Re: [Gaim-devel] Making it easier to add GTalk accounts by prepopulating the server settings fields

[Luke S. <lsc...@us...>]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 11:21:07AM -0500, Mark Doliner wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:18:07 +0000 (UTC), Jason Spiro wrote
> > It is too hard to add GTalk accounts to gaim. I always end up having 
> > to google for the help page with the server settings listed on it. Could
> > Gaim prepopulate the Jabber advanced server settings fields as soon 
> > as someone enters a som...@gm... Jabber ID?
> > 
> > Also, to make things easier for newbies who don't know what Jabber even
> > is, could the display name of the Jabber plugin be renamed to 
> > "Jabber / Google Talk"? The majority of Jabber users use Google Talk 
> > as their Jabber server anyway. And the easier to use Gaim is, the 
> > more people will use it (and perhaps even the more people will 
> > switch to Linux).
> 
> I'm actually in favor of showing a dummy "Google Talk" protocol in the list of
> accounts when someone adds an account.  There have been a lot of questions
> about using Google Talk in Gaim.  Having a simpler way to add a Google Talk
> account would probably eliminate some of the confusion.
> 
> -Mark

This weekend, I was at a birthday party, and a room full of people
tried to insist that google talk was not jabber.  This is a problem,
because it means that they will have no chance at understanding the
connection between "services and software that does not suck" and the
open standards (which google admittedly seems to play fast and loose
with) of jabber.

The only way I see to even attempt to counteract this tendency is to
force that small body of users that look to gaim as their client to
realize that google talk is jabber.  If we give in and special case
this, set up a dummy prpl, then even gaim users would be enabled in
thinking (and insisting) that google talk is not jabber, but is
google's own invention.

I don't want to see this happen.  I don't want to enable this sort of
confusion, I don't want to have users who can't handle the fact that
google is jabber.

luke