Re: [Gaim-devel] Automatic friendly name update

[<lsc...@re...>]

On Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 02:55:43PM +0000, Robert McQueen wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 09:06:27PM -0500, Luke Schierer wrote:
> > Doing things on a per-buddy basis will be far easier when the xml blist 
> > is in place. untill then, it would have to be added by adding fields to 
> > the existing format, and re-writting the parser only to re-write it 
> > again as we move to the xml based blist. 
> > luke
> 
> I disagree with this on principle. I like the way that currently, Gaim
> keeps next to no state about my buddies other than who they are, and
> what I call them. If lots of options, especially useful ones, become
> associated with each buddy, it will become increasingly confusing,
> time-consuming and unintuitive to get the correct behaviour by setting
> an option for each and every buddy. I would rather see an option per
> account with 'Display remote names' or such. But not per buddy. Please!

I agree. And even if we did allow per-buddy options, we'd want a way to set 
the default behavior, precisely so that you do not have to set the same 
behavior for several hundred buddies. 

that being said, the amount of information stored per-buddy has to increase in 
some way. icq and jabber allow you to over-ride your global status on a 
per-buddy basis, and this would be a nice feature, BUT IT SHOULD WAIT. it 
should wait precisely because extending the current blist format will make 
things more confusing, and because the xml blist will allow us to add this 
sort of detail with a minimal amount of increased confusion in the text file 
and also because the increased delay while we work out the ui issues in the 
move to gtk2 cannot help but contribute to our ability to come up with a 
decent ui for this latter. 

right now the move to gtk2 is a HUGE part of gaim's current development. it is 
introducing a HUGE number of bugs (we have had as many bugs opened since gtk2 
as were left open from before it total). the last thing we need to be doing is 
trying to introduce a large number of new features before we have replicated 
the functionality we had before gtk2. 

> 
> I also don't see the need to have a local name if you've opted to use
> the remote one, but I see the benefit of showing the remote name if
> you've opted to use a local one. I'd prefer that to changing the local
> alias, or even displaying the remote name, because I'd find that
> intensely annoying. My patch is just the least evil way to implement
> this functionality for people who are used to having MSN do it.

given how evil msn friendly names can be, i can see why someone might want to 
see the friendly name but not set their alias to it. 

> 
> As an aside, why is all of Oscar's capability stuff implemented in the
> blist and not the Oscar prpl? Can someone move that? It will make the
> blist code quite a bit simpler. =)

this is probly a good idea.

luke

-- 
-This email is made of 100% recycled electrons.