Am I reading this right? Is the only protocol being supported now the most recent version of IRC? Are there plans for others? Part of Pidgin's "calling card" has been its ability to support many different chat protocols. However, that's become difficult since most protocols have become walled gardens and harder to reverse engineer. I'd imagine supporting Matrix, XMPP, Signal, other protocols with open specifications, etc. would be a good idea
The last time I followed Pidgin development was a while ago, but I'm actively using it for various protocols (slack, discord, googlechat, skype), so I'm curious about the decision to break the API.
I understand that the Pidgin community is small, so claiming that "the other protocols will eventually be supported" seems unrealistic. This change requires the community to take on unnecessary porting work and we are already dealing with constant protocol changes, playing whack-a-mole with protocol providers.
For instance, this guy [1] is doing incredible work, but I doubt he will want to invest his time in unnecessary rewrites unless someone steps in to assist with each plugin.
I'm guessing at the time of this experimental alpha "don't use it full time but alongside pidgin 2.x to test things, all plugins are incompatible", only IRCv3 is supported.
I hate to have different apps for similar stuff and I also prefer "native" clients over web UIs so I used pidgin a lot in my life. I impressed many people with its "telepathic" feature that would open a chat when someone starts typing, to let you type in something before they even finish their initial sentence. Fun times…
However, when I finally got a smartphone, and started a more conventional line of work which came with extra devices, I switched to grouping my chats using server-side gateways for better multi-device consistency. I started by using Spectrum [1] which leverages on libpurple (pidgin's "backend") to do that. Since spectrum is on life support (maintenance mode, no modern chat features like emoji reactions which I happen to like despite my old age), I actually started my own hobby project [2], because I'm not really interested in learning C++ (which spectrum is written in). (shameless plug, I know)
The hype these days is more around mautrix [3], but the permacomputing enthusiasth in me prefers XMPP over Matrix. I'm not that religious about it though, my gateway project includes the most feature-rich XMPP/Matrix gateway out there [4] which I try to improve and maintain when time and motivation allow it. Unfortunately, XMPP support in pidgin has historically been pretty poor and IMHO partly responsible for some of the hate XMPP gets. I'm not blaming the pidgin devs of course, I should contribute to libpurple-xmpp (if that's how it's called) instead of complaining. ^^
Resource usage in general, especially server side? Although XMPP clients also seem to win too, cf [1] (debatable methodology in this link, I agree).
And this is not "implementation detail stuff", by design serving Matrix is resource-hungry, while serving XMPP is very lightweight. Others have phrased it better than me, something along the lines of:
> Matrix is a distributed, eventually consistent database; XMPP is just message passing.
Both have their own merits.
But you know all of that Arathorn ;). I'm replying for readers anyway.
I had no idea people were still working on this. I remember it as Gaim in the 1990s and one of the developers being particularly nasty to me in 2000 after I submitted a patch. I worked hard on that and he was a complete asshole.
Since then I've used that experience to exemplify who I never want to become and how I never want to treat people.
So thanks. Bad experiences can help you become a better person.
PS: shoutout to Daniel Reed (rpidan) who did an Ncurses naim (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naim_(software) // https://github.com/jwise/naim) from back then. He was a genuine upstanding guy. Naim in long running screen sessions that I'd log into from text terminals at the library to chat with friends over AIM - good times.
Also, meebo... Basically libpurple over 2005 era AJAX. I even made a super minimal HTTP forms based client I could use over flip phones in the early 2000s. It was optimized for T9N and per/KB metered data plans. Never really publicized it. Probably still have the code somewhere.
Yes, there was some drama in the early 2000s where a bunch of bad vibe people got forcefully shaken out.
I did some digging and have been able to find basically everything. I'm keeping it to myself. No dirty laundry here.
Also if pidgin could magically combine slack, messenger, telegram, discord, and Whatsapp in a single reasonable app ... It'd be a return to the glory days. The current state of half a dozen web apps is such a pain. Just text chat. Nothing fancy.
I wish this project godspeed. I used Pidgin on and off over the years. Last time I gave it serious use was around 6-8 years ago, when I created a full Lync / Skype for Business setup for Linux with it. I could even do screen shares and everything. It was a blessing because Linux was still a BYOD thing in my company, no support at all. And of course the stack was Microsoft based. Office already had competent enough web clients, but Teams wasn't on the horizon yet (for our company), and so, I had to keep around a Windows VM for S4B and other random stuff. That is, until I tinkered with Pidgin enough to set it up as a client. I really appreciated that it enabled me to do that, and I wish the best with the current efforts as well. It would be really, really funny to send iMessages with it one day.
Timing context:
Debian sid currently distributes 2.14.13, which is the 2024-02-13 bugfix release of the 2020-06-10 minor release 2.14.0 which was already clearly specified to be the last of v2.
My most vivid memory of using pidgin on a daily basis is inability to copy-paste using ctrl+c, cuz someone decided to bind this hotkey for something else. Luckily this was many years ago.
Textbook example of what happens when developers design UX/UI.
While there have been clipboard bugs, we've never used those keystrokes in the UI. However, GTK2 did have a way to let users change the menu shortcuts by hovering over the menu item and hitting a new keystroke and I suspect that's what happened here.
Readit News
I understand that the Pidgin community is small, so claiming that "the other protocols will eventually be supported" seems unrealistic. This change requires the community to take on unnecessary porting work and we are already dealing with constant protocol changes, playing whack-a-mole with protocol providers.
For instance, this guy [1] is doing incredible work, but I doubt he will want to invest his time in unnecessary rewrites unless someone steps in to assist with each plugin.
[1] https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-discord.git
I suppose for now I may stick to Gajim (and Conversations on Android).
Dead Comment
I hate to have different apps for similar stuff and I also prefer "native" clients over web UIs so I used pidgin a lot in my life. I impressed many people with its "telepathic" feature that would open a chat when someone starts typing, to let you type in something before they even finish their initial sentence. Fun times…
However, when I finally got a smartphone, and started a more conventional line of work which came with extra devices, I switched to grouping my chats using server-side gateways for better multi-device consistency. I started by using Spectrum [1] which leverages on libpurple (pidgin's "backend") to do that. Since spectrum is on life support (maintenance mode, no modern chat features like emoji reactions which I happen to like despite my old age), I actually started my own hobby project [2], because I'm not really interested in learning C++ (which spectrum is written in). (shameless plug, I know)
The hype these days is more around mautrix [3], but the permacomputing enthusiasth in me prefers XMPP over Matrix. I'm not that religious about it though, my gateway project includes the most feature-rich XMPP/Matrix gateway out there [4] which I try to improve and maintain when time and motivation allow it. Unfortunately, XMPP support in pidgin has historically been pretty poor and IMHO partly responsible for some of the hate XMPP gets. I'm not blaming the pidgin devs of course, I should contribute to libpurple-xmpp (if that's how it's called) instead of complaining. ^^
[1] https://spectrum.im/ [2] https://sr.ht/~nicoco/slidge [3] https://github.com/mautrix/ [4] https://git.sr.ht/~nicoco/matridge
And this is not "implementation detail stuff", by design serving Matrix is resource-hungry, while serving XMPP is very lightweight. Others have phrased it better than me, something along the lines of:
> Matrix is a distributed, eventually consistent database; XMPP is just message passing.
Both have their own merits.
But you know all of that Arathorn ;). I'm replying for readers anyway.
[1] https://decentim.grafana.net/public-dashboards/92602d3a4aa84...
Yes! This is great news.
Since then I've used that experience to exemplify who I never want to become and how I never want to treat people.
So thanks. Bad experiences can help you become a better person.
PS: shoutout to Daniel Reed (rpidan) who did an Ncurses naim (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naim_(software) // https://github.com/jwise/naim) from back then. He was a genuine upstanding guy. Naim in long running screen sessions that I'd log into from text terminals at the library to chat with friends over AIM - good times.
Also, meebo... Basically libpurple over 2005 era AJAX. I even made a super minimal HTTP forms based client I could use over flip phones in the early 2000s. It was optimized for T9N and per/KB metered data plans. Never really publicized it. Probably still have the code somewhere.
My pride and joy was the Adium theme support (which was resurrected from another rejected patch) https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=...
It was a long long time again.
Good memories.
pidgin and adium were my dream apps for a long time.
I did some digging and have been able to find basically everything. I'm keeping it to myself. No dirty laundry here.
Also if pidgin could magically combine slack, messenger, telegram, discord, and Whatsapp in a single reasonable app ... It'd be a return to the glory days. The current state of half a dozen web apps is such a pain. Just text chat. Nothing fancy.
What a dream...