your not trying to make money with this because you would not be making much if any with this kind of aditude. Granted I have got some positive responses. I thank those who gave them but I have got just as much negative feedback thrown my way also.

[lschiere]

I'm not ignoring you, I am disagreeing with you. We have publicized our reasoning. I have stated that while this may *appear* simple to you, but that it is *not* simple to implement (and more importantly) support this option. You have not put forward a reason for going back on this decision that we have not heard and considered many times already.

[deryni]

I haven't seen any negative responses coming out of anyone other than you. You were negative in #pidgin-win32 and you are negative here. Threatening to stay with older versions of gaim because you don't like changes we have made, changes we have thought long and hard about, and changes we have defended a number of times already isn't going to make us listen to you more. You have to spend approximately 3 seconds worth of effort to check the Send To menu which you didn't have to spend when the protocol icon was in the tab, I'm not going to feel sorry for you about that because we didn't actually hurt you. We made pidgin easier to use, clearer to operate, and more friendly to people with multiple buddies on multiple protocols. The fact that you don't want to use contacts isn't our problem, the fact that you don't want to change isn't our problem either, we aren't making a client that isn't going to change, there's no point in that. pidgin is going to change as it needs to change to stay the best client it can be for as many users as it possibly can.

As one final point, pidgin has this wonderful support for 'plugins' for reasons exactly like this, you could write a plugin that adds a protocol icon to anywhere in the conversation window you like. If that gets you what you want go do that and be happy.

[AishaDracogryph]

I'm giving up, I was being ignored in the chat, and if you had said exactly why you couldent code in an option and that you already considerd all I had said instead of asking me to retell you what I already did. I would of dropped it a long time ago. why did you need all this to get to the damn point?

[seanegan]

I don't know the details of your IRC conversation either, but please understand that we're putting the finishing touches on our most significant release to date, and are far more interested in finding and fixing fundamentally critical flaws that keep people from usin Pidgin at all (crashes on startup, my preferences all disappeared, etc.), then we are in arguing relatively minor, largely cosmetic differences in opinion. So, if we seem a bit curt on this issue now, perhaps we'd be willing to debate it in more depth once the dust from 2.0.0 has settled.

If this is the biggest complaint about 2.0.0, I'd be very happy.

[merwin]

What about this reasoning: I want to prune my contact list down on a certain protocol. I recently re-added an old Yahoo IM account that I hadn't used in a year or two. There are a lot of people on there that I want to remove, but I don't know which contacts are Yahoo and which are other protocols. I suppose I could mouse over each contact to find out the protocol, but that is very cumbersome and makes the process take much longer.

What if Windows decided to hide the file extension because you didn't need it, and the only way to find it was to mouse over the file. It could be argued by them that the file extension isn't necessary, and the file type icon and type description should give you all the info you want, but many people want to see a little more detail.

I just don't understand the argument of putting it back being complex, as it would just be an option in the configuration and another column in the contact list with the protocol of whichever contact is on-top.

Is this functionality of adding a column to the contact list something that could be implemented with a plugin?

[dogfood]

Seeking volunteers to fork Ostrich to introduce Protocol Icons.

The Ostrich developers both seem to have their head in the sand when it comes to legitimate user requests as well as to be placing greater value on theoretical notions of UI design and abstraction than on the way people actually exist as social creatures.

To wit, protocol icons are highly useful as evidenced by the number of requests for them. This, in and of itself, should be enough to for the developers to put them back. However there are also deep and impossible to refute socio-theoretic reasons to include them as well.

Since the Ostrich developers insist on adhering to their model of reality as opposed to actual reality, I will also attempt to explain a very significant (but absolutely not the only significant) theoretical reason why protocol icons are good. Ostrich developers are correct that there are good reason to be more concerned with who we are communicating with and what we are communicating than how we are communicating,

They, of course, are willfully ignoring that different protocols have different strengths when it comes to communications beyond simple text. In fact it's useful to know what one will be able to easily communicate before initiating communication. More concretely, if I want to send a particular photo or video or joke or file, it's nice to know at a glance who I can easily send it to.

More importantly, Ostrich developers ignore that, as social creatures, protocol icons give us a vital context clue as to who we have represented ourselves as in the past to be, and who we wish to continue to represent ourselves as, and how we know people. We have different identities in different contexts and we need visual clues as to which identity belongs where. These clues also help us remember who others are. Some complaints about missing protocol icons would disappear if Pidgin could simply display different icons based on the combination of messenger/screen name and protocol that tends to signify our identities and how we met others. However this could require a potentially infinite number of icon sets and also require impractical mental or mouseclick effort for users to associate different icons with different identities.

As a practical matter protocol plus group is an excellent context clue to know what identity a counterparty will know us as. Protocol plus group plus name is a much better mnemonic for who someone is than group plus name alone. Unfortunately this reality doesn't seem to accomodate the dizzying heights of abstraction of the Ostrich developers.

To be more concrete, I have one MSN messenger name, and one yahoo messenger name, and two AIM screen names. Partly this is because I go to Burning Man and I have a "Playa name" that is different from my real name and I have some IM friends who know me from a Burning Man context and others from "real life." However it is also because I have an AIM screen name that I use for people who I worry might be camgirls, bots, or scam artists.

It's not that I give a shit whether I'm talking to someone using AIM or Yahoo or MSN protocol. It's that I generally represent myself slightly differently with one account than another. The combination of group and protocol lets me know who I am before I start communicating. It also helps me remember who my contact is. Seeing it on top on a buddy list right away lets me know who might be appropriate to communicate with given the mood I'm in. When I'm feeling like FinanNerdDude? I want to see who is online in certain groups using MSN messenger that I use for that part of my life. When I am PlayaTechnoGod? I like seeing a visual representation of people who know me as that via Yahoo Messenger.

I understand that the Ostrich people will claim that this can all be solved if I reorganize my groups. However I have several hundred IM friends and better things to do than organize my groups when I had a method that worked fine with GAIM. Only a fool spends his time reworking a taxonomy to get to 98% accurate classification when he had a prior taxonomy that was 99% correct.

The removal of protocol icons appears to be wishful thinking on the Ostrich developers part that the world is simpler than it, in fact, is. They should put protocol icons back or Pidgin will go the way of MIT LISP versus Bell Labs C like all who prefer abstraction to reality.

[merwin]

Replying to dogfood:

Seeking volunteers to fork Ostrich to introduce Protocol Icons.

Already been done. The patch can be found here: http://merwin.bespin.org/pidgin/

The Ostrich developers both seem to have their head in the sand when it comes to legitimate user requests as well as to be placing greater value on theoretical notions of UI design and abstraction than on the way people actually exist as social creatures.

Funny, heads in the sand

To wit, protocol icons are highly useful as evidenced by the number of requests for them. This, in and of itself, should be enough to for the developers to put them back. However there are also deep and impossible to refute socio-theoretic reasons to include them as well.

To be fair, nobody knows the number of users who want this feature... could be a few, could be a lot.

They, of course, are willfully ignoring that different protocols have different strengths when it comes to communications beyond simple text. In fact it's useful to know what one will be able to easily communicate before initiating communication. More concretely, if I want to send a particular photo or video or joke or file, it's nice to know at a glance who I can easily send it to.

Hey, that reason has already been proved invalid :)

More importantly, Ostrich developers ignore that, as social creatures, protocol icons give us a vital context clue as to who we have represented ourselves as in the past to be, and who we wish to continue to represent ourselves as, and how we know people. We have different identities in different contexts and we need visual clues as to which identity belongs where. These clues also help us remember who others are. Some complaints about missing protocol icons would disappear if Pidgin could simply display different icons based on the combination of messenger/screen name and protocol that tends to signify our identities and how we met others. However this could require a potentially infinite number of icon sets and also require impractical mental or mouseclick effort for users to associate different icons with different identities.

But since we are inherently only one person, and never act differently around different people, we need no different identities.

The removal of protocol icons appears to be wishful thinking on the Ostrich developers part that the world is simpler than it, in fact, is. They should put protocol icons back or Pidgin will go the way of MIT LISP versus Bell Labs C like all who prefer abstraction to reality.

I doubt it. People will use Pidgin either way, but people also use Windows even though they try to strong-arm you into thinking their way.