Re: [Gaim-devel] libgaim strings

[Evan S. <ev...@ad...>]

On Feb 11, 2007, at 6:32 PM, Sean Egan wrote:

> For a while now, we've had a "conversation error" function that will
> show the error in the conversation if said conversation exists, but
> show it in a gaim_notify_error dialog otherwise. So this will still
> come in to gaim_notify_error in some cases (e.g. trying to get the AIM
> profile of an online user.) Does Adium create new conversation windows
> in that case?

Trying to get the AIM profile of an offline user (I assume you meant  
offline, not online) fails silently since we suppress the dialogue.   
New conversation windows wouldn't be created; a separate dialogue  
would be shown. By  the time it hits the notify_message() callback,  
there isn't enough data to put something into a conversation window  
-- the core has handled trying that already.

>> Your buddy list was downloaded from the server.
>> Your buddy list was stored on the server.
>>      These two are from Gadu-Gadu; having to manually upload/download
>> the buddy list is silly, so Adium does so automatically (upload after
>> a buddy change like a move or add, download on connect).
>
> Was Bartosz going to change this behavior?
I opened a thread discussing this behavior a while back (December  
'06).  Bartosz initially felt that these behaviors were too important  
to be automatic, and that rather user intervention should be  
explicitly required for either to occur; after discussion, he  
suggested difference detection, similar to how the MSN protocol  
handles it.


> Because of the string freeze, we won't be able to change these until
> after 2.0.0.
For sure :)

>
> <bad error messages>
> These all come from OSCAR:
> I don't think any of those qualifies as a decent error message.
Indeed.  So no objection to rewriting them after 2.0.0?

> However, I do have to point out that the feature is called "evil," and
> I guess the AOL marketing people wigged out and wanted to call it
> "warning" instead. Of course, we should call it "warning" too.
Sounds like a very probably story of what happened at AOL corporate :)

>>      The (URL) after actions seems odd to me... why should the user
>> care if they'll be directed to a web page or not?
>
> Because launching a web browser isn't necessary cheap?
Worksforme.  My web browser is always launched, so I just didn't  
think about it.  I'm not heartbroken for (URL) to be there.... though  
perhaps something more user friendly like (Web) or (Web page) would  
be better.  It's asking a couple steps of reasoning for (URL) to be  
understood: the user has to first recognize that (URL) is there, then  
reason that this indicates that they are about to click on a URL,  
then reason that Gaim isn't going to display the resulting web page  
directly but rather that a web site is going to be loaded in a  
browser window.

>> Yahoo:
>>      Why is there an "Add Buddy" item here and nowhere else?  This is
>> suppressed in Adium; the contextual menu for *any* buddy not on the
>> buddy list already has a similar item without the account having to
>> add one.
>> -----
>> Contact actions:
>> MSN: "Initiate Chat" is ambiguous; it should be "Initiate Multiuser
>> Chat" or "Initiate Group Chat"
>
> In Gaim parlance, "chat" is synonymous with "multiuser chat" or  
> "group chat."
I see.  It'd be nice for MSN to have the same group chat interface as  
the rest of the prpls, of course, making that option moot, but its  
craziness makes that a bit tough.

>> AIM tells us when a screenname isn't valid; we can handle that error
>> message with more verbosity and therefore more helpfulness.
>>> This is
>>> what Adium shows at present: "The screen name you entered is not
>>> registered. Check to ensure you typed it correctly. If it is a new
>>> name, you must register it at www.aim.com before you can use it."
>
> That's a dangerous "therefore" ;)
:)  In this *particular* case, the verbosity is more helpful.   
Definitely agree that it's not a good general practice.

-Evan