hi guys,

sometimes while chatting with msn friends who are appearing offline
at random time i can't send messages to them
i have to wait for them till they send me a message so i can reply
it is really an annoying thing
i get the following error messages :
Message could not be sent because the user is offline
or
error with switchboard

first is there any fix, workaround,plugin for this
or do you suggest using another client? what would that be

i know that amsn maybe has same issues.. cuz sometimes i see my friends who use amsn putting in their nicks that they can't chats with ppl appear offline
and i think kopete doesn't work either

help appreciated, you will save me some googling :D
that's due to the fact that pidgin does not support "offline" messages.
MSN protocol works as follow:
if user A wants to send a message to user B, it initiates a connection with the switch board, that in turns will initiate a connection with B, and then the message is sent through that connection. that connection however is not closed directly, rather kept open untill a certain time of idling or closed by some other error/reason.
So if A is appearing offline, everything will work fine when he/she will send a message that initiates the connection and B can reply throught it. while on the other case, some clients will fail to establish a connection to party that isn't appearing online if there is no previously established connection.
Now you try to send a message to a user that's appearing offline, MSN would still request the messages to be sent while pidgin will see the user as offline and will refuse to establish a connection with the switchboard. a patch ? dunno, get the source and patch it !! :P
thanks for the explanation padre
i guess u got the info from reading lot of hacking hotmail manuals :D and how to

let's suppose my appear offline friend is User A and i am User B
well i guess what is happening is that User A is establishing a connection with me..at some time an error is happening either with the switchboard or another reason (there are hundred million ones )
i can't re-initiate the conv.. that is the main problem

now before i download the source code and work on a patch.. first thinking of a workaround :D (i will not actually use this)
i wonder if establishing for example file transfer or voice conversation or cam will open some kind of direct connection between user A and User B
is that still done with msn
i know that it can be used as security weakness and it may slow down connection
Maybe open voice and not actually talk.. or initiate file transfer and limit the con to 1k/s

just some random thoughts .. so what u say ?

- i guess i will have to do some googling . i will post my findings if someone is intrested -
i think even in msn live u can't initiate file transfer, voice or webcam with someone who is appear offline, only text works. what i THINK could be the issue is that as you can send messages to people who are actually really offline and receive them when they come online, it would mean that whatever u send when someone is offline is sent and store somewhere, probably a microsoft software, and when this person logs in, he gets the messages from the server. now when you're appear offline, the behavior would be the same, the conversation would go threw the microsoft servers. as the comunication is not direct between the 2 and passes by microsoft servers, they could restrict other clients to use this feature, which is why it is only available on the official msn client.