Thanks for your comments!

• checkfriends is being revamped in the development stream. The in-window indicator may come back in a latre reincarnation as part of a status bar, and certainly there are plans to fix the dock (/"tray") indicator, which you will be able to use in GNOME.
• backdate disapperating is a bug and will be fixed in the next release.
• Insert image: Yes.
• From the README file:

  You can remap the accelerators for any menu item.  To do it, first
  enable the accelerator-changing functionality in GTK by appending this
  line to ~/.gtkrc-2.0:
    gtk-can-change-accels = 1
  or, on a GNOME system, with this command:
    gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/interface/can_change_accels -t bool true
  Then open up a menu in LogJam, move the mouse over a menu item, and type
  a keystroke to bind that menu item to that keystroke.  (To clear an
  accelerator, hit backspace.)
  

• The LiveJournal client-server protocol does not currently report this information, which means LogJam cannot get it from the server without resorting to hackery such as guessing the information on the userinfo screens of all your friends. Since we are against doing that, this feature probably isn't coming in soon. :/ If you think it's really important, consider filing it in to suggestions.

thank you for your reply :)

for the final point, I guess I thought it was available, due to this: http://www.livejournal.com/birthdays.bml
I figured if it was available on that page then it might be available in general, plus the client I used on windows had it, but that was a while ago.

we tried the readme text suggestion, having a few problems- using suse 9 pro with all the gtk packages. added the line to the bottom of ~/.gtkrc and ~/.gtkrc-2.0 restarting logjam each time but can't seem to get that functionality to work, any ideas where I could look to solve?

Ok, rambling, I'll shush now.

The thing is that of all the information that is available for humans on the site, not all is accessible to programs in a well-defined manner. Exact definition (what is called "protocol" in techspeak) is important for any number of software reasons which don't directly matter to you :)

I'm not saying it's impossible to get this to happen; I'm only saying that it'll require a bit of drive to do it properly. I can't be certain but I think the windows client you have seen doing this was using a rough technique called "screen scraping" which we are unwilling to adopt.

I'll let Evan comment about accelerators as he was the author of that particular note.

it's not gnome, it's kde, but no I didn't log right out of it. I will try when I've got a few spare minutes (have to put the code back in too)

hey don't worry about it! I'm no expert (understatement alert)

ah well it's not a problem, I'm just very demanding :) I wouldn't like people to have to do messy code it seems sacrilige :)

it's not that important, just figured I'd ask, you don't ask you don't get eh?

oh it was lochjournal I used... though logjam was partly the reason I gave up windows and came over to xwindows... much beter functionality.

And I'm rambling now. so that will be enough form me :)

Software development is much easier with no users at all :)

It's quite all right that you're asking! We want to make this the best client we can, too, and we were recently looking at possible new features. It just strikes me that at this point in time, this feature doesn't need logjam code, it needs protocol support, and it's usually best when the people who want them most champion those causes.

And thanks for telling us about moving over to logjam, that's always fun to hear.

I could just pop off and kill myself if you like? But I think there might be a larger problem than just me....

I can say more nice things about it if you like ;)

I'd rather contribute things as well... but I'm not so good with that.... so I'll be demanding instead :P

I understand about where the change needs to be made.. Like I'd like a *random* button for icons... but I'm pretty sure that would be an lj feature request as well.. but could logjam do it easily?

Well, that is certainly something the client could do now.

The main difficulty getting this one right is not cluttering the UI. If anyone wants to work on this, please discuss it here or with Evan and me.

Is there a possibility of having a “birthdays” pane/panel... what with livejournal not doing the notifications it would be nice to maybe have a small panel somewhere that showed “Upcoming Birthdays”.

You can always check them up on http://www.livejournal.com/birthdays.bml while you're logged in.