I had a conversation with resiak earlier and we discussed some things
just now. I'm going to throw together snippets of conversations and
thoughts. I have to leave in less than 5 hours and I haven't gotten to
sleep yet, so I'm not going to bother to edit this much. These quotes
are chopped a bit. It shouldn't change the meanings. Finally, all of
this is how I think things *should* work. I haven't had much time to
play with the status selector to analyze all these cases with its
current code, so I'm not necessarily saying what it does now is
different from what I suggest in any specific case.
Looking at the Custom status selector... we basically wanted to replace
the current list view under "Use a different status for some accounts"
with the per-account status selectors.
We're suggesting killing the per-account status selectors in the blist
entirely. The arguments for keeping them are that 1) they allow you to
see what's different from the global status and 2) that they allow you
to change statuses for one account.
Really, we need to make #2 easy to do with the custom box. If you choose
Custom, you should really get a dialog that's configured with a global
status that matches your currently set status (global + custom
settings). If accounts have errors, the custom box would reflect the
states you had set for them, naturally.
I'm not terribly convinced that #1 is necessary. Your status should
always match the global status set in the status selector (be that a
plain all-accounts-are-the-same status or a custom status) unless an
error occurred.
I drew up some diagrams at the pub today with resiak. The basic idea is
that if an error occurs, we replace the icon in the status selector with
a big red exclamation point (or something, the details don't matter too
much). Where we currently show the text of the error, we should do this:
IF error_count = 1:
show the short summary of the error
ELSE
show "N errors"
There would be a tooltip with a bulleted list of errors (or
similiar), but only the basic "short summary" of the error.
Clicking the status selector when there's an error should bring
up a dialog with all the FULL error messages.
We've tossed around this idea that we should only show those statuses
that vary from the norm. resiak points out...
I think that, logically, they should vanish because if we show
those which differ from the norm, then you can change those and
it's yet another way to change things but you can only change
some of them that way
resiak: if you already have Custom... selected, reselecting it doesn't
re-pop up the window
rlaager: It shouldn't be showing "Custom..." should it? It should show
the name?
resiak: That's a good point
resiak: I guess make it be called the same as the status message if
there _is_ one
rlaager: What about just forcing them to have names?
resiak: That'd be really bad for just wanting to temporarily flick your
personal Jabber account to DND
resiak: Maybe if the overall status is, say, "Extended Away", unnamed
ones get magically named "Extended Away 1" or something
LSchiere: we now do require some 3 or 4 clicks to use a saved state
LSchiere: which upsets me a little bit
rlaager: To solve that, I think we should 1) make middle-click in the
saved status box apply, and 2) store the previous X most recently used
saved statues in the status selector combo box.
LSchiere: 2 would be nice. it was in the original description of the
goal
Flame at will!
Richard
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