[Adium-devl] I would like to port Adium to Windows XP

[Evan Schoenberg]

On Apr 25, 2006, at 9:02 PM, Peter Hosey wrote:
> Also, nobody has pointed this out, but Adium is written in Cocoa,  
> with Carbon and Quartz mixed in. It's not possible to run this on  
> Windows. It would have to be a complete rewrite. As Augie  
> mentioned, it would be "Adium in name only".

Actually, I believe Geoffrey made this point in his original email --  
two separate code bases would be necessary for such a project to exist.

Geoffrey, hi :) Thanks very much for your praise of Adium and interest!

It would indeed be a huge undertaking to create an Adium for Windows,  
and as pointed out in several places it would be a continuous process  
to keep it in line with the Mac version once it existed.  Cocoa's  
many things great things, but portable isn't one of them.

That said, you've development experience, and if you wanted to try  
something like this, I don't see why we should discourage it.  I  
agree completely with your previous points about the Adium goodwill  
and brand name; a Windows 'port' would have to meet a high standards  
bar to bear the Adium name.

One possibility I think is worth exploring is a slightly alternative  
one: there exists two significant open source IM clients for Windows  
at present, Gaim for Windows and Miranda IM.  Gaim for Windows is  
built on gtk+ and intentionally looks just like Gaim for Linux; it's  
not intended to be the visually appealing, expansive program that  
Adium is.  It is the protocol core for a lot of Adium's  
functionality, and for that we owe the Gaim team many thanks (for the  
record) :).

Miranda, on the other hand, I have little experience with but from  
what I've seen actually has some Adium 'skins' which have been  
developed elsewhere.  I wonder if Miranda might make an interesting  
starting point for a pseudo-port... packaging an improved Adium skin,  
adding in support for the various .AdiumXtras, etc.  Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Evan
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