Re: The noninclusion of Gaim

["Curtis C. Hovey" <sinzui cox net>]

On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 13:16, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 12:57, Sean Egan wrote:
> > On Fri, 2003-10-10 at 18:48, Mark Finlay wrote:
> 
> > > Even if gaim maintainers could be convinced to move to Gnome cvs etc...
> > 
> > You'd be very hard pressed to convince us to move to GNOME CVS.  We've
> > been with Sourceforge for years, and they've been very good to us.  We
> > don't want to abandon them.
> 
> Then you strike out already.  It's been gone over before, translators
> and such need you on GNOME CVS.

Is this strictly true?  There must be some fine line for translations
because I can see a number of repositories configured in jhbuild to
build GNOME 2.4.  Are libs like cairo or backend apps like Mozilla
exempt?

> > 
> > > they are not on boards the Gnome philosophy as far as I can tell. Gaim
> > > would really need a massive UI and usability overhaul to "fit in" with
> > > the Gnome desktop IMHO
> > 
> > I use Gaim and GNOME all the time and think they "fit in" together very
> > well.  Gaim follows the GNOME HIG very well, follows appropriate
> > freedesktop.org specifications.  I'd be interested in hearing what needs
> > to be "overhauled."
> 
> For one, this has been gone over many times.  You can probably find a
> lot of discussion on it in the archives for this list and
> usability gnome org (where you should probably ask for suggestions,
> those guys rock!)
> 
> 1) Separate browser settings are extraneous
> 2) Same for proxy settings
> 3) 20 ways to configure IM window grouping and tabs is insane
> 4) Icon smileys *might* need to be icon themes, not sure tho
> 5) Tons of just plain insane settings - button icon/text, window pixel
> sizes, etc.  Way too much crap that 99% of people *never* use, and
> making them wade thru that crap sucks.  I still have trouble finding
> useful settings in GAIM, even tho I've been using it for years. 
> Completely insane.  The tree-view of settings is also bad, since it just
> confuses things even more - is a setting in a general category or
> sub-category, etc.  Strip out the uselss/extraneous settings and
> simplify the browser to a list/icon list (or even tabs, if you can get
> it down to few enough categories).
> 6) Menues on the buddy list need a bit of work.  There are pointless
> options in the Buddies menu, like "Show empty groups" - these should be
> moved to preferences, *if* you even need them.
> 7) The tools menu is just a complete mess.  I don't even know where to
> begin with that - it just needs to be torn out and done over, I think. 
> It's just far too technically oriented, for things that shouldn't be
> (away messages, etc.)
> 8) I see the HTML for markup right in the IM message, which is
> completely horrible.  It should work more like other apps (such as
> Abiword) do with regards to markup; then just convert to HTML when you
> send it across the wire.
> 9) Many of the plugins have whacked configuration/behaviour -
> notification area icon is "violating" the spirit of the notification
> area (I always see the GAIM icon, even tho it's not notifying me of
> anything - just taking up space), the message notification plugin has
> tons of various ways to notify me, just one (that works best with GNOME)
> should be picked and be done with it.  Likewise, most common
> functionality should be default, and not even have an option to disable
> (why would they want to?  in extreme cases, they could hand-edit the
> config file).
> 
> You can tell configuration is the main theme of the problem, tho there
> are a few layout/complexity issues.  Again, the usability gnome org folk
> could probably get much more indepth, and probably offer more concrete
> and useful fix suggestions than a UI design neophyte like me can.  ;-)
> 
> GAIM does, however, do an fairly excellent job of following the layout
> guidelines of the HIG so far as a non-GNOME app goes, which is quite
> commendable.  ^,^

Wow, you dwarfed my list, and I was very proud of mine.  I'll add the
cut, copy, paste does not behave right.

I've been using Gaim for 3 years.  I agree with many users that it is
the best IM available, but I'm constantly frustrated by it's subtle
deviance from the rest of the app I intuitively use.  All three users
I've set GNOME up for have complained that Gaim just doesn't work
(browser, proxy, paste) right.  They don't know how GNOME should work,
they just notice within a few days that Gaim isn't like the rest of
apps, and they don't know how to fix that.

Gaim just happens to use many of the same libraries that GNOME uses; it
doesn't make an effort to integrate or take advantage of GNOME.

> > 
> > > I think that gaim should be the galeon of IM and for Gnome we need
> > > something that fits in better with the goals of Gnome.
> > 
> > Good luck, then.
> 
> Or, more likely, GAIM would be the mozilla of browsing, and GNOME would
> have an integrated, clean UI making use of the libgaim backend.  ;-)

That's been planned for years.  I believe there is a division of backend
and frontend now, but I think a separate Gnome-IM, or Gossip-Gaim
project is the only way to make GNOMEness happen.  I recall there was a
crude IM feature added to Evolution back in it's 0.8.0 days--most of my
contacts have IM identities, so I'm keen on seeing a IM app that knows
about Evolution.

Even if a separate front-end project would be started, I suspect there
will be some frustration during code and string freezes.  I gave up
fixing my Evo-Gaim online buddies rss hack because the API's were never
stable.  I do recall that API compatibility with major versions is a
GNOME Platform requirement.

-- 
__C U R T I S  C.  H O V E Y____________________
sinzui cox net
Guilty of stealing everything I am.