Trying out Discord (purple-discord) for Pidgin

[fewestpolecat]

I decided to write an awful review for an awful plugin on a website that nobody even uses anymore. I could've done a brief explanation of everything in the #tech channel, but I didn't. So, here it goes, folks...

Introduction

If the name Pidgin doesn't ring any bells, it's an open-source program that works as something called a universal chat client. Here's a nice explanation from the official website:

Pidgin is a chat program which lets you log into accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on XMPP and sitting in an IRC channel at the same time.

Even if it comes with all the chat networks you'll ever need out of the box, you can still add your own via plugins. In this case, there's one for Discord.

Now, this is a plugin, based on a closed-source program, for a client who's purpose is completely different. Not to mention this is still somewhat on a test stage. Of course it's going to be awful. I'm just roasting it for funsies. Anyways, props to the developer for being able to somewhat pull this off.

Review

I set my expectations as low as possible, and put all the necessary files in their respective folders. I then proceeded to add my account. It was dead easy. No need for some fancy account token you get by going through a bunch of menus, just your email and password. TAKE THAT, RIPCORD!

The first problem became apparent as soon as my account was added:

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Everything was a hot mess. Instead of organizing by servers, it was done by categories, which meant you had to scroll down A LOT to get to a specific place. It becomes even more of a chore when you realise that everything isn't even in order.

My next issue came with a bunch of chat windows appearing out of nowhere, presumably because of unread messages. The strange part comes when I realised all the chat windows came from one server, and one server only. Everytime I closed the window, it opened again with some unread messages. My notification settings for that server were set to only @mentions in the Discord client, so I have no clue what occured there. Still, I couldn't find a setting to turn it off.

Enough of that, let's get to the glorious chat interface:

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FUCK YEAH!

There's a lot to talk about here.

First of all, you automatically become more important than everyone else. Bet their interface isn't this radical, is it?

Now, here's a few "quirks and features" I'll briefly note to not elongate this:

- Username colors are randomly chosen, you have no control over them.
- You can't post images from the client, even if you can with other protocols.
- The "people in room" box is utterly useless. It sometimes shows people who aren't even online.
- Embeds work, though not that well.
- Emojis sent from Pidgin become emoticons in the official client.
- Conversation logs are a thing here.
- Right-clicking on someone and pressing info shows their connected accounts, which is something I didn't expect.

There's MUCH more to mention, but I'm running out of time.

Next up...

Text formatting surprisingly works! There's a text formatting menu too, which makes it super easy to make your text bold-itali-scored.

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Now, something I want to point out is- FUCK I LEFT THE QUICHE IN THE OVEN FOR TOO LONG

[fewestpolecat]

Time to look back at this in 3 months and cringe

[NetwideRogue]

I tried this once. The biggest sore point for me was not being able to access scrollback and search. That is the way things are for IRC and friends, and I think that might be for the best too, but connecting to discord this way feels kind of distant, not having access to the whole protocol. Especially since you need to keep a tab open for every channel you want to lurk in, which is not feasible for something like BHJ. Too many channels! Pidgin itself is not that great anyway and I switched to Hexchat for IRC. (It might make more sense for DMs than chatrooms, seems to be built that way.)

My next issue came with a bunch of chat windows appearing out of nowhere, presumably because of unread messages. The strange part comes when I realised all the chat windows came from one server, and one server only. Everytime I closed the window, it opened again with some unread messages. My notification settings for that server were set to only @mentions in the Discord client, so I have no clue what occured there. Still, I couldn't find a setting to turn it off.

The funniest part for me was the friends online notifications that started popping up at the top of my screen while Pidgin was open after I got the plugin, damn near constantly. I can't remember if I found a way to turn those off, either.

I also love Pidgin's tiny arbitrary collection of default smilies. Just like Phpbb, and skype, and steam.

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Even if it comes with all the chat networks you'll ever need out of the box

Yeah the protocol support out of the box in Pidgin nowadays is poor. Half of what's still listed doesn't even exist anymore anyway... It's pretty sad going back to screenshots from 10 years ago and seeing how much healthier it was back then, with support built in for things like facebook messenger, and comparing it to now, now that all these walled gardens have gotten wise and dropped support for XMPP.

[fewestpolecat]

Yeah the protocol support out of the box in Pidgin nowadays is poor. Half of what's still listed doesn't even exist anymore anyway... It's pretty sad going back to screenshots from 10 years ago and seeing how much healthier it was back then, with support built in for things like facebook messenger, and comparing it to now, now that all these walled gardens have gotten wise and dropped support for XMPP.

Pidgin is on a strange spot nowadays. More than half of their default protocols don't work anymore, yet they bothered to completely revamp their website a few months ago. Google Talk was axed somewhere in 2013, yet it's still a selectable protocol. Hell, even the product made to replace it is on lifeline. But yeah, there's no real benefit of using XMPP anymore. Pidgin, even.

Plugins can somewhat remedy that, but you're better off by just using the official client, rather than fiddling with a program that's fundamentally been the same since 2008. An example is the Skype plugin; it works surprisingly well, but VoIP has become such an integral part of Skype, that you're essentially being handicapped by using it.

It does have some neat smilies though, so there's that.