2 Annoyances

2009-01-04 Thread John Moore 3rd 
I am enthralled with Pidgin but am annoyed by 2 things that seem to
happen far too often.  One minor  one major.

Pidgin 2.5.3
O/S:  XP SP3

Minor Annoyance:  Initial Start-Up

When starting Pidgin it takes too much time.  The view from Task Manager
indicates that Pidgin goes through several 'Responding'  'Not
Responding' phases. :(  Usually patience will prevail and ultimately
Pidgin boots.  From My personal logs I noticed this behavior /after/
installing the Skype Plug-In.  I can ameliorate this Start-Up hassle if
I remember to Open Skype _before_ Opening Pidgin.Because I use both
Google Talk with My Gmail Account  with a Google Apps Domain I have
resigned Myself to the 'Certificate Acceptance' confusion.  :-\

Major Annoyance:  accounts.xml suffers a lobotomy several times a year.  :(

I have not been able to track the source of this intensely aggravating
circumstance but every 2-3 months I Open Pidgin and am greeted with the
'Welcome to Pidgin' screen inviting Me to configure Accounts.  Arrugh!!!
 Everything was configured and running smoothly the night before when I
closed Pidgin normally.  No Warning, just all the data in accounts.xml
has vanished.  :-\  The most irritating aspect of this is that even when
all 8 Accounts have been re-enter manually the settings related to
combining Buddies  using 'Expand' is lost too.  Also lost are the
assigned aliases which is a large hassle when ICQ Contacts are suddenly
represented by their ICQ # and not their Name.  The other thing that
must be reconfigured are the IRC Channels that were configured to
'Auto-Join'.

I know this can be 'solved' by remembering to manually maintain a Copy
of accounts.xml in another location on the computer; but invariably when
this error happens it isn't with a recent back-up available.  Has anyone
ascertained what causes this data loss?

Other than the above 2 items I have Zero complaints with Pidgin.  The
Application is extremely versatile, stable and customizable.  The
Support ranks among the very best I have experienced with any
Application.  Any suggestions to mitigate the 2 annoyances above will be
much appreciated.

JOHN 8-)
Timestamp: Sunday 04 Jan 2009, 13:46  --500 (Eastern Standard Time)



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Re: 2 Annoyances

2009-01-04 Thread John Bailey 
John Moore 3rd wrote:
snip
 Pidgin boots.  From My personal logs I noticed this behavior /after/
 installing the Skype Plug-In.  I can ameliorate this Start-Up hassle if
 I remember to Open Skype _before_ Opening Pidgin.Because I use both
 Google Talk with My Gmail Account  with a Google Apps Domain I have
 resigned Myself to the 'Certificate Acceptance' confusion.  :-\

We maintain that the Skype plugin is a violation of our license.  It is our
opinion that no one should use this plugin.  We will not support it or any
consequences arising from its use.

 Major Annoyance:  accounts.xml suffers a lobotomy several times a year.  :(
snip
 Has anyone ascertained what causes this data loss?

The root of the problem is that invalid XML data makes its way into
accounts.xml.  We've done pretty much everything we can to mitigate this.

The best suggestion I have to avoid this issue is to maintain proper backups.  A
simple logon script can maintain an adequate backup of this file, or you could
go a bit overboard and write a script that maintains a multi-tier backup.

John



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