Bug 317284

To use our terminology we show "requested status" and not "current status".

This was a deliberate change at the time to fix http://bugs.kde.org/302508. 

The summary is: 
 - presence applet has to match the contact list, otherwise it looks broken
 - contact list has to show requested otherwise to look like a combobox otherwise that's confusing

I will leave this open for a while, because I do want some discussion and brainstorming from everyone, but I do _not_ want any devs to make the obvious change it to fix this report because that just reopens the bug above.


@S
I'm surprised it's not changing when you go offline, could you tell us if you using network manager?

Thanks very much for considering this report. I understand the other point of view, that the icon should reflect "requested status" so that the user understands that it is attempting to obey the user's selected status. I have a suggestion that might satisfy both this bug and also #302508: While it is trying to connect, it shows an animated icon that clearly conveys progress, that it is trying to establish a connection. I like that, and it makes sense, because it clearly conveys that current attempt to the user. Of course, "trying to connect" is not truly a status that a user can set for his IM presence, but even so it useful and not confusing. I would call it a "transitional status". So maybe an additional "transitional status" could be considered for when the user has requested a status but network or other conditions make it temporarily impossible to achieve that status. It could display an icon that looks just like the icon that corresponds to the requested status, but with a small splash of color to indicate that it's not quite there yet, that it's still in a "transitional status". (The exception would be if the user requests "Offline". That should always be achievable, and it should immediately obey and disconnect and show the red X.) I am adding an attachment to show what I mean. This could be a quick fix. Maybe in the future, something fancier like showing a small animated blob rotating around the border of the icon could be used to indicate that it is in a "transitional status".

As for the icon not changing when I go offline, yes, I am using Network Manager. But I do have the "Network Status" service disabled in the KDE Services KCM, to reduce the memory footprint of KDE. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Thanks for looking into this!

Created attachment 78375 [details]
achieved status, original icons from presence applet

Created attachment 78376 [details]
"transitional status" icons, quick hack I made

This transitional status you're talking about is conveyed by the spinning "busy" indicator on top of the icon, which is basically the same as you're proposing, except we're using Plasma theme for that, so it's consistent with other stuff in your Plasma. It should go away as soon as the last account is connected (and all is at the requested presence), otherwise it spins and spins and spins until it goes offline.

> This transitional status you're talking about is conveyed by the spinning
> "busy" indicator on top of the icon, which is basically the same as you're
> proposing, except we're using Plasma theme for that, so it's consistent with
> other stuff in your Plasma. It should go away as soon as the last account is
> connected (and all is at the requested presence), otherwise it spins and
> spins and spins until it goes offline.

Well, in that case, it would be good to make the busy indicator appear immediately whenever the "requested status" and "current status" don't match.

Marking this as wontfix. 

We've been through most of these things already, what we have is what we consider to be the best solution.

You may be encountering lag in the UI if network manager is partly disabled, but there's no way round that (except for you to enable it).