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.
Presumably because the old API was broken/lacking/etc. Calling the resulting porting work "unnecessary" without even considering why the API might have been changed is not fair.
The pidgin project is 25 years old, and libpurple is 17 years old. It's entirely fair that a rework is required, and much appreciated that this work is continuing.
Pidgin supports lots of protocols, including xmpp, via plugins. It just sounds like they choose to make breaking changes to the plugin API for v3. I'd expect popular protocols to get ported at some point before GA.
Sure it did. Our company chat was XMPP 10 years ago and pidgin was one of the most widely used clients. I assume it's just the experimental version that doesn't support it yet.
Nowadays we use zulip at work which has a better model (topics). For IRC I use quassel because I can have the backend running on a server and when I connect using the frontend I see the channel history and messages I might have received weeks ago...
Alternative clients do exist but OWS has a history of taking them down and/or making protocol changes to block them, similar to AIM back in the original days of Pidgin.
Unfortunately, whether or not a client is sanctioned for use on Signal-owned infrastructure is entirely up to the Signal organization, and they have been rather hostile to such clients.
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. ^^
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.
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.
On one hand, it's great Pidgin is still alive and thriving like this. I have plenty of memories using it to talking with friends, people from uni, crushes, etc. And it had tons of cool funny plugins - I used to use one that let you change your profile pic from several from a given directory, sort of like how a "wallpaper slideshow" thing works. Do try to do that now with Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal/Slack/whatever...
On the other hand, the thing I always complain about - the state od IM right now is absolutely miserable thanks to all those walled gardens that force you to use their shitty client "apps" because of "privacy" or "features" or whatever, so you end having to use a bunch of different "apps" to talk with different people. It's insane.
reply