[Adium-devl] potential idea / rfe: write-protect switch for tabs?

[Alec Muffett]

> I think an important question would be, is this 'mute button' going  
> to help solve the problem you're describing? More specifically, is  
> anyone going to remember to use it? From what you've described you  
> are alt-tabbing applications...

Nooo... just mousing and missing. :-)


> how many people are going to take that extra step to mute the  
> conversation before switching apps?

I update my Twitter status maybe 3 times a day but I watch that  
particular conversation constantly, so it's permanently at the front  
and often has focus, sometimes accidentally.

And other apps like Twitter *are* coming out, where IM is used to  
bridge you to another world entirely, somewhere where what you write  
will certainly be googleable and indexed forever.

So yes, it would get used, by me and two other security-aware folk  
off whom I have bounced the idea. You don't want 300 people to know  
what your plans for the evening with your girlfriend are.


As for coding, alas I come from the land of pre-GUI C-programmers,  
and never bothered to learn any toolkits.  It would be uphill work  
without someone to ask where/how to plug into the API.


Are there any Adium/GAIM third-party plugins which exist, which already:

	- provide one toggle button
	- don't do much else

...and are therefore ripe to use as a reference/starting point?


Basically I am envisioning:

	- checkbox or other button on screen for each tab, somewhere not  
eating too much real-estate
	- while button is "on" and tab is at front, attempt to type/paste in  
tab is rejected and beep is sounded
	- per-conversation-tab button state is preserved until program exits

In an ordinary C program, that logic would be about 10 or 15 lines of  
code to express, plus a per-tab-structure boolean, so I am assuming  
that for a GUI tool like Adium it will be, what, 40,000 lines of code  
plus graphics, and a bunch of class definitions and templates ? :-)

	-a