indicator-applet-session should launch empathy if I change my status

[Lionel Dricot]

Binary package hint: indicator-applet-session

If empathy is not started, indicator-applet-session will not allow me to change my online status by greying out the menu.

Instead, it should automatically launch empathy if I choose to become online.

Current situation is a big usability bug because :

- Most users will not understand that they have to start empathy first.
- We etablish an artificial difference for two situations that are similar for the end-user : having empathy launched but hidden and not having empathy launched. From an user perspective, there's no way to distinguish between those situatitons. And it should not be the case.

Note that indicator-applet already behaves correctly.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

I agree. This was removed from Karmic as there was a desire to have a "Shutdown" icon somewhere on the panel. Hopefully we can fix both of these issues for Lucid. I talked with the Telepathy guys at GNOME Boston Summit about this as well.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. However, a paper cut should be a small usability issue , in the default Ubuntu 9.10 install , that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. So this bug can't be addressed as part of the project.

this is a feature request so not a papercut

For further info about papercuts criteria , pls read > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

Don't worry though, This bug has been marked as "invalid" ONLY in the papercuts project.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

At the moment the status icons are grayed out if empathy is not running. this should be changed, a simple example is that when gwibber is not running (accounts are set) and some text in typed in the MeMenu it starts gwibber and broadcasts the status. So empathy should have a similar behavior i.e. when accounts are set status icons should not be grayed out.

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

This missing functionality (by the way, the specification at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeMenu seems to suggest it, at least in spirit) also greatly complicates the process of discovering features involving Social From The Start. It's turning into a jigsaw puzzle. The message indicator has some discoverability because it lights up when one receives messages. However, I don't think we can expect our users to notice it before that happens, which the current design is demanding.

In writing the introductory slideshow, I'm finding it incredibly painful to explain something along the lines of "Find the tiny, greyed out envelope icon (by the way, it also tells you when you have messages) and open Chat. Now go to the Me menu and — oh boy, look how easy it is to change your status and set up your accounts!" Or I can just tell people to do it the old way and open Empathy (which is super easy!), but I like the idea of progress.

Further along that line, it's inconsistent with the rest of the Me menu's behaviour: It is used to set up accounts, so it seems to be a launchpad of sorts for all things instant messaging... except, at the moment, it isn't; the foundations are layed, then it fizzles out. (And that accounts dialogue, by the way, makes a prominent note of the fact that status is set to offline while the menu itself makes it appear that status can't be changed - confusing!). In addition, the Me menu automatically opens Gwibber when something is entered into the microblogging text box.

So, err, in short: I was hoping someone could let us know if this will be addressed for Lucid, or after. I need to have these strings perfect, and I don't want to confuse our users :)

[Ted Gould (ted)]

We can do this, but user complained vigorously. In fact we did it. And removed it. I don't think it's really possible unless we make the Me Menu only work with one IM client only. Otherwise people who've experimented with another one will get it launching continuously.

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

I agree with Ted. My original report (Bug #528244), later considered a duplicate of this bug, was more about the inconsistency between opening Empathy for the first time and other times. Now that the status changing is properly grayed out whenever Empathy is closed, I believe everything is fine (except, perhaps, for Bug #548994).

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

I think people are rightly frustrated by what's going on here but are proposing a solution that does more than necessary to solve the problem.

  Problem: Users are frustrated by insensitive menu items, especially when most of the Me menu is insensitive and it's not obvious why I can't just click "Available" if I want to be Available!

  Solution: Make the status menu items sensitive. If I click Available, sign me on but don't launch Empathy.

Ted, why did users complain?

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

"If I click Available, sign me on but don't launch Empathy."

David, what exactly did you mean by that? I didn't understand.

Also, I can guess that users complained because the implementation tied the Me Menu with Empathy and they used Pidgin. In my original report (Bug #442603), I pointed out this dilemma:

"I believe the expected behavior in this situation would be either to make the app open or to make all options other than "offline" grayed out. Since there's no way, in the first case, to figure out the correct procedure if the user has Pidgin AND Empathy installed, I suggest following the second suggestion."

It's not easy to figure out the correct behavior in case the user has two messaging apps installed. Set a "default" chat app? Open both? Open neither?

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

This feature truly defines 'social from the start'

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

I mean, let me click "Available" is Empathy isn't running, and put me online using Telepathy without launching Empathy. If someone sends me an IM, empathy launches to display it.

Think about what "Available" means -- the user who clicks on available wants to be contactable. They don't necessarily want to see their buddy list, they just want to be reachable via instant messaging.

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

In theory this is not a bad idea, but from the looks of your response it seems that you are settled on the idea of tying the entire thing to Empathy/Telepathy.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

On Mon, 2010-03-29 at 14:43 +0000, David Siegel wrote:
> Ted, why did users complain?

The problem was largely based on the fact that we support both Pidgin
and Empathy. So if someone configured Empathy once, we'd end up
starting. We couldn't detect what someone "really wanted" with regards
to their IM application so we did it poorly. Since both are technically
supported (but Empathy is default) in the Lucid cycle, I still don't
believe that we can make a reasonable choice here.

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

I perfectly agree with David here.

Conscious User > I don't see the problem of tying that to Telepathy. It's like tying Totem to GStreamer. Telepathy is there specifically to enable you to do that kind of stuffs.

As for the pidgin/empathy confilct, IMHO, pidgin will not be supported anymore in a not too distant future. A reasonnable solution would be to start Empathy by default except if "there's no empathy configuration" AND "there's already a pidgin configuration".

A Gconf key might also be provided for those who want to manually change their IM cilient.

[David Siegel (djsiegel-deactivatedaccount)]

"from the looks of your response it seems that you are settled on the idea of tying the entire thing to Empathy/Telepathy"

Not sure how you read that between the lines, especially since I prefer Pidgin to Empathy ;)

If we need to be able to tell which chat application the user prefers, we may just have to ask the user! We do it for web browsers so we know what app to open when you click on links; seems perfectly reasonable to ask what your preferred chat app is to make sure we're launching the correct application on behalf of the user. This is a lot of work, though.

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

In my opinion, there is no need for extra complexity and I stand by what I reported as Bug #548994: the status options, like the broadcasting field, should simply not appear if no adequate program is running. This way there would be no "grayed out frustration".

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

@David, my bad, I've got the wrong idea. It's just that your paragraph revolved around Telepathy and Empathy, but I guess you were just using them as examples.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

So, there are two relevant holes in the Me menu specification.

The first is that it isn't specific about which chat client it's referring to. When we said the IM statuses "section is present only if you have set up any instant messaging accounts", we meant "only if any instant messaging accounts are currently set up in Empathy". If you don't have any accounts set up in Empathy, the IM status items should not be present at all. If someone wants to extend the menu to support Pidgin, then great, but they'd need to include a way of choosing your default IM program (in a similar way to how you choose your Web browser). <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeMenu?action=diff&rev2=13&rev1=12>

The other is that the specification started out including toggle items for each IM account, but then these were dropped and the rest of the specification wasn't fully updated to match. I've now fixed this. The relevant sentence for this bug: "Each [IM status] item should be sensitive only if at least one of the accounts you have set up in Empathy supports that status, regardless of whether Empathy is currently running." <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeMenu?action=diff&rev2=14&rev1=13>

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I've now added two test cases.
------------
Test case: Set up a Facebook Chat account, and no other account, in Empathy. Log out, then log in again. “Offline” should be checked, “Available” should be sensitive, and the other IM status items should be insensitive.

Test case: Set up an XMPP account in addition to the Facebook account. Log out, then log in again. Select “Busy”. Empathy should launch with your status set to “Busy” for XMPP and “Available” for Facebook Chat. The “Busy” and “Available” items should have an indeterminate mark, while all the others are sensitive.
------------

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

So, in which situation are we in? The current behavior of graying out when Empathy is closed will be kept for Lucid?

[Ted Gould (ted)]

On Tue, 2010-03-30 at 09:02 +0000, Conscious User wrote:
> So, in which situation are we in? The current behavior of graying out
> when Empathy is closed will be kept for Lucid?

Yes. Changing it would be too big of a change at this point in the
release cycle.

[clemmy (luca-clem)]

David Siegel wrote on 2010-03-29: #10

> Think about what "Available" means -- the user who clicks on available
> wants to be contactable. They don't necessarily want to see their buddy
> list, they just want to be reachable via instant messaging.

I totally agree with this point.
It describes exactly the idea I have of the MeMenu: in the morning I turn on the computer, and I begin to work... I don't want to open my chat program nor I want to see my buddy list, but I want to give to my friends a way to contact me, and MeMenu should provide a quick way to do this.

Think about a mobile phone.. it's the same thing!
When you wake up in the morning press the power button to turn it on, and the you put the phone somewere. You don't open you contant list, because, for the moment, you don't want to contact anybody. You just you want to be contactable.
MeMenu should behave in a similar way: yo click on you name, the menu opens, then you click "online". That's all...very quick, very easy! as easy as turning on a mobile phone!

I understand that you want to support both pigdin and empathy, and this efford is all-worthy. But if supporting two IM client prevent from implementing such a usefull feature... maybe it is not worth the trouble!
I think that you should support empathy by default, because it is the chat software installed by default.

Of course if a user wants to drop empathy and install pigdin he should be able to change the behaviour of the MeMenu.. but if he does this change he probably is an experienced user, so he can go to the trouble of changing the default chat application (maybe from Sytem->Preferences->Preferred applications)

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

@clemmy:

The ability to change the default chat application does not currently exist and might not be implemented in any near future. From a *idealistic* perspective, I agree with everything you said. From a *realistic* perspective, it is important to consider the current constraints.

[clemmy (luca-clem)]

@Conscious User

Oh, of course I understand that there are some technical difficulties.. and the solution I proposed maybe needs al lot of coding, so it is not easy to implement..you can consider this feature as a 'whishlist', and maybe one day you'll implement it! :-)
Maybe it easier to put the choice in a gconf-editor string.. it will not be a system-wide choice, but just an option of the MeMenu.
MeMenu by default uses empathy to set your status, and if someone wants to use pigdin he simply edit a string with gconf-editor

There is a similar example that just came into my mind.. the new version of eog (the verision that ships into ubunto 10.04) have a nice button in the toolbar saying "Edit this image". You click on this button and fspot suddenly opens, so that you can quickly modify your image.
Personally I don't like f-spot, so I modified a string in gconf-editor and now my eog open the gimp when I click on the "edit this image" button..

In this case ubuntu developers have decided to support only one image editing software, and I think this is good. The button "edit this image" does exactly what user expect.. it opens one image editor app. The system is "easy and user friendly", it just works out-of-the-box.

If then someone wants to change the editor app (like I did) he probably is enough experience to do a small search on internet end browse system settings with gconf-editor

best regards

PS= don't misunderstand me.. I think MeMenu is great, and I'm very happy with what you have done. Your work is really impressive! I just wanted to give some advice about how it could be made even better, but it is just my personal opinion.
Moreover.. I'm not a programmer, so I will just use you decide to develop, and I will be happy with it!

[Conscious User (conscioususer)]

@clemmy:

There seems to be a misunderstanding. I'm not involved in any way with the development, so please take those compliments back. :)

Anyway, like I said before, allowing the change of default chat app is not trivial. The eog example you gave is just a matter of choosing which app opens a file. The Me Menu involves much more complex functionality and communication. Even if it the developers decide to do it, it won't be for 10.10.

So, in my opinion, while it's nice to think about the ideal scenario, the focus of this bug report should be on what is a good solution in the short term. And I'm not sure that alienating Pidgin users from using the Me Menu (something that will happen depending on the solution adopted to fix the bug) is a good idea.

[frizzle21 (frederik-nnaji)]

If the MeMenu sets a symbolic "flag" for Presence, the next consumer for this information on DBus should be selected in "Preferred Applications" in a new section for Instant Messaging.
Perhaps somebody wants to set Skype as default application for making voice calls!?
And the same somebody wants to set up Empathy as main application for sending files via XMPP..!?
And perhaps that same person would like to have Pidgin as main text-chat application...

In that case, Preferred Applications would need to look different..
I suggest reviewing "Preferred Applications", since obviously everyone in this conversation underestimates the importance of this simple User's Choice dialog..

[Patrick Scott (patrickscott52)]

This bug is not a duplicate of bug 550824. These are two very different issues. Bug 550824 is related to the 'Chat Status' change options becoming disabled (greyed out) after the user changes uses the Me Menu to change his Chat Status to offline. It is a simple usability bug and has been fixed for Natty I believe. This Bug (452067), however, is related to the 'Chat Status' options being disabled (greyed out) when the user logs in and there is no apparent way to make those options enabled using the Me Menu. This is a much bigger issue as the user must instead somehow know that he must launch the empathy application to get these options enabled and get to work (that's no good for new users, I was left confused when I joined Linux @ Ubuntu 10.04 ).

Expected Result for this Bug Report:
- Once the user logs in, he should be able to change his 'Chat Status' from Offline to any of the other available options using the Me Menu WITHOUT having to first launch Empathy.

As mentioned by one of the earlier posters here, invoking this change of status probably shouldn't launch the Contact List. The option "Show Contact List" should also be added to the Me Menu. I have submitted a Bug Report 763266 for that but it is yet to be triaged (https://bugs.launchpad.net/indicator-me/+bug/763266).

It disappoints me that, after 12 months of using Linux and Ubuntu, this issue which has really annoyed me since day 1 still hasn't been worked on and yet this Bug has been reported all the way back in October 2009 and has since been marked as a duplicate.

[pablomme (pablomme)]

@Patrick: that is not the case. You do have to open empathy *once* to set up your accounts, but the me-menu remains active thereafter, even if you close your session/reboot/etc. I don't think it would be sensible for a user to intend to "go online" without having specified how.

With that in mind, bug #550824 is the same as this one, in that it requires the same fix.

The overlap in semantics between the me-menu and the messaging menu is a different issue, but it's not clear to me that moving/duplicating the empathy entry in the messaging menu is the way to solve it, a higher-level redesign may be needed.

[Patrick Scott (patrickscott52)]

I think our wires are crossed, of course I agree with you that accounts need to be specified before the user can "go online". My issue is that every time I boot my machine I need to open empathy once per session to activate the Me Menu otherwise the "Change Status" options are disabled (greyed out) for the entire session (my accounts were configured long ago). I'm running the Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 so the bug 550824 issue has been fixed on my machine where as the issue from bug 452067 still remains..

[pablomme (pablomme)]

I don't need to run empathy to activate the me menu on any of my two natty installations, so the problem you're seeing may be specific to your set up.

[Patrick Scott (patrickscott52)]

Oh dear, In that case I apologise for the confusion! I had seen somebody else report the same issue I was having in bug 550824, so maybe its an upgrade issue left over since Lucid or Maverick. I'll do a clean install on the 28th and see what happens. I had been thinking of switching to 32 bit anyway since I'm having some issues with shutdown and restart on Natty 64 bit

[pablomme (pablomme)]

For what it's worth, both my natty systems are clean installs, so this might be an issue with upgrades.

[Patrick Scott (patrickscott52)]

I just did a clean install of Natty Beta 2 -x86 on an old spare hard drive. I'm afraid I am still seeing the issue even on a clean install, when I start ubuntu, the Change Status options in the Me Menu are disabled until I launch empathy. I have fixed the issue myself by adding empathy to the "Startup Applications" dialog in System Settings.

@pablomme, I am not sure why we are seeing different things here, do you have Empathy set as a Startup Application?

[pablomme (pablomme)]

No, I don't have empathy in startup applications.. Two other things that might influence the behaviour of the me menu to some extent:
- I use automatic login, and my default keyring has an empty password
- I have facebook, google talk, msn and "people nearby" accounts set up

[Patrick Scott (patrickscott52)]

No neither of these changes worked for me, I'm afraid. Although I never knew you could set a password keyring to blank, very useful!

I'm quite happy with my workaround to add empathy as a Startup Application. Setting the command "empathy -h" starts it in hidden window mode and simulates the desired behavior quite well :)

[pablomme (pablomme)]

Yup, but bear in mind that your passwords are stored as plain text, which from a security point of view is a Bad Thing. About 'empathy -h', watch you compiz options, see bug #765469.

[Marcus Haslam (marcus-haslam)]

I'm out of the office until 1st August.

On 23 Apr 2011, at 21:59, Patrick Scott <email address hidden>
wrote:

> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 550824 ***
>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/550824
>
> I just did a clean install of Natty Beta 2 -x86 on an old spare hard
> drive. I'm afraid I am still seeing the issue even on a clean install,
> when I start ubuntu, the Change Status options in the Me Menu are
> disabled until I launch empathy. I have fixed the issue myself by
> adding
> empathy to the "Startup Applications" dialog in System Settings.
>
> @pablomme, I am not sure why we are seeing different things here, do
> you
> have Empathy set as a Startup Application?
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of
> Papercutters, which is subscribed to One Hundred Paper Cuts.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/452067
>
> Title:
>  indicator-applet-session should launch empathy if I change my status
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
>  Invalid
> Status in Me Menu:
>  Confirmed
> Status in “indicator-me” package in Ubuntu:
>  Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: indicator-applet-session
>
>  If empathy is not started, indicator-applet-session will not allow me
>  to change my online status by greying out the menu.
>
>  Instead, it should automatically launch empathy if I choose to become
>  online.
>
>
>  Current situation is a big usability bug because :
>
>  - Most users will not understand that they have to start empathy
> first.
>  - We etablish an artificial difference for two situations that are
> similar for the end-user : having empathy launched but hidden and
> not having empathy launched. From an user perspective, there's no
> way to distinguish between those situatitons. And it should not be
> the case.
>
>  Note that indicator-applet already behaves correctly.

[Marcus Haslam (marcus-haslam)]

I'm out of the office until 1st August.

On 24 Apr 2011, at 00:59, Patrick Scott <email address hidden>
wrote:

> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 550824 ***
>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/550824
>
> No neither of these changes worked for me, I'm afraid. Although I
> never
> knew you could set a password keyring to blank, very useful!
>
> I'm quite happy with my workaround to add empathy as a Startup
> Application. Setting the command "empathy -h" starts it in hidden
> window
> mode and simulates the desired behavior quite well :)
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of
> Papercutters, which is subscribed to One Hundred Paper Cuts.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/452067
>
> Title:
>  indicator-applet-session should launch empathy if I change my status
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
>  Invalid
> Status in Me Menu:
>  Confirmed
> Status in “indicator-me” package in Ubuntu:
>  Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: indicator-applet-session
>
>  If empathy is not started, indicator-applet-session will not allow me
>  to change my online status by greying out the menu.
>
>  Instead, it should automatically launch empathy if I choose to become
>  online.
>
>
>  Current situation is a big usability bug because :
>
>  - Most users will not understand that they have to start empathy
> first.
>  - We etablish an artificial difference for two situations that are
> similar for the end-user : having empathy launched but hidden and
> not having empathy launched. From an user perspective, there's no
> way to distinguish between those situatitons. And it should not be
> the case.
>
>  Note that indicator-applet already behaves correctly.

[Marcus Haslam (marcus-haslam)]

I'm out of the office until 1st August.

On 23 Apr 2011, at 05:19, Patrick Scott <email address hidden>
wrote:

> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 550824 ***
>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/550824
>
> I think our wires are crossed, of course I agree with you that
> accounts
> need to be specified before the user can "go online". My issue is that
> every time I boot my machine I need to open empathy once per session
> to
> activate the Me Menu otherwise the "Change Status" options are
> disabled
> (greyed out) for the entire session (my accounts were configured long
> ago). I'm running the Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 2 so the bug 550824 issue has
> been fixed on my machine where as the issue from bug 452067 still
> remains..
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of
> Papercutters, which is subscribed to One Hundred Paper Cuts.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/452067
>
> Title:
>  indicator-applet-session should launch empathy if I change my status
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
>  Invalid
> Status in Me Menu:
>  Confirmed
> Status in “indicator-me” package in Ubuntu:
>  Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: indicator-applet-session
>
>  If empathy is not started, indicator-applet-session will not allow me
>  to change my online status by greying out the menu.
>
>  Instead, it should automatically launch empathy if I choose to become
>  online.
>
>
>  Current situation is a big usability bug because :
>
>  - Most users will not understand that they have to start empathy
> first.
>  - We etablish an artificial difference for two situations that are
> similar for the end-user : having empathy launched but hidden and
> not having empathy launched. From an user perspective, there's no
> way to distinguish between those situatitons. And it should not be
> the case.
>
>  Note that indicator-applet already behaves correctly.

[Marcus Haslam (marcus-haslam)]

I'm out of the office until 1st August.

On 23 Apr 2011, at 15:15, Patrick Scott <email address hidden>
wrote:

> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 550824 ***
>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/550824
>
> Oh dear,  In that case I apologise for the confusion! I had seen
> somebody else report the same issue I was having in bug 550824, so
> maybe
> its an upgrade issue left over since Lucid or Maverick. I'll do a
> clean
> install on the 28th and see what happens. I had been thinking of
> switching to 32 bit anyway since I'm having some issues with shutdown
> and restart on Natty 64 bit
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of
> Papercutters, which is subscribed to One Hundred Paper Cuts.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/452067
>
> Title:
>  indicator-applet-session should launch empathy if I change my status
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
>  Invalid
> Status in Me Menu:
>  Confirmed
> Status in “indicator-me” package in Ubuntu:
>  Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: indicator-applet-session
>
>  If empathy is not started, indicator-applet-session will not allow me
>  to change my online status by greying out the menu.
>
>  Instead, it should automatically launch empathy if I choose to become
>  online.
>
>
>  Current situation is a big usability bug because :
>
>  - Most users will not understand that they have to start empathy
> first.
>  - We etablish an artificial difference for two situations that are
> similar for the end-user : having empathy launched but hidden and
> not having empathy launched. From an user perspective, there's no
> way to distinguish between those situatitons. And it should not be
> the case.
>
>  Note that indicator-applet already behaves correctly.

[Marcus Haslam (marcus-haslam)]

I'm out of the office until 1st August.

On 23 Apr 2011, at 03:58, Patrick Scott <email address hidden>
wrote:

> *** This bug is a duplicate of bug 550824 ***
>    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/550824
>
> This bug is not a duplicate of bug 550824. These are two very
> different
> issues. Bug 550824 is related to the 'Chat Status' change options
> becoming disabled (greyed out) after the user changes uses the Me Menu
> to change his Chat Status to offline. It is a simple usability bug and
> has been fixed for Natty I believe. This Bug (452067), however, is
> related to the 'Chat Status' options being disabled (greyed out) when
> the user logs in and there is no apparent way to make those options
> enabled using the Me Menu. This is a much bigger issue as the user
> must
> instead somehow know that he must launch the empathy application to
> get
> these options enabled and get to work (that's no good for new users, I
> was left confused when I joined Linux @ Ubuntu 10.04 ).
>
> Expected Result for this Bug Report:
> - Once the user logs in, he should be able to change his 'Chat
> Status' from Offline to any of the other available options using the
> Me Menu WITHOUT having to first launch Empathy.
>
> As mentioned by one of the earlier posters here, invoking this
> change of
> status probably shouldn't launch the Contact List. The option "Show
> Contact List" should also be added to the Me Menu. I have submitted a
> Bug Report 763266 for that but it is yet to be triaged
> (https://bugs.launchpad.net/indicator-me/+bug/763266).
>
> It disappoints me that, after 12 months of using Linux and Ubuntu,
> this
> issue which has really annoyed me since day 1 still hasn't been worked
> on and yet this Bug has been reported all the way back in October 2009
> and has since been marked as a duplicate.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of
> Papercutters, which is subscribed to One Hundred Paper Cuts.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/452067
>
> Title:
>  indicator-applet-session should launch empathy if I change my status
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
>  Invalid
> Status in Me Menu:
>  Confirmed
> Status in “indicator-me” package in Ubuntu:
>  Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: indicator-applet-session
>
>  If empathy is not started, indicator-applet-session will not allow me
>  to change my online status by greying out the menu.
>
>  Instead, it should automatically launch empathy if I choose to become
>  online.
>
>
>  Current situation is a big usability bug because :
>
>  - Most users will not understand that they have to start empathy
> first.
>  - We etablish an artificial difference for two situations that are
> similar for the end-user : having empathy launched but hidden and
> not having empathy launched. From an user perspective, there's no
> way to distinguish between those situatitons. And it should not be
> the case.
>
>  Note that indicator-applet already behaves correctly.