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Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

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Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#51

Post by eddieroger »

fumar wrote: post #43
kitsunesoba wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

iChat had multi-party video calls and virtual backgrounds in 2008. It blows my mind when Apple talks about multi-party FaceTime calls like it's a new feature.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#53

Post by duskwuff »

xenophonf wrote: post #31
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.

Honestly, it's mostly a matter of Adium having lost its purpose. Most of the IM networks it originally interacted with no longer exist or are no longer open to third-party clients, and the ones that remain (mostly XMPP and IRC) aren't necessarily a great fit for Adium.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#55

Post by zaik »

eimrine wrote: post #15

I love Pidgin. If I want a secure chat between 2 I will forse my buddy to go XMPP OTR

You should also checkout OMEMO which is based on the Signal protocol and allows things like group chat and sending messages to contacts who are offline.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#56

Post by hammyhavoc »

zaik wrote: post #54
hammyhavoc wrote: post #52

Why not Matrix with bridges?

Bridges require you to forfeit your credentials to your homeserver and break E2EE.

But surely if it was worth protecting then you would be having that conversation on Matrix in the first place rather than Facebook Messenger?

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#57

Post by inops »

dybber wrote: post #37
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

That will take years to be heeded, I'm sure. Even then, it's possible some companies will provide that access only to customers from the EU (given it removes the monopoly these companies hold on their services).

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#58

Post by dmacvicar »

Gualdrapo wrote: post #50
mdasen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Kopete we even had Latex rendering plugins and auto-away plugins using motion detection :-)

(I started that project decades ago and still grateful to it, as it was the start of my career in tech)

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#59

Post by danShumway »

mdasen wrote: post #48
hans1729 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

I'd be very curious to know if the work on P2P Matrix servers is going to include some level of support for client-side bridges?

I know the P2P work and bridging aren't quite the same thing, but it seems like the two are vaguely related: if you've got a bridge running, I suspect that would have a lot of the same concerns as running a Matrix server locally. And I get that for some clients like iMessage, your bridge has to be running on a Mac, but that isn't the case for most other messaging platforms, is it?

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#60

Post by zaik »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #56
zaik wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bridges require you to forfeit your credentials to your homeserver and break E2EE.

But surely if it was worth protecting then you would be having that conversation on Matrix in the first place rather than Facebook Messenger?

I mostly use XMPP for secure communication. Sadly, Matrix does not built upon the XMPP standard and reinvents another incompatible E2EE chat protocol.
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