Gfire on Empathy

[ape@…]

Empathy seems to be better IM and it could replace Pidgin. It supports all protocols that Pidgin supports, but it would be nice to have Gfire on it. So could you please port Gfire for Empathy?

[chewit]

Empathy is going to replace Pidgin, already has done in Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2. However, please refer to the name of the project, Gfire. Stands of Gaim Xfire. We could port, but its not an important thing to do.

[anonymous]

It isn't a port, because Empathy will be able to use Purple plugins...

[oGGy990]

As far as I understood it, Haze emulates libpurple, so the only problem concerning compatiblty should have been the same issue we had with finch and it should be solved now.
Would be nice if you could try it out and tell us here.

[nwarrenfl]

Is there a build that can let us test?

[oGGy990]

Replying to nwarrenfl:

Is there a build that can let us test?

Of Gfire, you mean?

[nwarrenfl]

Since Empathy is now the default IM client in Karmic Koala, is it with this version possible to use Gfire in it? Would be very nice, even the parts using GTK would work...

[nwarrenfl]

It seems it is already possible from this thread:  https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17907

Would be nice to test out with Gfire!

[cmaiku@…]

I just tried this earlier today. Initially I was having problems with it because it appears Gfire doesn't declare that it requires GTK libraries. I assume it relies on them being loaded from Pidgin. I added the configure and makefile statements for that (similar to how the GLib ones are now) and it loaded.

It seems to crash if the protocol version isn't set correctly and there's some issue with Empathy not wanting to load it in the account dialog. I got around that by using mc-tool, and it worked. It seems it's just these few issues though. :)

[oGGy990]

I have also tried it a few weeks ago. And no. It's not really useable. We rely on your buddy list being constantly there (only rare deletions of it) and also our games files constantly being there. But Haze creates a temporary ~/.purple directory in /tmp for every connection. This means that you will have a new buddy list for every login and you also need to download the games list for every login. Also, Empathy doesn't update the buddies as Pidgin does. So, the list of online directly after your login will always be playing numbers. Another thing is that you can't configure your games (it wouldn't be saved) and you can't open the games manager, server browser, change your nickname, search for buddies or reload the game configuration. The menu entries on a buddys menu like the "Join Game" button are not displayed and also the group handling of clans, friends of friends and real buddies doesn't really work.

You can see a screenshot  here.

Btw: I've tested it with the coming 0.9.0. The library issue is gone with it. But the version needs to be set manually as we can't save the current one (new config directory for every login).

[anonymous]

Replying to ape@ape3000.com:

Empathy seems to be better IM and it could replace Pidgin. It supports all protocols that Pidgin supports, but it would be nice to have Gfire on it. So could you please port Gfire for Empathy?

Empathy supports voice talk too and is in Ubuntu 9.10 (And 10.04 BETA1 [Code name: Lucid Lynx]) default install.

[oGGy990]

Well, a working port of Gfire to telepathy would come close to a complete rewrite. And in my eyes telepathy is nothing to support. So I won't do it :)

[cmaiku@…]

0.9.0 does indeed fix the GTK issue. That's good to know :) After manually setting the correct version, it seems to work just fine for basic IM. That's all the further my needs are.

Unfortunately, since libpurple doesn't have any notification for when account parameters are updated, it'd be tricky to correctly update them in Telepathy :/

I'll have to look into the Empathy accounts dialog issue more.

[cmaiku@…]

Oops. I still had a manager file hanging around from a different installation. There's no Empathy issues now. Currently, telepathy-haze doesn't initialize GThread, so it crashes if the ingamedetectionnorm preference is enabled. That's easy enough to fix on the haze end.

So it's really just updating the protocol version preference to be dealt with, at least for basic IM etc. :)

[oGGy990]

That's the haze.manager protocol entry I added:

[Protocol xfire]
param-account=s required
param-password=s required
param-server=s
param-port=i
param-version=i
param-typenorm=b
param-ingamedetectionnorm=b
param-use_global_status=b
param-ingamenotificationnorm=b
param-server_detection_option=b
param-p2p_option=b
param-use_notify=b
param-show_fofs=b
default-server=cs.xfire.com
default-port=25999
default-version=122
default-typenorm=true
default-ingamedetectionnorm=true
default-use_global_status=true
default-ingamenotificationnorm=false
default-server_detection_option=false
default-p2p_option=true
default-use_notify=true
default-show_fofs=true

But you can say that all of Gfire 0.9.0s new features are useless on Empathy :)

[cmaiku@…]

With newer versions of Haze you don't even need the manager file. It automatically figures it out.

You could say they are useless, but I'd much rather have at least IM work rather than all of Gfire's features not. :P