Re: Feature request maybe?

I guess it is time to weigh in on why things are the way they are, but 
before I start, I would like to relay a not so well known tip to those 
who use tabbed windows to keep numerous conversations open at once.  
Opt-return goes to the first unread tab in that window.  Hitting it 
again goes to the next, etc...  After all tabs have been read, it goes 
to the first tab whose user is typing.  If no tabs have typing or 
unread messages, it does nothing.  This is useful if you are acting 
like you are stuck in "reply mode" where you are replying to each 
message as it comes in.  In addition, Cmd-Left Arrow and Cmd-Right 
Arrow cycles through all conversations just like it always has.

Using a single file per buddy or even a single file per buddy per 
day/week/month brings with it many complications and disadvantages.  
There is no issue with the ending tags since they are re-written with 
each message sent or received in the unlikely (or likely with some 
builds) event that Fire crashes before you close the window.
First of all, for those who use Fire on multiple computers, 
synchronizing the logs between the computers is simply not practical.  
I have a friend who tries to do this with Trillian since it logs this 
way and it is nothing short of painful.  With Fire's current system of 
logging, two rsync commands are enough to synchronize all logs between 
two computers (I can tell you the commands I use if you like).
Second, if any kind of history is displayed, such as the last few 
lines, the ENTIRE file must be parsed.  This can take a considerable 
amount of time and I personally don't want to have to wait around for 
it to parse a huge file just to see what my friend said.
Third, if you want to distribute a certain conversation to friends so 
they can see what is said, it is quite likely that a single file 
contains everything that you want them to read and nothing that you 
don't.  Since it is an xhtml file, many browsers can display it 
properly using the css file described at the top of each session.  I 
have done this myself on numerous occasions.

There is a simple way to view previous logs quickly.  The buddy icon in 
the conversation toolbar is really a menu, and one of its items is 
"Chat History" which brings up the last log in the chat history for 
that user in the history viewer.  In addition, this same menu is 
available by right-clicking on the user in the buddies window, the 
Buddies menu after selecting the buddy in the buddies window, and the 
Buddies menu when the conversation is the front most window.  Usually 
this is the current conversation, but the previous is immediately above 
it.

The offline dialog message is actually useful.  First of all, it is 
only displayed on the first message you send as on offline message.  
Second, a vast majority of the time that people see it is when the 
buddy goes offline just before user hits return.

The "close" button is in the sidebar tabbed chat window for those who 
want a method to close a single conversation with the mouse without 
closing the window.  With a single conversation in a chat window, this 
is done through the close window button.  If you don't like the close 
button, don't use it.  If you want a keyboard method to close a single 
conversation, use Cmd-W.  Cmd-Sft-W closes the window, and 
Cmd-Sft-Opt-W closes all conversations in all windows.  Note: This is 
the same behavior as Safari.
I do not understand what you think an "open" button should do there.


Now that this has all been said, I have investigated the idea of 
displaying some of the previous chat history in the current window, 
however, it will be limited in what it shows.  It will not allow 
showing of unlimited history because this will be too slow.  If you 
don't believe me on this, try seeing how long it takes Safari to render 
500K html files.
This has taken a back seat as of late since I have been working on the 
code that will be in version 2.0 for the past few months.  Much of 
Fire's core functions have been redesigned in this to allow for greater 
speed and more functionality down the road.

On Jan 9, 2005, at 3:39 AM, Elektron wrote:

>
>
> It shouldn't be a button, for one, since some people will always click 
> it, and some people never will (I hate the 'close' button on the 
> sidebar, especially since there isn't a corresponding 'open' button). 
> And 'within a certain time frame' is also a little silly, since I 
> might as well continue yesterday's conversation.
>
> (That said, can we kill the 'would you like to send an offline 
> message?' dialog? A simple "sending offline messages..." line is 
> enough. And similarly, display messages sent to offline MSN users 
> anyway (with the 'user not available' on the following line) since I'd 
> like to know what I was trying to say.)
>
> Displaying the last few things until both people have said something 
> seems like a better idea, with a user-definable limit (20?), since the 
> amount which is relevant varies (half my conversations end one-sided 
> while I'm busy). Bothering to remove this text is silly, considering 
> it won't be logged (which would be pointless), and we have infinite 
> scrollback. Having a button to prepend the previous conversation is 
> also silly (might as well have a 'show previous conversation' toolbar 
> button, which will pop up a window which can be closed). And both of 
> those require recording which bits were from the previous conversation 
> (so they can be removed, or won't be displayed twice when prepending 
> the previous conversation), and the second requires funky log 
> manipulation for the desired functionality (which in the 'really 
> infinite scrollback' problem when I want to continue the previous 
> conversation more than once), since the current conversation will 
> already have been written to disk.
>
> Otherwise, continuing logs should be trivial, since we already write 
> all the end tags anyway. And a feature to automatically continue logs 
> (since the length of a session depends more on when fire crashes or I 
> need to sleep/disconnect for some reason than anything else), 
> optionally within the last day/week/month/whatever. And with that, a 
> feature to automatically start a new log, say, every day/week/month. 
> And ta-da, we have monthly logging implemented (hopefully with better 
> filenames, since the time and weekday are completely irrelevant when 
> my logs go on for weeks, and the spaces are annoying too).
>
> This, at least, means I can close conversations more regularly without 
> having a billion log files. 2000 is a lot, given that I tend not to 
> close any.
>
> - Purr


------------------------------------------------------------------
Graham Booker                   Texas A&M University
[email protected]    Graduate Student in ELEN
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