[Adium-devl] Get Info window: Status / Profile distinction

[Colin Barrett]

On Feb 4, 2007, at 12:29 PM, Evan Schoenberg wrote:

> The Status / Profile split in the Info tab of the Get Info window is  
> a really silly AIM-ism.
>
> On AIM, we suppress the various other information we're fed by  
> libgaim and show their status message in the status are, or  
> absolutely nothing if they are Available with no message, and  we  
> show just the profile in the profile area.  Other information  
> available in the tooltips, such as online since, their client  
> ("America Online", "AIM via Hiptop", "AIM Mobile", etc.), and their  
> idle time are all hidden in that window.
>
> On services with actual status messages that aren't AIM -- Yahoo and  
> Jabber, for example -- we have the status message in the status  
> area, and libgaim's generated information -- which includes whatever  
> the protocol supplies, formatted however we want but at present as  
> "Label: information" -- in the "Profile" area.
>
> On services without status messages -- MSN for example -- the status  
> area contains the name of the status the contact is in ("Do not  
> disturb", "On the phone", etc.) and the profile area duplicates this  
> and has the other information as above.
>
> The only rationale for having profile and status in separate areas  
> that I can remember is that as of 10.2 there were problems  
> specifying a background color for just part of an NSTextView.  This  
> architectural limitation is no longer present... and I can't come up  
> with any good reasons for still doing what we do.  How about a  
> single text view with all this info?
>
> And having done that, is there any reason whatsoever to continue to  
> have "Client" in the AIM tooltips?  I can't think of a time I've  
> ever cared to want to see that on hover.
>
> Thoughts?

I was planning on giving the entire get info window a make over,  
particularly that area.

I was also thinking of suggesting a bit of a reworking to get rid of  
the ugly model/view fusion that we have with Tooltip plugins. The  
tooltip plugin should be deciding what parts of the model to pull into  
itself -- that data is essentially unreachable to anything else that  
wants to have it, currently.

Thoughts?

-Colin

p.s. As far as client goes, it's nice information to have,  
particularly if you aren't showing status icons and are just using  
list backgrounds (there's no color for mobile users right now).