Re: conversation history

It is times like this that I wish everyone on this list could program 
and would submit patches.  There are a lot of good ideas here, but the 
issue is lack of time on part of the developers.  See my responses 
below:


On Mar 24, 2004, at 10:22 AM, Jeffry Engert wrote:

>
> On Mar 24, 2004, at 9:53 AM, Jeremiah Blatz wrote:
>
>> So, my vote for any changes to the stored convo format would be 
>> something like this:
>> * Make the file name end in .html
>> * Make there be no spaces in the file names, so as to ease 
>> integration with xargs
>> * Perhaps wrap each message in the convo with something like a 
>> <firemessage></firemessage> tag, and maybe even include a header like 
>> <fireconvo date=xxxx ....> to include some more metadata without 
>> interfering with web browser friendliness.
>>
>> Jer
>

This seems a bit similar to what I want to change to in a future 
version.  Basically, I was thinking saving as xhtml (html that is xml 
compatible).  Essentially, it will be an XML file that uses html tags.  
Now there will be additional tags surrounding the message portion quite 
similar to what you had above.  Currently I am looking at <message 
received="YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS ±HHMM" translated="yes">blah blah <font 
color="#ff0000">blah</font></message>.  I may have some of the tags 
slightly wrong, but you get the idea.  Of course, translated will only 
be there if it really was translated.  I am going to need something 
like this for what I am planning to do in the near future.  Fire will 
read this as an XML file, and parse the XML, but browsers will see it 
as html, so a .html may be the best option.  The XML will be in a nice 
format, so, you could take the XML, run it through an XSLT, and then 
create custom HTML that can be displayed nice a pretty using a CSS.  I 
guess I should create a DTD at some point and let you guys comment on 
it.  Enough acronyms for you?

The question I have for you all is the following:  How should the 
display logs appear when you display it within a web browser?  Should 
they appear as they do now, or should it look different?  Nothing 
complex here, this is after all just if you don't want to see the logs 
in Fire.  Complexity can be done with the process I described above.

The key issue is going to be figuring out how to append to an existing 
file since XML parsers will throw an error if you don't close all tags, 
and inserts must be done inside some of the outer tags.  It is a 
problem I am trying to consider.  Anyone has any ideas, go ahead and 
suggest them.  At the moment, I am considering not closing the tags in 
the files, and append the closed tags to the string of the file upon 
read, or re-writing the file each time.  Doing something like a fseek, 
and then writing may not be a bad idea, but I will have to see.


Submit ideas now, or don't complain when I finish ;)  This is a ways 
off (post 1.0), but I will be tearing aport code soon.  You will see 
the fruits of my last code shred really soon.

> Some things I'd like to have
>
> * save to rtf for friends

File -> Save Current Chat.  Has been there for a while

> * always log by name, ignore alias

Assuming you mean screenname, 1.0 does this.

> * or group by alias regardless of service they are chatting on

1.0's stored IM Controller converts (internally) screen names to the 
current alias, and sorts by that.

> * search by time constraints
>

Sounds like a good idea, but once again, time constraints kill.

> also, am I the only user that has problems with conversations going on 
> two files because you closed the window too soon, or visa-versa? I 
> don't think there is much that can be done about this... just dreaming 
> I guess
>