A good messenger client that supports Plus! tags? That'd be fantastic.
Gaim sure needs desktop contacts, I agree. I used to be unsure about Gaim, but I like it now. I don't know what Terillian is like these days, but it was a bit rude when I used it [on Windows though] five or six years ago. Might be worth a look.
Gaim also supports SLIP and Jabber, and I'm trying to get all my contacts to move to SLIP so it suits my purposes. It's also got tabbed chats, which is one of my favourites.
All Linux/Unix messengers also support the one thing Plus! removed from it's featureset, which was one of the most important features but was sold in a deal with the devil. [Don't get me wrong, I think it's great what Patchau did in regards to getting better Plus! support for later MSN versions. I just... that important feature was missed.]
Anyway, if you want a feature bad enough, you could always build it in yourself
was put impeccably into words at DebianDay for me last Saturday, by Knut Yrvin of Trolltech - adults try something once, fail, and then are like "ffs this doesn't work". Children try, fail, and then try again, and succeed - maybe on the second, or even fifth retry. But the thing is that they keep at it and overcome the problems in the end.
-andrewdodd13