Protocol status TEXT in contactlist instead of icons

[johnny5wd]

This may seem like a silly feature requuest, but what I would like to see is the ability to use a contact list that has configurable text prefixes for the protocol statusses instead of icons / replacing the icons.


For example:

[icq: occupied] contact name
[msn: n/a] contact name
[aim: away] contact name
[bnet: online] contact name

...without icons appearing.


I know, I know it sounds a little silly, but when you have a contact list with over 500 people on it and you're running Miranda on an older system, this saves time and resources and makes it potentially readable from other applications such as applications for people with visual disabilities / blind people because it is plain text which can be easily read/interpreted by such software.

My main concern though is speed and resources.


I know, sounds silly. But apparently there is a need: my need. :)

[Nightwish]

That won't help much. Drawing a 16x16 pixel icon isn't much slower than drawing text (in fact, the latter can be slower in some situations).

The icons are loaded anyway, so just skipping the drawing won't save much (if anything at all...).

[johnny5wd]

Ok I see. Nonetheless I'm sort of weird in some ways. I don't always like icons. Alas, I'm just a lowly sysadmin, not a developer and the only other useful skills besides coming up with silly feature requests is drinking coffee.

Seriously though, take a very low-end machine (preferably Pentium-1), install Windows, install an older MS Office product (like Office 97) both with default settings (although I use Open Office myself). Now, disable all the toolbars with all nice icons, reboot the computer and start Word again, this time without the toolbars. Notice any difference?

Making Miranda accessible to people with disabilities might still be worth considering though, IMHO.

The one thing that is most annoying when deploying Miranda is to have to download separate icon sets for certain protocols since they don't come with default ones to distinguish themselves (if all protocols use the default Miranda icon). In this case it's Miranda's flexibility and customizability that while very nice for users who like to tweak, causes it to sometimes take a back seat to other IM's because it's too much trouble, which is sad.

What about amending my request to: "Option to disable protocol icons in contact list"? I can easily rename the contacts to have the protocol names as a suffix to their names. In the past I've had some problems loading Miranda with a large contact list when I had a lot of protocols, especially in the tray area. When changing options to display only one icon in the tray area these problems disappeared.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying things and taking the time to read the feature request. If someone will do it then great, if not, I won't ask again (unless I forgot about it in the mean time then comne up with it again).

However just because most developers don't care about certain functionality, doesn't mean there aren't people out there who do (thankfully Miranda is modular and customizable so I for one can dispense with the games etc. unlike the major proprietary messengers), eventhough they lack the skills to do it themselves. I do hope the Miranda community will be as open and welcoming and forgiving to new (forum) users as it has been in the past.

I certainly hope I didn't inconvenience anyone. Naturally I understand and respect that certain "market demand" will only be met if someone is willing to put some effort into it and see sufficient demand / need for it him/herself. If not, then tough luck for the people that lack these skills as the likelyhood that their needs will be met.

As a wise character in a certain SciFi movie once said: "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few". Such is the nature of most open source projects as well, especially under GPL, which is ironic since sometimes these projects are started BECAUSE of the needs of the few.

My apologies for this uneccesarily long post, please forgive me, and keep up the good work. Miranda is top notch and still my favourite IM.

[-pv-]

hey.. I am using clist nicer and I am able to disable icons and let the plugin display status text in the 2nd line. maibe other clists besides classic can do that too. no modifications to clist nicer are required just go throught all the options.
I dont know if one can prefix user nicks with a proto name but if you've got your clist sorted by protocol it is not needed I hope.

[johnny5wd]

Hi,

Thanks, haven't tried that plugin yet. Suffix is also welcome, I currently rename everyone's silly MSN nick to their real names or at least something readable and append (MSN) or whatever protocol they're using to their name.

I started doing this particularly so I could distinguish between SkypeOut users and normal Skype users in the Skype plugin. In Skype itself this is clear but with the plugin this was a problem, which is why I sort of came up with the workaround.

I actually sort alphabetically on display name. That way I don't need to use meta contacts and still have the same person's contact options grouped together.

Thanks for your tip I will take a look at it!

[MattJ]

I wrote this plugin: http://forums.miranda-im.org/showthr...bledisplayname

Sepcifically for this (showing status text for screen readers). It can do more though. It was my first plugin, and I grant it is in an unfinished state. I hope to get back to it this summer, do up the UI, and release it on the FL. Hope it helps.

[Nightwish]

Ok I see. Nonetheless I'm sort of weird in some ways. I don't always like icons. Alas, I'm just a lowly sysadmin, not a developer and the only other useful skills besides coming up with silly feature requests is drinking coffee.

Seriously though, take a very low-end machine (preferably Pentium-1), install Windows, install an older MS Office product (like Office 97) both with default settings (although I use Open Office myself). Now, disable all the toolbars with all nice icons, reboot the computer and start Word again, this time without the toolbars. Notice any difference?

This is because a toolbar is much more than only drawing a few icons, and when you disable it, the icons are replaced by *nothing*. Replacing only the icons with text and leaving the toolbars enabled wouldn't make much of a difference. Drawing text can be more complex than drawing an icon (the latter can often be performed by a single bitblt operation while rendering text can require quite some calculations for things like clipping and maybe even an algorithm which does antialiasing in real time (clear type for example).

Anyway, clist_nicer+ can (almost) do what you want. It is possible to disable the status icons and show the status as text in the 2nd line below the nickname. All the options are on the advanced page:

* uncheck "show status icons"

* under "multiple rows mode" set the display to "always" and uncheck the "consider status message" checkbox.