pidgin-indicator: Ubuntu Indicator Plugin for Pidgin
====================================================

This plugin provides an Ubuntu Indicator icon, for use in the Unity desktop
environment. Unity no longer provides a general purpose notification tray,
so the standard Pidgin tray icon does not appear. The official Ubuntu
alternative is an integration with their Messaging indicator, which
consolidates status from multiple applications. I've found this indicator to
be much less usable than the original Pidgin tray icon, so I decided to
build this plugin to restore the icon's functionality in a maintainable
way (in contrast to having to run a patched version of Unity).

Functionality
-------------

The indicator provides all the same functionality as the original tray icon,
but not in exactly the same way.

* The 'smart' click behaviour that either shows the buddy list or unread
  messages is now activated by a middle-click.
  * This is because indicators do not get to control what happens on clicks.
    An indicator can register a 'secondary action' which takes place on a
    middle-click but nothing else.
  * The left/right click behaviour is completely up to the desktop environment.
    * Unity shows the menu on both left and right click.
    * KDE shows the menu on right click and does nothing on left click.
    * I've not investigated what the GNOME indicator plugin does.
* As the indicator is a separate process from pidgin itself, there are
  sometimes conflicts with Focus Stealing Prevention when you use the
  indicator to go to unread messages. You may need to disable FSP for
  Pidgin to get around this.
* Due to how indicators work, the middle-click action must also be a menu
  item, so it's the new Show/Hide item at the top of the menu.
* Due to indicator limitations, some of the special icons can't be shown
  next to menu items any more.

Required packages
-----------------

Runtime:
* pidgin 2.10.x
* libappindicator-0.1

Buildtime:
* build-essential
* pidgin-dev
* libappindicator-dev
* autoconf
* automake
* libtool
* intltool

The ``configure`` script can be generated by running:
* autoreconf -i

Binary Package Repositories
---------------------------

These repositories are managed by third parties, so I can't take credit
or blame for them. But I can definitely thank them for their efforts!

* Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/+archive/ubuntu/webupd8
* Fedora (Official): http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=22135
