Re: Empathy Help

[Milo Casagrande <milo casagrande name>]

2009/8/28 Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>:
> I'm working on the Empathy Help to take into account the
> recent UI changes.  (Milo already committed quite a few
> corrections.  Thanks!)  I want to give a heads-up about
> a few things I've come across:
>
> * I'm adding an "Accounts Window" guide page, so there's
> something to point that Help button at.
>
> * From the "Accounts Window" page, I started doing details
> pages.  For instance, there's a "Jabber Account Details"
> page, which is strictly for crazy advanced usage only.

Cool. Since the interface doesn't mention Google Talk anymore when you
create an account, are we going to talk about that here?

In the old Empathy docs I wrote something about the values for
"Priority" and "Resource", maybe it's possible to reuse that.

> * Along those lines, I'm adding "IRC Account Details",
> which is the craziest, because it's the only one where
> the basic options aren't just login ID and password.
>
> * To that end, a lot of the detailed information about
> connecting to an IRC server ends up duplicated in this
> page.
>
> * That information is redundant with "Create an IRC
> account".  I'm not sure this is a particularly good
> task.  I don't really ever want to create an account
> for IRC.  Heck, IRC "accounts" are purely an invention
> of IM programs doing IRC.  I want to join an IRC chat.

Yeah, true that is not a real account, but Empathy speaks in terms of
accounts. When you add a new one the interface will look like:

Add a new [IRC] account

I think user will get used to it, and think of IRC as another of their
accounts with all the features of other accounts: enable/disable,
remove, search conversations...

There is absolutely room for improvement on the IRC side in the help
(and also in all the help), but I tend to think on treating IRC as
another account, since you also need to create one and enable it
before you can join a room/chat...

> * So I propose we nuke that topic, and modify "Join a
> room" to direct you to create an account if you haven't
> already, directing you to "Add an account" and "IRC
> Account Details".

The "Add an account" page (think is the "Add a new account") is a
general one, and applies to IRC to some extent. Probably it makes
sense to link the "IRC Account Details" also from there.

> * Talking to the Empathy developers, I'm told that the
> password for IRC accounts is a server password, not a
> nickserv password.  That affects all the nick password
> stuff pretty drastically.

Hmmm... if it's a server password, why does it work with nickserv? Are
the two things identical?
Testing it on freenode which has a nickserv, it worked fine...

Ciao.

-- 
Milo Casagrande <milo casagrande name>