[Adium-devl] Facebook UIDs and names

Evan Schoenberg evan at adiumx.com
Thu Feb 26 18:41:46 UTC 2009


The Adium Facebook service plugin which we were using before 1.3.3 had  
the following behavior:
	UID: long number (the Facebook ID number)
	Formatted UID: Person's name (first & last, typically)
	Display Name: Not used
	Alias: Whatever the user set

The pidgin-facebook prpl which we are now in 1.3.3 has the following  
behavior:
	UID: long number (the Facebook ID number)
	Formatted UID: Not used
	Display Name: Person's name (first & last, typically)
	Alias: Whatever the user set

The difference in behavior is that in most places (more on that in a  
moment), the person's name was typically shown as the 'screen name' in  
≤ 1.3.2.  Folks using Alias (Username) contact list name format would  
see, for example Evan (Evan Schoenberg) if 'Evan' were the alias, or  
just Evan Schoenberg if no alias were set.

Now, that same person will see Evan (23987243), or just 23987243 if no  
alias is set.

This is the source of the "Seeing numbers instead of names" problems  
which are reported; it wasn't until someone on feedback described the  
problem better that I understood why I could never reproduce  
it...looking at the code with that knowledge, though, it's clear.

Now, in all of the above cases, the log viewer shows 23987243 unless  
Facebook is connected (so that a formatted UID has been set).  That  
number means pretty much nothing to pretty much everybody who uses  
Adium.  We should either be storing (and restoring) the Formatted UID  
in the transcript viewer (which used to be a very expensive  
undertaking but is probably much less so now that all preferences are  
in a large file instead of tons of tiny separate files) or should just  
use the person's name as their UID.  The problem with that, of course,  
is that a name change would remove any preferences you had on that  
person.

Thoughts?  At a minimum, I'm going to restore setting of the formatted  
UID, and we should think about a near term release.

-Evan
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