[Adium-devl] Global proxy settings?

[Viksit Gaur]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the prompt responses.

@Evan - Right, I know that Mac OS X has a number of network "Locations"
which can be changed at will, and can have proxy settings associated with
it. But, consider a scenario where you've connected to a VPN. Now, I go to
locations -> My VPN Location, and can select a system wide proxy, perhaps an
HTTP at port 80. But, this proxy might be unfriendly to IM connections, this
being of course, dependent on the whims and fancies of people who run this
particular proxy - perhaps even blocking connections to known IM servers.

Another issue is of using different proxies for different resources. I'm not
too familiar with the internals of advanced proxies in use today, but I've
come across a couple of cases where I need one proxy for a web browser to
access public web resources/Library access, and another for IM/IRC, for
reasons I'm not really aware of. Also, some places provide auto
configuration files which can differ across networks/resources. This makes
using a global proxy (systemwide) cumbersome, because of the need to
manually keep editing stuff. Oh, and what if you're on a network where you
don't need a proxy for IM, but do for other stuff? (A hypothetical
situation)

With the solution I'm proposing, you can have separate profiles for Adium,
that may or may not utilize the system wide settings - the choice is up to
the user, of course.

Another important factor is that there is no interface to set a common proxy
for ALL accounts  on an Adium instance. So, if you've got 6 accounts, and
you want to flip back and forth between "System wide proxy settings" and "No
Proxy", you need to either manually go and flip the check box on each
account, or disable proxies from the System wide network settings. IMHO, it
would be a more elegant solution to have some flexibility for this on the
Adium level.

Opinions?

Cheers,
Viksit

On 2/28/07, Evan Schoenberg <evan at adiumx.com> wrote:
>
> Viksit,
> I'd like a bit more information on why the systemwide network preference
> is insufficient for what you (and others in a similar situation) want to
> do.  There's a fairly robust network Locations ability in OS X, which
> carries proxy information with each location... why does this need to be
> implemented at the Adium level?
>
> Cheers,
> Evan
> On Feb 28, 2007, at 11:26 PM, disposable at infinitenexus.com wrote:
>
> This sounds reasonable to me.
> Your best bet would be to take the source (1.0.x or trunk if daring), hack
> away at adding it (feel free to ping this list for any help you need along
> the way), and when finished ask for a review of the work for inclusion as a
> submitted patch.
>  - brian 'bgannin' ganninger
>
> On Feb 28, 2007, at 9:45 PM, Viksit Gaur wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Using Adium, I realized that there doesn't seem to be a place to set up a
> global proxy which would be used by all accounts. Instead, each account when
> edited has the option of having a proxy set.
> IMHO, this is a very tiring task if you're the kind of person who switches
> between networks and VPNs with different proxy servers. This is highlighted
> even further when you have 6 different accounts like I do. I haven't even
> tried to set these proxy settings manually, but I would appreciate input
> from the list whether this assumption is correct.
>
> There does seem to be an option for "Systemwide settings" - I'm not quite
> sure how you set that, but my guess is through the Systems Prefs ->
> Networking menu. This is however impractical in certain cases, since there
> might be 2 proxies available - one for a VPN based connection, the other
> somewhere else.
>
> If yes, I'd like to propose a feature request:
> - A global proxy settings dialog box in the main Adium Preferences
> (perhaps, in the Advanced tab)
> - Automatic fill of each account proxy from this "Global Proxy" setting
> - A list of "Saved Proxies" which could be selected using a minimal number
> of clicks once input
>
> Of course, needless to say, I would be interested in contributing this to
> Adium :)
>
> RFC.
>
> --
> Cheers,
> vIkSiT_______________________________________________
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