[Adium-devl] Adium patch suggestion - setting font color for incoming messages

[Colin Barrett]

I'm just going to blast this out to the general development list,  
Josh. Hope you don't mind!

On May 12, 2008, at 4:18 PM, Josh Dubois wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Adium doesn't seem to allow a user to easily set the font color for  
> incoming messages easily from the UI - even tweaking the style sheet  
> templates doesn't look like it allows that easily.  I would like to  
> add that feature to Adium.  I checked out the source a while back  
> and modified the message style nib to include a color picker for  
> incoming & outgoing messages (right now I have it so both use the  
> same color).  I've got it working so you can change the color of the  
> incoming & outgoing messages via a color picker from the preferences  
> panel.
> This is probably a departure from the way the UI is designed right  
> now.  Most color tweaking seems to be done in style sheet  
> templates.  Also, I it looks like some (maybe all) of the messaging  
> protocols allow a color to be set by the sender and transmitted over  
> the wire.  Right now my patch ignores those colors, but I could make  
> that an option.

The colors that are actually sent out over the wire are defined  
differently. See http://trac.adiumx.com/wiki/FontsAndColors

As for the display UI, perhaps it would make the most sense for the  
font color of the "Text Display:" pref to stick? Though that could get  
confusing because folks might think it's the place where you set what  
fonts/colors actually are sent out (which isn't the case).

> What is the best way to bring this up for discussion?  Should I just  
> blurt out a message on the general development list, or is there an  
> existing discussion I could read before I ask?  I joined the  
> developer mailing list, but I don't see an archive.
> What would you suggest as a first step to see if others are  
> interested in that feature?

Really, the way Fonts & Colors are done overall in Adium is relatively  
confusing. If you've got a good idea for a UI to make this more  
intuitive, feel free to propose it :)

-Colin