On Vox: Grumbles about Pidgin
Actually, I'm still using the GAIM version-- the project was renamed Pidgin because AOL got their panties in a bunch about it.
this multi-IM client of mine keeps crashing with MSN. I thought about upgrading GAIM to Pidgin, and then remembered why I had not done so. The developers decided to strip Pidgin of protocol icons, which I have preferred from the very beginning, including when I was still using Trillian. I abandoned Trillian because at the time between .74 and 2.0, it was a terrible memory hog, and it was always frustrating to find something I might be able to use was only featured on the Pro version. Sure, I suppose I could find a cracked version with a keygen included by piratish means, but such can be fraught with peril. Lately, I've decided to support open source instead, as most everything I use suits my purposes with the least amount of frills.
Well, I went out to see if someone developed support for protocol icons, say, in a plug-in or some extension, and I got a rather rude surprise here. It seems some goobs demanding such support decided to spam the hell out of the ticketing system for Pidgin over at Sourceforge, nesting it in comment and reply, and so on. Well, the developer blogging about it in this link decided to employ a rather defensive attitude about it, which oddly enough, is not all that unusual among Linux users at times, i.e., "our way is the best and only way to do it."
This comment I found particularly insulting:
Others have failed to fully take advantage of Pidgin’s capabilities, and once they realize the power of the “contacts” pidgin supports, realize that most if not all of their desire for protocol icons is removed.
How presumptuous. I continue using protocol icons because sometimes I need to distinguish my contacts by the protocol they are using. Despite compatibility made between Yahoo! Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (MSN, now standard on the Vista OS), their offline messaging doesn't quite work the same. For a multi-IM system that uses older protocols, this distinction is even greater. GAIM/Pidgin uses a "bounce" system for MSN/WLM, but it's not quite the same as Yahoo in that the offline messages for Yahoo go straight through and are timestamped directly when they are sent, while the "bounced" MSN user receives the message timestamped at the time they log on (unless I missed something, and I'm quite wrong).
A friend suggested I go back to Trillian and divide my contacts by protocol. No thanks... Trillian 3.17 may be nice, but I have no assurance it runs lighter than it used to, and I could do that in what I'm using now. I just decide not to because my Contacts come from different places on the 'Net, and I need to reference them in some way, particularly if I don't recognize a name right away.
GAIM runs pretty light and suits my needs, but some of my contacts do get frustrated when they can't send their extra bells and whistles through-- I can't read handwritten pictures, I can't see some custom emoticons, I can't initiate audio or video chat, and I can't accept an invite to MSN's gaming network (say, for those simple games of checkers, Reversi, etc. that have been included in Windows operating systems for quite some time). I don't need those bells and whistles myself, but they get a little put out.
Why don't I just use Yahoo! or WLM standalone? Well, my Contacts are spread out over ALL of the major IM clients. None of them are using Gtalk with any regular basis, if at all, but I still have Jabber set up for that. I'm trying to remember if the LiveJournal client is Jabber-based or not.
Anyway, maybe I'll figure out eventually why my old build isn't playing nicely with MSN, or vice versa. When things get bad, I actually do go back to Windows Messenger. Everything is all unsorted there, but it works in a pinch with minimal memory usage.
Originally posted on jaklumen.vox.com