Hi, On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 09:10 +0200, Joachim Breitner wrote: > Hi, > > Am Montag, den 05.05.2008, 01:19 -0400 schrieb Kevin Mark: > > On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 11:28:40PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote: > > > On Sun, 2008-05-04 at 23:24 +0300, Mohammed Sameer wrote: > > > > Package: wnpp > > > > Severity: wishlist > > > > Owner: Mohammed Sameer <debian@foolab.org> > > > > > > > > * Package name : funpidgin > > > > Version : 2.4.1 > > > > Upstream Author : A lot. Can't be listed here! > > > > * URL : http://funpidgin.sourceforge.net > > > > * License : GPL > > > > Programming Lang: C > > > > Description : graphical multi-protocol instant messaging client based on pidgin > > > > > > > > Funpidgin is a graphical, modular Instant Messaging client capable of using > > > > AIM/ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN, IRC, Jabber, Napster, Zephyr, Gadu-Gadu, Bonjour, > > > > Groupwise, Sametime, SILC, and SIMPLE all at once. > > > > It has all the features offered by pidgin plus: > > > > * "Entry area manual sizing" a plugin by that allows manual resizing of the entry area. > > > > * An option to set the size of the buddy icons displayed in the chat window. > > > > * An option to let the window manager place new windows. > > > > * Two different ways of seeing that your buddies are typing. > > > > * An optional send button for Tablet PC users. > > > > > > Maybe you could wait to see whether this fork lasts, and adds some > > > *substantial* features, before adding it? > > > > > > Ben. > > > > > > > my understanding is that this is a 'protest' fork made to add a feature > > that the upstream did not want(the resizing). So as long as the upstream > > resists, it should survive. > > Could we, as the Debian distribution, not make the decision what variant > we want to distribute? We can take the useful patches from funpidgin, if > they are good, and add them to “our” pidgin. That might be the best for > our users and in the spirit of free software, although it might be bad > for our relationship with upstream pidgin. > Pidgin and Funpidgin are clearly two different projects, although not much rebranding has yet happened. While this seems like a good solution, it is likely not: * some users will likely prefer Pidgin as it is over Funpidgin; * Funpidgin has features (MSN P14/Pecan support) that cannot easily be integrated into Pidgin without ugly patchsets. A solution, provided that the public plugin API isn't changed in Funpidgin could be to install pidgin-plugins to a shared location, and patch both clients to load plugins from that directory as well as their native locations. > In any case I suggest that the maintainers of pidgin and funpidgin try > to work together to keep the packages in debian compatible as possible, > e.g. when it comes to plugins and the like. > Having talked with upstream (and now joined upstream), funpidgin is becoming more of a refactoring project of pidgin's code, as well as readding features which were removed. As such, while funpidgin will likely try to maintain the public interface, there will be reasons to run funpidgin over pidgin and vice-versa. In my view, funpidgin will probably be more valuable to the Debian user community than pidgin (even with patching) due to planned improvement of i18n-related issues (character set transcoding, etcetera) and an overall improved and refactored codebase. William
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