[jdev] Open src implemention of Jabber Client, which is best?

[Pieter Barrezeele]

On 23 Nov 2005, at 10:38 PM, Sander Devrieze wrote:

> Op woensdag 23 november 2005 13:37, schreef Pieter Barrezeele:
> <snip>
>>> Look at Coccinella cvs ( http://hem.fyristorg.com/matben/ ). Yes,
>>> it is only a
>>> matter of time until Coccinella will replace Psi as the default  
>>> Jabber
>>> client :-p (I hope ;-) ).
>>
>> Ugh, once more we are confronted with the ugliness of some Linux UI
>> toolkits.
>> Jabber-wise you can dismiss this post as a rant, but with an
>> interface like this, you'll never get to warm up people for this
>> particular software, no matter how many features it has...
>
> Did you actually tried a *recent* version of Coccinella (latest or  
> cvs)? Or
> did you just looked at the *outdated* screenshots on the website?  
> Is this
> ugly?: http://sander.dontexist.org/coccinella.png

I admit I kind of trusted the website for having a decent as well as  
recent screenshot on as much as it entry pages...

The screenshot you posted looks a _lot_ better and should I have seen  
that instead of the one on the coccinella website, I probably  
wouldn't have bothered ranting about it... :-)

But now that we're at it:
- native widgets for any UI toolkit (be it tcl/tk or swing or...) are  
only as good as the native widgets themselves. Don't get me wrong:  
both GTK and Qt, being themeable, have some pretty decent themes. I  
kind of like the default ubuntu gtk theme, for example, but take a  
look at Keramik and tell me that style isn't too intruding... I am  
very glad it only lasted one minor release as default KDE theme.
- about coccinella (and more specifically the screenshot you  
posted ;)): just noting that I don't get why the font in your  
groupchat is at least 2 points smaller than the font in the users  
list for that groupchat ?
- And why do these icons have to be that large ?
- Also, looking at the left-most edge of the chatroom window... Why  
does that has to be in two levels of depth? A lot of current Linux UI  
themes suffer a lot of what I would call 'ballast'. In my very humble  
opinion, this interferes too much with the user experience...

Anyway, I realize this all has little or nothing to do with jabber  
development, but sometimes it's hard to draw the lines between client  
issues and user interface issues... :)

Cheers,

Pieter.


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Pieter Barrezeele                        email:       macbar at fab4.be
                                         jabber:       macbar at fab4.be
                                     Unix sysadmin, Linux enthousiast

If Windows is the solution, please give me my problem back

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