Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

The ironically non-pedantic kind. The point beyond the internal inter-personal squabbles of this forum is if 5 isn't enough for you, request the features you want through the maemo bugzilla. If you have other suggestions, request them via maemo bugzilla. Only putting them here will result in them being ignored at best; at worst they will turn into flamebait.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

Wrong is wrong though.

2/5 = .40 and that times 100 = 40%

It should have been 5/2 * 100 = 250%

Now, with that aside... go RTCOMM over Pidgin... and this comes from a person that came from Pidgin - before that, Miranda IM - and switched to it on my machines. It integrates with the OS better, saves space and works rather well, even with my Gizmo dial-in number set up via IPKall.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

I use MirandaIM on my PC, but RTcomm on my Tablet. I don't need anything other than to be able to chat with people, so file transfers, invisible mode, etc, is all superfluous.

The only thing I would like to see is the ability to quickly and easily choose what accounts get signed in. As it is now, I have to go into the Account settings and disable the ones i don't want signed in.

Pidgin, is, well, another app. Using more memory, etc. The Tablets are very capable, but in such a limited environment, specially when I've got internet, MaemoWordpy, and Mirage running sometimes, that extra little bit helps.

Those considering RTCOMM, highly suggest updating to the beta. It's REAL easy to switch in and out of red pill mode, and i"ve done it repeatedly for the various updates without having any issues.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

I switched from pidgin to rtcomm because of difficulty finding a chat window in pidgin once it is minimised. You have to click the systray icon, then your whole desktop goes blank, then you have to press the home button to bring up the application list, then pick pidgin, then double-click the user in the buddy list to then bring back the conversation. Crazy stuff.

rtcomm, is good, but has one major bug. If you disable "auto away", then go online, sometimes it appears you are online, when infact you are marked as away. You can find this out by opening a chat window, and you will see next to your icon that you are actually away, even though your presence tray icon says you're online. Sometimes it quickly changes to online when you open the chat window, otherwise you have to select avaliable mode.

One other problem I have with rtcomm is that it does not give you the ability to notify when users come online or go offline. I thought of a solution to this - by running "dbus-monitor" in xterm, I can see that there are dbus messages for contacts changing status. So I could write a python script to check for these, and then display a notification and/or log status changes. Maybe even execute a command for certain special contacts. Pity I don't know python! But there are some nice examples of doing this with pidgin here: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/pidgin-2-0.ars/4

Anyone want to tackle this? :)

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

Not that Pidgin is bad or anything, but RTCOMM's integration into the IT is freakin superb.

One thing I'd love to see with RTCOMM is DirectIM support for AIM, for no other reason than it'd be great to be able to take a snapshot with the webcam and then paste it right into a conversation.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

Hmmm, that 'away' bug in rtcomm is worse than I thought. It sets you as away even if you are busy using your NIT. Even if you disable auto-away in the presence settings. You only find out when you open a chat window. Anyone else experience this? Where does one log this bug?

I also realised (by looking at the output of dbus-monitor) why opening the contacts list is so slow and uses up 100% cpu. It seems, upon opening, this list queries the online status of every contact in your list against all the im servers. I would've thought that it maintains this list in the background like most im clients. When you have a lot of contacts, this process is slow.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

For me, the inability to see who's online without starting another app has made me return to pidgin. I keep one side of my NIT clear for desktop picture reasons so the contacts applet doesn't do it for me. If it had an option for icons only and a way to make them really small, i'd probably use it.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

Is it really querying the servers, or just the dbus calls to the telepathy backend?

There is the persistent IM backend ( telepathy ) that does all the protocol stuff and then the front end ( chat_ui, contact list, ... ) can be closed completely and will query for the state information when it is launched from telepathy ( not necessarily the actual IM servers ).

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

You're probably right. I was thinking of that after I posted. Still, it's a very slow process.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

I'll switch to RTCOMM when:

1) it actually makes me invisible when I set my status to invisible - I know that not all chat service let you do that, but RTCOMM should work properly with those ones that do support it.
2) I can tell it to not auto-IDLE nor auto-AWAY me. It should keep the status I told it, no matter how idle I am, no matter if my screen dims, etc.
2a) it'd be nice if RTCOMM had some visibility into, and integration with, the power management stuff. Don't power down if you're signed in. Don't fully shut off the screen if you're not AWAY (partially dim the screen: yes, fully blank the screen: no). Settings/options like that.
3) easy to create custom statii (like pidgin) -- I like to have more status info than just "away". Like "I'm in a meeting", "I'm watching TV", etc.
4) I can have chat logs that automatically get stored on the data device of my choice (removable card, internal card, somewhere under /home/user).

If those are do-able now, then great. Let me know, and I'll switch. But, from what I've heard whenever I've looked into switching, these are ways in which RTCOMM is not yet fully baked.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

2a) You can already have the nokia not dim the screen when plugged in. not turning off the display when on battery would not be recommended as the battery would drain quickly. That said, I believe there is a gconf hack to add longer display timeouts

4) the problem is those other locations are unsafe to use for logs as they can dissapear at any time. A simple script could move/copy the logs when you want the on the external card.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

I'm aware of both of those, and neither is acceptable for what I was expressing. I'm not talking about only having the screen stay lit when I'm plugged in (and that feature is kind of odd anyway -- seems like some apps think the screen IS dim, like the status bar cpu/clock applet that stops showing the current time when it thinks the screen would be dim). I'm talking about not dimming the screen when I am signed in to a chat service (which is also not what the gconf hack does). As it is now, I have to keep tapping the screen to see if the other half of a conversation replied, and that ends up defeating any battery savings.

Further, I end up constantly tapping the screen anyway, so I'm not seeing any battery lifetime savings the way things are now. What I am seeing is: the annoyance of having to tap the screen in order to get instant feedback on the state of my chats. If the other side of the chat is semi-slow in responses, then I end up having to force the NIT to stay awake. No battery savings (and the lifetime is just fine; I do in fact see the battery indicators stated battery life of up to 7 hours when I start with a full charge)

I'm not saying that this should be set-in-stone. I'm saying this should be a selectable feature. RTCOMM is integrated into Maemo, so give it options that really leverage this fact. Maybe a "wake the screen when I receive an IM" or something. Just give me options that make the experience less annoying, and requires fewer pointless gestures just to keep my use of the device the way I want it.

To me, that means the following _OPTIONS_:

(signed in meaning "I'm on-line with at least one RTCOMM chat service")

- don't fully blank the screen if I'm signed in
- alert me (ask to confirm) if I try to shut down while signed in
- don't dim the screen if I'm signed in, and neither Away nor Idle
- un-dim/un-blank the screen if I receive a message, and the screen isn't locked

None of those having any dependency on whether or not I'm plugged in. Or maybe have options that vary with both "being signed in" and "being plugged in".

A well written application will deal with such unexpected events gracefully. Either by ranking the 3 storage locations, warning you that there's a problem, or falling back to a default location (or some amount of all 3).

I shouldn't have to work around/against a well written application. :-) Nor should I have to resort to hiding shell scripts behind the GUI for my GUI oriented apps.

Worst case, the app should do that for me:

- I tell it where I want the logs to end up.
- It dynamically writes them to the default location.
- It periodically copies them (without my having to initiate it) to the storage location I specified.
- Optionally, I can initiate that copy process, but that's not instead of the automated copy, that's just for when I want to force such an event.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

Guys please please vote for contacts not responding bug... 3072.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3072

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

As user change xxxx and yyyy and run. Display options will now contain additional dimming and off settings ( values are in seconds ). You can set this to be anything you choose. You can make it so your display, effectively, never turns off if you wish.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

No offense, but ... can you read? If so, you should go back and RE-read what I wrote... because I'm pretty sure you didn't understand what I wrote even a slight little bit.

I already know how to make it so that it effectively NEVER dims/blanks. I even said I already know about that hack. That hack is NOT EVEN CLOSE to the feature I described.

What I have described is a desire for the application to inform the tablet about when is a good time to intelligently dim/blank or not. What you're talking about is almost entirely unrelated to that. It's not even a good hack for what I'm describing.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

Don't get snippy at me, I didn't write it and Nokia hasn't seen fit to open it to developers.

Then I guess it's time to break out the compiler and take over the pidgin project. It shouldn't be too difficult to keep the display from blanking using a few dbus calls.

Have fun while you are at it.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

Sorry, bad day here. But, you really did seem to ignore everything I said.

Re: Pidgin or RTCOMM?
 

Reading on the small screen I sometimes miss items. I figured with you online all the time it would be a viable fix until something better could be developed.