ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Tony Pursell <ajp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mike

On 14 April 2013 16:35, Mike Romard <mromard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi, Kevin.
>
> Since Microblogging was my section, I have to ask, where/when was it
> announced that Gwibber will no longer be installed by default? It was still
> included in the version of 13.04 (alpha or beta... I don't recall which)
> that I had installed while I was working on the section.
>
> I see in this OMG Ubuntu article that I found this morning  (
> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/04/gwibber-not-in-ubuntu-13-04-install-friends)
> that Gwibber will be replaced by Friends, which also won't be installed by
> default for 13.04. Do we know if we should expect Friends to be in by
> default for the 13.10 release?
>
> In any case, thank you for removing the Gwibber content.
>
> Mike Romard
>
>
> On 13 April 2013 19:23, Kevin Godby <godbyk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Hello.
>>
>> I've removed mention of Wubi from the manual since it's not currently
>> supported.
>>
>> I've also removed the Microblogging section since it documented
>> Gwibber which is no longer installed by default.
>>
>> —Kevin
>>
>
I put the following on the Manual Mailing list on April 10.

---------------------------------------------------
Friends Social networking for 13.04 is now handled by the Friends service,
which replaces the backend Gwibber provided in previous Ubuntu releases.
There is no transition required, if you have social networking accounts
setup in Ubuntu Online Accounts, the Friends service will just work. The
Gwibber lens in Unity has been replaced with a Friends lens and works in
much the same way. The Gwibber client application is no longer included by
default, for similar functionality friends-app can be installed from
Software Center.

---------------------------------------------------

from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/TechnicalOverview

I have been frequently re-installing 13.04 on USB stick since before then
and to my dismay all the social media apps seen to be in a state of
dis-array.

If anyone still has Gwibber, then that is because it was an early 13.04
release or was an upgrade from 12.10 to 13.04.  Gwibber may be in Universe
and can still be installed from the Software Centre, but when I tried to,
about a week ago, I just got a message saying it was not in the
repository.  In any case, reviews of Gwibber are very disparaging, with
hardly a good word to be said about it.

'Friends' seems to only support the Friends lens in the Dash which seems to
a very poor relation of the Gwibber lens that I have in 12.04.  I cannot
find the 'friends-app', referred to above, in the Software Centre.  I can
only get Facebook post in the Friends lens.  No tweets.  I think this is
because the Online Accounts manager only supports Facebook and not
Twitter.  Altogether a complete mess.

Empathy is also going down hill as well.  The UI is now terrible, only
supporting large avatars and so being a disaster for anyone with lots of
contact.  It too has bad reviews in the Software Centre.  I haven't found a
way yet to enable IRC.  I tried to get into #ubuntu-meeting from it last
night (using 13.04 on USB) and failed.  Again, I think that is because of a
lack of support in the Online Accounts manager.  This time, for IRC
accounts.

For now, the Instant Messaging section of the manual is OK, but I had to
propose the removal of Microblogging at last night's meeting.  Maybe,
Microblogging will come good and something new can be written, but for now
there is so much uncertainty and a lack of information from the developers
about what is happening.

Tony