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Imagine a chat application with Teams that is actually /usable/. I really miss the days of Pidgin. Fun fact: the KDE / Linux client for MSN had a feature whereb

Imagine a chat application with Teams that is actually /usable/. I really miss the days of Pidgin. Fun fact: the KDE / Linux client for MSN had a feature whereby it would notify me (by opening a window) if someone had clicked on my profile in MSN Messenger and started typing a message, but not yet sent it. It was a really nice way of freaking regular MSN Messenger users out. I cannot remember what the name of the application was but it was very handy.

tim-- 4y ago
There were a bunch of apps back in the day that could hook into MSN Messenger to provide a whole bunch of functionality like this. It could tell you when people closed their chat windows.
rw_grim 4y ago
Yeah we're trying to tackle the usability stuff in Pidgin 3. Unfortunately due to API guarantees we just can't make the changes people want in purple2/pidgin2, so it is what it is. We are nearing an alpha soon (tm) (no date set) but they goal is to have basic pidgin 2 functionality with the ability to add all the new features. I have a public blog post on my patreon that goes into some more detail if you're interested. https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-were-with-3-78291546 https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-were-with-3-78291546
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Can't wait to see what Pidgin 3 is going to be like. How bad are the API changes? Will people be able to use existing libpurple implementations?
  - rw_grim 4y ago
    It's essentially a brand new program/library now.
userbinator 4y ago
A lot of thirdparty clients did that, and it's a natural consequence of the protocol relying on creating sessions (ephemeral chat rooms is a good description of what they're like), which its participant(s) are notified of being added to prior to the first message being sent; but the official client just keeps track of the session creations and doesn't actually indicate any activity in a session until a message is sent.
severino 4y ago
Kopete? I also remember some Linux MSN clients at the time actually told you when some contact closed the conversation window. That was really cool.

tim-- 4y ago

There were a bunch of apps back in the day that could hook into MSN Messenger to provide a whole bunch of functionality like this. It could tell you when people closed their chat windows.

rw_grim 4y ago

Yeah we're trying to tackle the usability stuff in Pidgin 3. Unfortunately due to API guarantees we just can't make the changes people want in purple2/pidgin2, so it is what it is. We are nearing an alpha soon (tm) (no date set) but they goal is to have basic pidgin 2 functionality with the ability to add all the new features. I have a public blog post on my patreon that goes into some more detail if you're interested. https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-were-with-3-78291546 https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-were-with-3-78291546

jeroenhd 4y ago
Can't wait to see what Pidgin 3 is going to be like. How bad are the API changes? Will people be able to use existing libpurple implementations?
- rw_grim 4y ago
  It's essentially a brand new program/library now.

userbinator 4y ago

A lot of thirdparty clients did that, and it's a natural consequence of the protocol relying on creating sessions (ephemeral chat rooms is a good description of what they're like), which its participant(s) are notified of being added to prior to the first message being sent; but the official client just keeps track of the session creations and doesn't actually indicate any activity in a session until a message is sent.

severino 4y ago

Kopete? I also remember some Linux MSN clients at the time actually told you when some contact closed the conversation window. That was really cool.