[kwlug-disc] Cross Platform Messaging Clients

CrankyOldBugger crankyoldbugger at gmail.com
Fri May 13 11:03:28 EDT 2016


So ultimately, the answer to my question is "no"....

I suppose that Pidgin is the best best for cross-platform and
cross-protocol, but as it was pointed out earlier, this can a bit of a
moving target.  The "walled gardens" are still unwilling to play nice.

All things being equal, I'd be happy to try out a locally made app (like
Kik), but we still have people on IRC, some on Google, some on Skype, etc.

Well, I will crawl back into my hole in the ground and wait another decade
before asking my question again...


On Fri, 13 May 2016 at 10:58 Jason Locklin <locklin.jason at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 13/05/16 10:41 AM, Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account) wrote:
> >> Pidgin and the like have always been a bit of an unstable mess with
> >> all the constantly changing, underlying protocols that they need to
> >> support (that said, I do still use Bitlbee for XMPP, Twitter, and
> >> Facebook).
> >
> > There is an important distinction here I think that needs to be made.
> >
> > Pidgin has been a bit of an unstable mess because the underlying
> protocols it’s trying to unify are obfuscated, undocumented and change
> without warning.
> >
> > XMPP has always worked. IRC has always worked.
> >
> > Google Hangouts stopped federating for a while, but now they seem to be
> federating again. No official word on changing their stance, but maybe a
> glimmer of hope.
> >
> > All this walled-garden “gotta try to trap the users in our specific app”
> is terribly frustrating and reminds me of the old MSN/ICQ/Y! messaging wars.
>
> True, but it's never been terribly good at IRC. Dedicated IRC and XMPP
> clients have generally been quicker to implement new features and
> support old ones consistently. It's a big load trying to support many
> protocols *and* keeping the UI functioning well.
>
>
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