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Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

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Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#31

Post by xenophonf »

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…

Does Adium not compile on newer versions of macOS? Development appears to have slowed down, but it doesn't look completely abandoned. I might try to feed it to Xcode on my hackintosh if only to see what kinds of errors crop up.

That said, I've switched back to terminal-based IRC clients, so I haven't run either Pidgin or Adium in probably 10 years. It's sad. Both were really good tools.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#32

Post by anta40 »

I'm a heavy Pidgin user during undergraduate days (2006-2010), when Yahoo Messenger was still really popular.

Thanks to Pidgin Portable, simply copied the zipped folder to the USB flashdisk, visit any computer lab then I can YM'ed my friends. Good old days :)

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#33

Post by olah_1 »

hans1729 wrote: post #25
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.

i think both Element matrix services and Beeper both offer this as a service now

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#34

Post by HeckFeck »

valbaca wrote: post #2

oh pidgin. Throughout my life (as a millennial) chat went this way: 1. IRC 2. IRC, Yahoo messenger, Aol Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger (mostly based on your ISP in the early days) 3. All + Skype (video!! wow!) + Google messenger. *This was when pidgin was invaluable* (there was also some Duck app for macOS?) 4. Skype started charging and since everyone was on Facebook, everyone moved to Facebook messenger. Text mes…

Stage 2 evokes warm memories. The clients were featureful enough but very far from being resource hogs. The UIs were workable and hid plenty of options in their menus.

The webcam features on MSN messenger landed at the same time as broadband internet became widespread in my country, when I was at school, so everyone was in on the novelty.

Some of it is certainly the cynicism of age and work life, but I'm certain something has been lost since then. The UI, the nudges, the winks, the games, the chaotic friend lists were all magic in a way that FB, WA, Slack, Teams, Discord, et al aren't.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#36

Post by tjader »

kurisufag wrote: post #30
tjader wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Do you manage to get pictures, audio messages, videos and reactions to work well in both directions with that setup?

Also, I use this for personal messages as well as group chats. The people I interact with don't even know I am not using the native client.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#37

Post by dybber »

xnx wrote: post #28

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.

Not necessary, new EU regulation forces them to make their messaging services interoperable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30798850

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#38

Post by snvzz »

dijit wrote: post #12
valbaca wrote: post #2

oh pidgin. Throughout my life (as a millennial) chat went this way: 1. IRC 2. IRC, Yahoo messenger, Aol Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger (mostly based on your ISP in the early days) 3. All + Skype (video!! wow!) + Google messenger. *This was when pidgin was invaluable* (there was also some Duck app for macOS?) 4. Skype started charging and since everyone was on Facebook, everyone moved to Facebook messenger. Text mes…

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.

Before: IRC + XMPP.

Today: IRC + Matrix.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#39

Post by MiddleEndian »

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. :(

One of the non-obvious parts of Adium's interface from the screenshots was that it integrated with Mac OS's calendar app, so I could have a contact "John Smith" and enter his AIM name, his Yahoo name, etc and they'd all show up as "John Smith" and be collapsed into one entry in your contact list.

On top of that, Adium is/was also incredibly themable. You could use independent Adium Xtra addons for both your contact list and your chats. I had a theme so that all messages just appeared sequentially like so:

[Hello][Hello][What's Up?][Etc.]

where mine were red and the person I was talking to was in blue (or vice versa, it's been awhile). You could see so many messages at once.

Adium is the application I miss most from MacOS, although I imagine I'd still miss it even if I were still using a Mac. With the exception of the addition of multi-device continuous chat history, we've really regressed in the category of instant messaging since the days of multi-chat clients.

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