[Adium-devl] Watching a first time Adium user for 5 minutes

[Evan Schoenberg]

On Jan 26, 2007, at 8:28 PM, Colin Barrett wrote:

> Are we literally just doing string comparisons? Are we leveraging the
> gettext system at all? It might be possible to include an "Adium"
> translation of Gaim to make things a bit easier on us in this respect.

String comparisons for some things, yes.  gettext, no.  Here's the deal:
1) Things in libgaim have been moving towards not needing it, but  
it's a big move and a gradual process.  An example of major forward  
progress: authorization requests now have a callback via the accounts  
API for us to hook into, from which we get told what contact requests  
authorization and on what account.  As of Adium 0.891., we were  
literally parsing strings out of Request window to know that it was  
an auth request.  Similarly for user info: I did a major rewrite of  
how user info is created by protocol prpls and sent to the UI such  
that the UI gets a series of label/value pairs rather than a giant  
block of text, and a while back I made it so we got user info in a  
specific callback that we could link to a contact and an account  
rather than having to guess from the text we're sent.

2) We could theoretically leverage gettext two ways.
	(a) Automatically, as Gaim itself does.  However, then we can do no  
string comparisons to find out what we're told, so until there's  
never any reason for Adium to know what libgaim is telling it in  
terms of text (and there are a ton of reasons at present), that's not  
an option.
	(b) Manually, once we receive text, we can feed it through gettext.   
The problem with (b) is that it fails miserably for nearly all  
strings... because all substitutions (%i, %s, etc.) have already been  
made, and of course the translation is supposed to occur before that.

> Maybe, maybe not. I don't think Gaim currently does. It may not even
> be stored on the server. We should probably have the default sort
> alphabetize groups, definitely.
They definitely are stored ordered on the server... the official AIM  
client respects ordering changes across installations and machines.

> <offline contacts>
Peter, you mentioned support requests: It is off by default in  
0.89.1.  I turned it on at one point after we'd seen a couple  
requests about how to turn it on... at the time, I don't think there  
was an entry in Trac about it, and that was probably part of the  
problem.  Some folks are going to expect it one way, some another...   
I haven't seen a request about turning it on in 0.89.1 in a while, so  
maybe that set of queries was a fluke.  So let's just decide it by a  
decision here -- I vote keeping it as it is in 0.89.1, with Show  
Offline Contacts unchecked by default.  Who else has a vote?

> I recommend putting it in the first-run wizard. Something like:
>
> 	Adium can hide contacts who are offline. They'll still be on your  
> buddy list, but since you can't message them while they're offline,  
> they don't need to be visible. Hiding them means that you will only  
> see those contacts who are online—that is, contacts who you can  
> actually message. You can always change this setting in the View menu.
>
> 	How would you like Adium to handle offline contacts?
>
> 	( ) Show offline contacts
> 	(•) Hide offline contacts
That's a great candidate for a first run pref, I agree - especially  
given my claim above that different users will fundamentally want it  
differently.  Even if they don't know what they want, having been  
presented the option will increase the liklihood they'll remember  
it's changeable later.  Maybe this and two other key preferences, on  
a second-to-last pane in the first run wizard.  Adium 1.1 material,  
that :)

Chris wrote:
> I'd be fine with us ditching what we do now and just going internet
> enabled dmg or zip. Ya, the dmg is pretty, but if it's going to cause
> problems like this I'd be ok with ditching it.
<Peter suggested a running-from-disk warning>
Again, this is a place where we're no worse off than in 0.89.1 --  
we've just got a much prettier background.  This guy wasn't going to  
do things as we consider Right no matter what.. I think Adium is the  
second non-Apple app he has installed, and the first is StudyItMD,  
the beta of my study-aid program. When I told him to drag it as  
shown, he grabbed Adium and tried to copy it to his desktop.  If we'd  
done Internet Enabled or zip, it would have just stayed there... I  
didn't mean to restart the dmg-vs-elsestuff debate, I just thought it  
was worth noting.

I like the running from disk warning.  Though I strongly suspect that  
had this guy gotten it, there's no way that we could have phrased it  
in a non-scary way that he would actually follow.

Chris wrote:
> Did the <password> error pop up from a separate window?
Yeah, it came in as a connection error, since that's what it was...  
as we didn't handle it in CBGaimOscarAccount's  
shouldReconnectAfterError: method (or whatever that method is named)

> I think we need to look at a few things here. Offline should be not
> displaying by default I think, but we should also have a search box
> at the bottom of the contact list. I wonder if he knew who he was
> looking for and could have typed it in to find it.
You can just type in the contact list to jump around in it.  We don't  
need a separate search box... however, one thing that Gaim does with  
its contact list which is cool is that when you start typing, a box  
appears at the bottom, showing you that it's acknowledging your  
typing and searching using it.  It's a pretty non-OS X-typical  
presentation, but something similar might work for us.

> So I take it he liked it overall?
I'll get a report next week after he's used it a bit - we're in the  
midst of studying for the next big exam, so I don't imagine he'll be  
doing too much IMing.  Then again, I'm typing epic emails, so maybe  
he is :P

Andreas wrote:
> What about having an automatic option as default, where the offline
> buddies are shown as long as the list doesn't have to scroll?
That's an interesting idea... I' not sure how often it would do much  
in practice - I know for me that showing offline contacts immediately  
shows scrolling, so the result would be either never seeing 'em or  
seeing some fraction of them.  The Google Talk client for Windows has  
some interesting automatic behaviors I believe -- there are options  
like "Show All My Contacts" which shows your address book contacts,  
and I feel like it may have been showing select recently-talked-to  
offline contacts.  Either that, or I just imagined that things should  
work that way and am now projecting it onto the only official client  
I've used in a while (however briefly) and been impressed by.

-Evan
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