cocoaforge

I'm sure this question have been asked many times before, but I'd like a clarification. On MSN for PCs, users can have custom status messages displayed under their user names (think I saw it refered to as 'personal messages' in a thread on this forum). And in some screenshots of Adium extras, I've seen users with messages displayed under their user names.

The mac version of MSN doesn't seem to support this, as far as I've been able to discern, and I haven't been able to enable it in Adium. Is this a limitation in the mac MSN protocol, or in Adium, or am I just very far behind when it comes to the latest in personal messaging? ;-)

[edit] Adding to me own thread here... I just discovered Adium DOES support the kind of status I'm talking about, but not for the MSN protocol. The screenshots I've been seeing have been of ICQ contacts with messages under their user names. Have I been dreaming, or doesn't the PC version of MSN allow this either? [edit]

Adium uses the work of another project called Gaim to connect to the Microsoft servers.

The Gaim team needs to update their implementation of MSN before Adium gets things like custom status messages. It's coming soonish and if you'd like to follow the progress of this update, I'd suggest you visit this page regularly (I haven't seen a better place to monitor this). When this has been completed, then Adium will benefit from this soon afterwards.

Hopefully it won't take to long, I'm anxiously looking forward to this feature, too.

Kiel :-)

My thanks. This is just the place to keep tabs on this development. On a related note, do you know why the mac version of MSN does not support this? Not that I'm planning on using it, just curious...

Because Microsoft have neglected MSN Messenger for Mac for a long time. The brand new version 5.00 might support it, but I wouldn't bank on it. There would appear to be no real reason why you couldn't implement it though - it has to be carried in the protocol for it to work on Windows, and Microsoft's programmers presumably have access to at least some level of protocol documentation.

So this is a limitation of libgaim/Gaim, then? Because I was actually considering switching to Proteus (the only reason I would ever do that) just to have that feature, but Proteus is also based on libgaim, so I suppose there's no reason at all... I just have to wait, and as an added bonus, I can stick to my favourite chat client...