Developing Messenger Add-ins: getting a user-assigned friendly nam

I'm working on developing an add-in for Windows Live Messenger. It is a
simple text-to-speech add-in that says something when a user's status
changes. For example, if a user logs in, it would say "So-and-so is online."
This I already have functional. The problem is that a user can have two
friendly names:

1. The name that the buddy gives him or herself. This is the nickname that
has been in the Messenger system for years and years, and is returned by the
User.FriendlyName property. Unfortunately, some users give themselves
cryptic names that do not lend themselves easily to identification, and are
not easily read in a text-to-speech engine. For example, ".:: Baruck ::.",
"Aluink", "*9milKevin", etc. It really sounds bad when running it through a
TTS engine.

2. Recently the Live Messenger team added a feature where you can give your
buddy whatever nickname you like. A user can then rename those cryptic names
of their buddies into something more intelligible, readable, and rememberable
(e.g. the user's actual full name). Unfortunately I can't figure out how to
access that new nickname from the add-in API. It just gives me the
buddy-chosen nickname from #1 above.

Bottom line question: How do I access the user-chosen nickname that is
created when you right-click a contact and choose "Edit Nickname"?

Sample snippet of code that doesn't work the way I want it to:

public void OnStatusChanged(object sender, StatusChangedEventArgs e) {
_speech.Speak(e.User.FriendlyName + " status has changed.",
SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault);
}

Best regards,

James Johnston

 

Greetings James,

Although I could do some work and research for you on these, your best bet is to reask this
question in the Messenger Developer group:
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=112&SiteID=1

Or on third-party sites like Live Fanatic which have a cult developer following:
http://forums.fanatic.net.nz

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2007 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.