The lead maintainer of Pidgin (Gary Kramlich) frequently livestreams his work on Twitch.
Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
41–50 of 181 posts
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#42Is pidgin's Discord experience anything to write home about?
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#43I 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…
There also used to be plugins for iChat (which later became Messages) that added support for MSN Messenger, making for a no-fuss nicely streamlined chat experience across a decent range of networks (AIM, XMPP/Gchat, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger). So between modded iChat and Adium, on Mac OS you had the choice between minimal and kitchen-sink style IM clients, both of which were free and had no ads. OS X had als…
How did I forget about iChat? That brings back memories. Mac 10.4 to 10.6 was glorious. The walled gardens got higher and less fun over the 2010's. Discord works but I am probably one generation too old to appreciate the meme-heavy communication style.
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#44I 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.
Honest question: when registering for those bridges is it just as simple as putting in your username/password or do you have to do other gyrations to make it work? Do you have to upgrade continually to avoid the services playing whack-a-mole with your bridges?
I ask because I’d like to set up Matrix bridges like that locally, but if I have to create a Discord bot account or fish out an API key then that’s asking a bit much.
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#45I did pidgin and before that Trillian, Miranda and Disgby.
It would be great to see an integrated chat app.
For me Telegram is the king of today's UI, hence, it would be amazing to see them integrating Skype (still using it) and whatsapp. Line and wechat integration would also be super.
This new European law that is about being passed gives me hope.
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#46Though 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
Forces them to make them interoperable in Europe. I’m sure they’ll drag their feet and then use some fuckery in the rest of the world to avoid it.
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#47oh 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…
Don't forget Trillian!
Woah! My Trillian-lover friend also used KVirc quite a lot. Actually, not sure it was called KVirc, but something like that.
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#48I 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.
Maybe I'll look into it more, but it feels messy and complicated at first glance. Portal rooms, plumbed rooms, bridgebot bridges, Bot-API bridges, puppeted bridges, double-puppeted bridges, server-to-server briding, and sidecar bridges. I haven't used it so some of this may be wrong and I'm happy to accept corrections.
It seems like a puppeted bridge requires me to send the messages to the Matrix server who then has a login to my FB Messenger to read/write messages there. I'm not going to run my own Matrix server so that requires me to trust a Matrix server with access to my Facebook.
Yes, downloaded apps can be malware, but it's a lot more easily discoverable. One can use tools like Wireshark to confirm where data is going. If apps are open source, one can see the source code and even compile one's self. Even if you don't trust the maintainer who is compiling, you still have a good idea that they're not sending all your messages to them because someone is more likely to notice the binary doing that (via tools like Wireshark). When software is just run on a server that the public doesn't have access to, who knows what is happening. Yes, running on your machine doesn't mean everything is safe, but there's some level of inspection you can do of what is going on.
I don't want to sound too down on Matrix, but it feels a bit off to me. It feels like people who want a decentralized future...where everyone is centralized into a small number of servers who can run a dozen or so Docker containers and such. Maybe that's the way the world needs to be given where we're at, but I just miss having a client that could login to multiple chat services.
If these puppeted bridges can exist, why can't my client just puppet directly? Why send the message to the matrix server for the matrix server to then call the Facebook API? I remember the days of AIM breaking the OSCAR protocol and libpurple/libgaim needing to catch up so I understand that pushing out an update to client software might mean some extra hiccups in the connectivity. Still, it feels like the servers might not be able to update their software much faster than I am able to. Maybe App Store approvals holding up updates is the issue? Is the issue that app stores could block a Matrix + bridges client since it's clearly trying to access services that don't want third-party access, but a Matrix client that's just talking to a Metrix server is fine - and then the "infraction" is on a server that the App Store doesn't get a say over? (I'm not saying that I think it should be disallowed, but I could see companies disliking it)
Is the issue that people want to write these bridges in JavaScript, Python, and other languages which are all fine if you're running a bunch of Docker containers on a server, but might not work so well if you're trying to create a desktop or mobile app?
Why can Matrix bridge these things, but we can't have a libpurple that works as well as these bridges? Or maybe I just haven't used libpurple in a long time and it's actually still good and I should re-try it.
It feels like Matrix wants to be a decentralizing force, but then the bridges force me to centralize my messaging through one of their servers. Again, maybe that's the way it needs to be for reasons, but it just doesn't feel like what I've been looking for.
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#49oh 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…
I'm the proud owner of a six digit ICQ number. What a time that was.
It's funny. Having a similar trajectory of chat clients, I'd say my migration in my teens was dictated by "which service were the girls I wanted to talk to using?" In my 20s it was "what preserved my session as I ran around town and logged into various dumb terminals" until finally "what worked best on mobile."
Now that I'm married in my 40s, it's "which service are the guys I want to talk to using?"
Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/11104033…
> The area inside the chat window is HTML rendered via WebKit and you can change the theme easily
KDE's Kopete (and after that, the now defunct KDE Telepathy) could that too. Maybe GNOME's Empathy client could that too. I agree all of that was really cool.
I sorely miss those all-in-one messengers completely integrated to the desktop.