Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client • Hacker News Board

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#21

Post by vanshlanger » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

Damn I used to use pidgin like 15 years ago, can't believe they're still around!

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#22

Post by vanshlanger » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

mdasen wrote: post #7

I really miss Adium ( https://adium.im ) which was based on Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes that were implemented using WebKit's rendering ( https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=... ). It was fast and memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes were just small templates offering a di…

definitely used Adium when I had a white macbook

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#23

Post by __del__ » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

shashurup wrote: post #19

I definitely liked it, however, since whatsapp, telegram, slack etc had joined the game with mostly proprietary protocols it looks like it just has no chance to catch up and it is very sad - I find the ability to choose a client quite important. P.S. I have even written a plugin for - quickpurple

protocols like aim's oscar were proprietary. it's the legal and business landscape that's changed.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#24

Post by AdmiralAsshat » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

mdasen wrote: post #7

I really miss Adium ( https://adium.im ) which was based on Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes that were implemented using WebKit's rendering ( https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=... ). It was fast and memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes were just small templates offering a di…

I'd love to see what Adium's interface actually looked like, but apparently the website does not believe in screenshots. :(

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#25

Post by hans1729 » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

mdasen wrote: post #7

I really miss Adium ( https://adium.im ) which was based on Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes that were implemented using WebKit's rendering ( https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=... ). It was fast and memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes were just small templates offering a di…

> Instead, I now have FB Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Signal all running and taking up space in my dock.

Why don’t you use a matrix client with bridges? I use telegram, WhatsApp and signal over Element. The bridges are not as great as the individual clients, but it’s definitely miles ahead of using five messaging apps.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#26

Post by l72 » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

I use pidgin daily with the libpurple-slack connector. It isn't super great for large rooms (I often keep Slack open in the background but have no notifications enabled), but it is really nice for direct messages, which is what mostly happens on slack in my company. Pidgin integrates nicely into gnome-shell's notifications, allowing me to quickly see messages and reply without losing focus.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#27

Post by lproven » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #24

mdasen wrote: post #7

I really miss Adium ( https://adium.im ) which was based on Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes that were implemented using WebKit's rendering ( https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=... ). It was fast and memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes were just small templates offering a di…

I'd love to see what Adium's interface actually looked like, but apparently the website does not believe in screenshots. :(

Er... does this help?

https://adium.im/screenshots/

I still have it installed. It was very useful in the PowerPC era.

Pidgin still is useful: it talks to a whole bunch of services that are still alive... IRC, Telegram, Skype, Google Hangouts, Slack, Rocket.chat, XMPP, ICQ, etc.

Sadly Adium can't use Pidgin or Libpurple plugins directly. This severely reduces its usefulness today.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#28

Post by xnx » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

Though it's often derided on HN, scree-scraping is the integration method that requires the list cooperation from the other party. I'd love to have something like Pidgin that ran stock copies of these messaging apps in their own virtual machines and aggregated the data.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#29

Post by mdasen » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #24

mdasen wrote: post #7

I really miss Adium ( https://adium.im ) which was based on Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes that were implemented using WebKit's rendering ( https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=... ). It was fast and memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes were just small templates offering a di…

I'd love to see what Adium's interface actually looked like, but apparently the website does not believe in screenshots. :(

The website isn't well maintained anymore since we've kinda passed the days that people used multi-service clients. Here are some screenshots:

https://www.adium.im/screenshots/images/overview.jpg

The area inside the chat window is HTML rendered via WebKit and you can change the theme easily. The Contacts list is also HTML in the middle so that's all theme-able too.

https://images.six.betanews.com/screenshots/1110403338-1.jpg

Here's a Contacts list that's more compact and a chat window without the top toolbar.

https://adium.im/screenshots/images/overvieworange.jpg

Here's a more radical theming where they've gotten rid of the window around the contact list so it's floating.

If you go through the Adium Xtras, you can see all sorts of chat (https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=...), contact list (https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=cats&cat_id=4&sort=do...), and other ways of styling Adium.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#30

Post by kurisufag » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

tjader wrote: post #17

dijit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar. 1. IRC 2. ICQ 3. MSN 4. IRC (again) 5. Skype and Facebook 6. WhatsApp 7. Facebook again 8. Still Facebook (very sticky) 9. IRC + Slack (some communities) + Discord (some communities) + Facebook/Whatsapp + Signal + Telegram + Matrix + Zulip Yeah, I think we need a new libpurple.

I've been using Matrix + bridges to fill that gap. I use IRC, Telegram, Google Chat, Discord and WhatsApp all via bridges, so I only have to interact with a single interface and all my chats are in the same place. Before that I used first Trillian, then Pidgin. Then seeking persistence across clients I started using bitlbee to access everything through IRC, but that really sucked for media-heavy things like Telegram.…

this, but I bridged them all to IRC by custom means, which is the easiest to implement and allows people on all platforms to talk in the same channel-equivalent. the media issue is solved by using a more modern client that can generate embeds (e.g. glowing-bear for weechat-relay).