Pidgin GUI improvements

[hbons]

I'm guessing Nathan won't have any objection to me stealing this one.

[elb]

This really isn't useful without some description of what it is. Can you add some text about what is in that tarball, and why we would care?

[hbons]

elb: there is a todo list inside!

[rlaager]

It's not reasonable to expect someone to download an extract a tarball to figure out what it is.

[rlaager]

Here's the contents of the "pidgin todo" file inside the tarball, separated into the parts I understand and the parts I don't.

Steps I understand:

• Updated the theme file, please commit it.

Steps I don't understand:

• "Help > About" uses packaged icon, move to gtk-about.
• Delete all old icons in pixmaps/.
• Use the icons in /pixmaps/icons for pidgin.desktop files (maybe it already does but my .desktop files aren't overwritten).
• Get rid of floppy overlay on saved statuses (this could be gray "(Saved)" or "(Custom)" text?).
• Apply some kind of filter on status icons instead of seperate files. This makes updating icons easier. (the ex-away now has two different versions)
• New icon for e-mail received (used in the tooltip like popup in the buddy list)
• Use the new icons included.

[lschiere]

I strongly detest multiple issues in a single ticket.

presumably he's saying that we have icons in the pixmaps directory that he's created and we have committed replacements for, but failed to remove the old version.

[lithium]

What this is actually about (yeah multiple tickets would be better but as this stuff is not easily dealt with by simple text patches...):

A) Icons: someone just need to put those into the repo

fonts/*.png => pidgin/pixmaps/toolbar/16/

fonts/*.svg => pidgin/pixmaps/toolbar/16/scalable/

insert-emote.png => pidgin/pixmaps/toolbar/16/emote-select.png

inser-emote.svg => pidgin/pixmaps/toolbar/16/scalable/emote-select.svg

insert-image.png, insert-link.png, message-new.png, plugins.png => replacements for icons in pidgin/pixmaps/toolbar/16/

rotfl.png, call-me.png => previously missing emoticons for pidgin/pixmaps/emotes/default/22/

theme => pidgin/pixmaps/emotes/default/22/theme (I actually did most of the changes for hbons in this one, looks like he left some comments in... these should be removed first, the TODOs and missing icon statements)

arrow*.xpm => differently named replacements for the arrow icons in pidgin/pixmaps/*

---

B) The TODO file:

- All *.png icons in pidgin/pixmaps/ can be removed from tree, they are not needed anymore

- Only icon from there that is used is the about_menu.png, which he says to use the stock icon from GTK instead

- The floppy overlay thing is fixed already I think

- as for pidgin.desktop: Currently the icon for the desktop launcher is taken from $PREFIX/share/pixmaps/ (pidgin.svg). This is the only fallback the theming system can find. The icons that should actually be used are installed to $PREFIX/share/pixmaps/pidgin/icons/$SIZE, but the theming system can't find them there, they have to be installed to $PREFIX/share/icons/hicolor/$SIZEx$SIZE/apps/ instead:

$PREFIX/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/pidgin.png

$PREFIX/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps/pidgin.png

$PREFIX/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/pidgin.png

$PREFIX/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/pidgin.png

$PREFIX/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/pidgin.svg

[Note: 22x22 and SVG versions are not available ATM but are required as per icon spec]

[hbons]

Sorry about my unclearness, but i sent Nathan an e-mail with this tarball and instruction. When is wanted to cantact him on devel sadrul told me to post a ticket, which i didn't have much time for. Thanks lithium. I will post better tickets from now on. :)

[zx2c4]

While the most recent icon set is shnazzy for sure, many Pidgin mtn users, like myself but not only me, still long for the older, more familiar, icon set. In fact, many users find it easier to switch to gaim from the windows aim client because the icon and feel of the program is similar. On the other hand, these users are less willing to switch to pidgin with its new icon set.

How about a way to toggle icon sets from within the program?

[hbons]

Replying to zx2c4:

While the most recent icon set is shnazzy for sure, many Pidgin mtn users, like myself but not only me, still long for the older, more familiar, icon set. In fact, many users find it easier to switch to gaim from the windows aim client because the icon and feel of the program is similar. On the other hand, these users are less willing to switch to pidgin with its new icon set. How about a way to toggle icon sets from within the program?

There are more users than AIM protocol users, there will always be large group of users who have to get used to whatever interface Pidgin uses, so I don't think this is a good idea. Some other IM users will find the switch easier (new look looks like GTalk) and Tango doesn't make the interface feel out of place on Windows or Mac OSX.

[zx2c4]

Replying to hbons:

There are more users than AIM protocol users, there will always be large group of users who have to get used to whatever interface Pidgin uses, so I don't think this is a good idea. Some other IM users will find the switch easier (new look looks like GTalk) and Tango doesn't make the interface feel out of place on Windows or Mac OSX.

Why not have the ability to change the icon set? You can change the smilies easily, so why not the pixmaps? Presumably, changing the smiles just tells pidgin to look in a different directory. Similarly, changing the icon set would have pidgin look in a different directory for icons during startup.

[seanegan]

We use the GTK+ stock icon system for all our icons, so it's easy for icon themers to create Gaim icons that match their themes. You can also edit the icon files yourself.

Why anyone might prefer the old icons to this, however, I'm at a loss.

[seanegan]

I committed all the icon changes, but haven't done the "todo."

""Help > About" uses packaged icon, move to gtk-about." We can't do that because gtk-about was only introduce in 2.6. I suppose we can probably detect if gtk-about exists, and then install our icon if it doesn't, though.

"Apply some kind of filter on status icons instead of seperate files. This makes updating icons easier. (the ex-away now has two different versions)"

This is also kinda tricky. I used different files because it was easier that way. But I'll look into doing this. We should definitely fix the extended away disparity somehow.

[lithium]

One icon was not updated: plugins.png

For the about image, perhaps hbons can come up with something "inspired" from the new about icon in gtk trunk, to use as a fallback here (for gtk < 2.12)

[hbons]

plugins.png replaced, i think this is all done now.

[seanegan]

No, the stuff in todo hasn't all been covered yet.

[lithium]

Also at least in my checkout I still have the old plugins icon, did something go wrong here?

[seanegan]

This is done.