Prefix selection widget (Feature request)

[AeSix]

It would be wonderful if there were a widget to the left of the text input which would allow the user to see where the text is being sent, and could be clicked on to select any other defined prefix. This may conflict with the show/hide option for the per-channel prefix. It could be possible this could be a third option: hide/show/menu?

This is a screenshot showing the feature as implemented in Guild Wars 2:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/a/a8/Full_Chat_Panel.jpg
In this image there is a chat bubble with a triangle to the left of "[say]" where "say" is the name of the chat channel, and the chat bubble is the selection menu. I don't expect TC2 to be quite so elaborate however. :D

(I did not add this FR to the issue ticket I put in for the prefixes stuff because though it's related, it's still a separate thing than the issues I'm having with the prefixes) :D

[mattmess1221]

I had this idea awhile ago, but was hesitant to add it because it would
require server assistance. It's not off-putting, but I'd want to do the
server implementation first.
On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 3:54 PM AeSix [email protected] wrote:

It would be wonderful if there were a widget to the left of the text input
which would allow the user to see where the text is being sent, and could
be clicked on to select any other defined prefix. This may conflict with
the show/hide option for the per-channel prefix. It could be possible this
could be a third option: hide/show/menu?

This is a screenshot showing the feature as implemented in Guild Wars 2:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/a/a8/Full_Chat_Panel.jpg
In this image there is a chat bubble with a triangle to the left of
"[say]" where "say" is the name of the chat channel, and the chat bubble is
the selection menu. I don't expect TC2 to be quite so elaborate however. :D

(I did not add this FR to the issue ticket I put in for the prefixes stuff
because though it's related, it's still a separate thing than the issues
I'm having with the prefixes) :D

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#39.

[AeSix]

I was hoping more for a client-side only thing where it would just insert the correct prefix. Having a server-side component, unless done in a way that didn't interfere at all with chat plugins used, would be a failure. Currently, the network of servers I'm involved with use a custom written chat plugin which requires
'/ch ' to set a default channel
and '/' to override default channel to speak into other channels.
I was using the prefix system to pre-enter the / so it would be sent for the line of text I was about to send to the server. This works occasionally, but other times it fails to send, or worse the prefix is ignored and my text gets sent to default channel (which my default can be a public channel and I meant to send to the staff channel, etc)

So, I was hoping there would be a way to select the prefix, from a list of prefixes, and for that prefix to show in the widget - this requires no server-side assistance, as it's only pulling local data.
HOWEVER I do see that if there were a method for TC2 to allow third party chat plugins to hook into a TC2 server side (or allow TC2 to hook into itself) the channels could be more stabily handled.
Perhaps a connection-time probe for a TC2 server component could be used to determine which method is used?

If I'm not making sense, or have said something you don't understand, I'll try to clarify and explain better. :)

[mattmess1221]

Parsing received messages is a little different to sending messages. There are many different chat plugins that use different methods for changing channels, such as the one your server uses. HeroChat also uses /ch , but you can also use /qm to send a message directly to a channel.

The easiest way I can see of doing this well is to have the server tell the client via a custom packet that the channel has changed. I would do this through soft dependencies on the chat plugins and listen when the channel is changed, then send that to the client. Other chat plugins (or chat plugin extensions) would then be able to add their own compatibility. It would come with some defaults, such as zChat and HeroChat among others.

I could also just create a custom chat packet that will only send messages to a specific channel, basically putting control of channels into the client rather than the server.

This also brings the possibility of increasing the length for commands. I've been thinking about this for a while now. I just need to go create the plugin for it.

[AeSix]

I just want tabbychat to handle the commands as prefixes and to better handle per-channel prefixes, and then possibly have a nice little gui that says which prefix is loaded (and thus will be used) when sending the line to the server, presumable the prefix will coincide with a channel on the server and the server will know what to do with it. If not, then the user messed up defining the prefix.

Nowhere in there is there any need for tabbychat to parse received messages or know what channel is set as default....