about empathy as the default IM application

Danny Piccirillo danny.piccirillo at ubuntu.com
Tue Jun 16 16:37:23 UTC 2009


Wait, I have a new proposal! Let's *not* include Empathy in Karmic, but plan
on including it in Karmic +1 (and *announce* this)
Why? Well, it will still give Empathy the attention it needs from developers
to fix the bugs that would be considered regressions during the switch
without actually replacing Pidgin before they're fixed. Aren't i brilliant?

*On the other hand*, it might *still* be preferable to include Empathy
in Karmic to have more of a guarantee that bugs will be fixed in time
for the 10.04 LTS
release. As someone commented on my last
post<http://pinstack.blogspot.com/2009/06/replace-pidgin-with-empathy-in-karmic.html?showComment=1245133369575#c6152600795066756079>
:

> Empathy has been the top active project in Gnome for the last few weeks,
> with about 100 commits a week on average. The pace of development is
> astounding. Once the move to Empathy is the default, Ubuntu can start
> depending on it for other applications' communication needs (using Tubes).
> Gnome Games are getting Tubes support. Vino just got Tubes support, meaning
> that you can share your desktop with your contacts in Empathy.


> I understand why 8.04 didn't ship with Empathy, but the change needs to
> happen. Empathy is 95% there. The needed changes can be made before Karmic
> if Ubuntu (and Canonical) commits to it. If 9.10 ships with Empathy, all the
> major bugs will be worked out by 10.04. Who wants to add yet ANOTHER new
> technology to another LTS.


So, what shall it be? Karmic 9.10, or Karmic +1 10.04
LTS<http://pinstack.blogspot.com/2009/06/empathy-in-ubuntu-karmic-910-or-karmic.html>
?

>
On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 00:44, Asif Youssuff <yoasif at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-06-15 at 17:36 -0400, Danny Piccirillo wrote:
> > IMHO Empathy is great for most users, especially new ones, and it can
> > replace poth pidgin AND ekiga. It lacks the basic features like the
> > ones you mentioned, but i don't think they are showstoppers and
> > including it in Karmic or the next release i'm sure would guarantee
> > that all of those would be resolved within the release cycle.
>
> I've been playing with Empathy for a while, and it has an extremely
> annoying behavior -- when a message is received from a person without an
> open conversation open, the alert comes up in the notification area, and
> does not spawn a new window -- this is unlike any other IM application I
> have ever used.
>
> Why do i need to click on the icon when in Pidgin (or other IM apps), I
> can simply switch to the new conversation tab? Having to move my hand
> from the keyboard is extremely annoying in this case.
>
> Also, most of the time, I don't even notice that I have a new
> conversation, since I don't look at the notification area often -- this
> means that friends can leave messages, and leave before I have the
> chance to respond, simply because I never noticed that i received an IM,
> even though I was actively using the application.
>
> I filed a bug report, and didn't get a friendly response, sadly.
>
>        http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=585914
>
> The response I got was "we don't popup a window in the face of the user
> to not steal focus" -- you can read the bug report for more.
>
> So for me, empathy is NOT ready to replace pidgin, as it presents a
> usability regression for me.
>
> -Asif
>
>
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