why limited to gaim

ahmettaha · Post by **ahmettaha** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:01 am

I understand that adium uses gaim for msn messenger. I also understand that adium doesnt support anything that gaim doesnt. However, I'm curious if there is no way of getting around this. I mean adium can use gaim for the majority of the features, but isnt it possible to add functinalities over gaim?

m2e · Post by **m2e** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:42 am

I think it is possible. but if you were to implement it into Adium only mac users would benefit. If you added the functuality to gaim, then windows and mac people would benefit and is much more convenient as 2 programmers don't need to code the same thing for 2 different platforms.

Well that's my understanding, and i can't really speak with any authority.

ahmettaha · Post by **ahmettaha** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:00 pm

as far as I am concerned, I want personal messages, and in a selfish way, I rather work on just adium then, gaim with adium

Post by **bgannin** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:06 pm

To implement protocol level features you need a protocol plugin to do so. libgaim provides the necessary components to do so and to go around this would require another protocol stack of some form to provide the rest of the necessary MSN architecture, which in turn would increase usage metrics (RAM, CPU, etc.)

ahmettaha · Post by **ahmettaha** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:12 pm

and this plugin cant be provided as an adium extra?

Post by **bgannin** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 1:24 pm

It's not that it can't, it's that you'd need to reimplement everything provided by libgaim for MSN in addition to the extensions needed for personal messages. I'm saying that you can't just add personal messages into Adium without protocol level changes. You say you want to avoid libgaim, which provides the protocol functionality you are discussing, which is why I said what I did [that you'd need to reimplement the wheel to supplement it in this fashion (or with this stipulation)].

adambrown · Post by **adambrown** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:35 pm

Sorry to say this man, but if you want it that bad - use Amsn, or Mercury. Adium will have them in time, patience is a virtue.

revolution · Post by **revolution** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:46 pm

adambrown wrote:Sorry to say this man, but if you want it that bad - use Amsn, or Mercury. Adium will have them in time, patience is a virtue.

Or use the official client. I'm afraid to say I have resorted to this for my iMac, I can't handle the interface of aMsn or Mercury. Adium is still used on my iBook and once status messages are availble in Adium I will be back like a shot. I just wish I had the knowledge to help with implementing stuff into gaim and speed the process up.

Post by **The_Tick** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:26 pm

I don't get what the big deal with these are anyhow, can someone explain them?

revolution · Post by **revolution** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 7:59 pm

The_Tick wrote:I don't get what the big deal with these are anyhow, can someone explain them?

Sure, simply put, my friends don't change thier account names (alias, nickname whatever you wanna call it) very often and communicate things through their status messages. Having trialled the new official client for a bit I realised I was missing a lot of information about what they were doing, where they are etc. It might seem trivial but I like to konw what my friends are upto. To me they are more important that the custom emotes, but I know you can only implement what gaim has implemented.

mipadi · Post by **mipadi** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 9:47 pm

m2e wrote:If you added the functuality to gaim, then windows and mac people would benefit and is much more convenient as 2 programmers don't need to code the same thing for 2 different platforms.

Hey don't forget about the Linux folks — they are the target users of Gaim, after all!

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:30 pm

It should be noted that the Adium developers aren't averse to incorporating other protocol code besides libgaim into Adium, as evidenced by the inclusion of joscar in Adium 1.0; joscar will replace libgaim as the protocol used for the AIM network (libgaim will still power everything else, besides Bonjour).

Post by **The_Tick** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:39 pm

FredAkbar wrote:It should be noted that the Adium developers aren't averse to incorporating other protocol code besides libgaim into Adium, as evidenced by the inclusion of joscar in Adium 1.0; joscar will replace libgaim as the protocol used for the AIM network (libgaim will still power everything else, besides Bonjour).

We also work on libgaim where we can. Or at least Evan does.

tedger · Post by **tedger** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 12:24 am

The personal messages fill the same niche as Available messages on AIM.

As FredAkbar pointed out the developers aren't agianst using other libraries but to change is a very big step. A huge part of the changes going into Adium 1.0 are changes due to using joscar instead of libgaim.

To illistrate this, as of this posting, there are 11 code related tickets remaining on trac for Adium 1.0 6 (over half) are joscar defects that still need ironing out. 14 out of 52 of the "highest" or "high" priority tickets are joscar. So it's no simple task to switch over, no other "subproject" has this many high priory tickets in 1.0, the closest is the entirely new log system with 5.

Yes, Adium tends to be a little AIM centric, but things are getting better, you have to remember that a big part of the core codebase is focused on AIM since Adium used to be an AIM client. AdIuM <- (see "AIM" in there?)

zerock · Post by **zerock** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 5:18 am

The_Tick wrote:I don't get what the big deal with these are anyhow, can someone explain them?

is just like having AIM status messages.. same thing

zerock · Post by **zerock** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 5:20 am

hmm i remember hearing from cbarrett, that they were definitely on the look out for other alternatives for MSN, if needed.

Post by **bgannin** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 5:29 am

zerock wrote:hmm i remember hearing from cbarrett, that they were definitely on the look out for other alternatives for MSN, if needed.

Note - a replacement must match and exceed the current capabilities for consideration.

Ethion · Post by **Ethion** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 10:45 pm

We have kopete, but we've alredy had a huge discussion about why we can't use it

Post by **Catfish_Man** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:40 pm

Essentially, most libraries fall into one or more of four categories:

Incomplete/buggy (any of dozens on sourceforge)
Requires bridging to a different language (joscar, smack.

)
Has huge dependencies (libgaim, libkopete)
Requires implementing some sort of complex connector (telepathy)

All of these suck, unfortunately. A talented developer could resolve any of them with enough time and dedication*, but time and people are something we're short on. So if anyone wants to finish an existing MSN library, or write a really good language bridge (we're very wary of Apple's java bridge; it pretty much sucks) to a language with good libraries, or get Qt+libkopete talking to Cocoa, or write dbus-objc so we can use telepathy... feel free.

*see libgaim in Adium for an example of this.

ahmettaha · Post by **ahmettaha** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 10:42 pm

How about using amsn for it? It's open source, and they seem to support more feature.