[Gaim-devel] Re: [Kopete-devel] Drag and drop of IM contacts

[Casey A. S. <cs...@so...>]

On Tue, December 02 2003 22:54, Sean Egan wrote:
> Account-name is no more obviously a telephone number.

Very true.  I can think of nothing better than UserID, and in fact when 
considering consistancy across plugins in the past, a couple people suggested 
using User ID if a single wording were to be used, so...

> There's no need to go around breaking standards in an attempt to create
> a new one.  I'm happy with MIME, but I don't really feel a strong need
> to accomodate meta-contacts.  Regardless, there are a ton of different
> ways to assemble this data; I'm interested in hearing some ideas from
> other people.

Very true.  Keep in mind that I'm no real KDE developer (my language scope 
being mainly limited to PHP, XML, and some Shell), but only can offer ideas 
and expand upon them.  I will be very curious to here what some of the other 
Kopete folks have to say on this.

> One possible alternative would be several MIME headers at the same,
> separated by blank lines.  That would essentially be replacing your []
> stuff with blank lines.

Hmm...well I'll leave that level of detail in the hands of people who 
understand such things better than myself.  I can't offer much more input 
here...

> You're list won't show any obvious signs that an entry in your list is
> anything other than a single buddy---that being the most active buddy---the
> one you most likely want to talk to.

Interesting...so it uses a similar logic as when a user clicks upon a 
metacontact to chat with in Kopete.

> Only when a user clicks "Expand" in the context menu will he realize it
> represents more than one buddy. 

Interesting...so the details of what individual contacts are associated with a 
person (I must admit I find 'person' more obvious in meaning than 
'metacontact') are more hidden from view.  But taking a single-user approach, 
how would you choose which contact to put into the im-contact?  If based on 
the most active user, that would seem a bit time-sensitive.

One example I can think of is a person on my list for which I have accounts 
for both AIM and MSN.  They prefer to use MSN (and usually don't use AIM at 
all), however when they want to restrict their conversation to closer 
friends, they disconnect from MSN, leaving the AIM connection active.  So if 
I had dragged the contact during normal hours, the MSN contact would be 
copied.  However since I may only be able to communicate with them via AIM at 
certain points in time, the preferable account at such points in time would 
be AIM.  I'm sure that scenarios exist to defeat any given algorithm to pick 
a single contact - where it is adequate for clicking on a metacontact, I 
would argue that it is not adequate for moving contacts around.

But as I've been noted of in the past, I tend to be beyond the average IM 
user.  With 17 accounts setup in my Kopete and multiple contacts for nearly 
every entry on my list, I tend to notice issues that the average user may 
never experience.

However it is increasingly common for the average user to have at least a 
single account on multiple protocols.  If you look at random LiveJournal user 
info pages (which allow entry of user IDs for 5 different protocols), you 
will see that most people who state any list an account on more than one 
protocol.  Peaple develop a favorite, but keep older/different clients/
accounts around to communicate with old friends or users who only use 
protocols other than their preferred protocol.

Well I've said much more than enough for the time being.  I think I shall sit 
back for a while and see what other ideas enter this thread.

-- 
Casey Allen Shobe
cs...@so...
Jabber: si...@ja...; ICQ: 1494523; AIM/Yahoo: SomeLinuxGuy
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