Re: [Gaim-devel] Automatic friendly name update

[Robert M. <rob...@de...>]

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 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.

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. =)

Regards,
Rob