Re: rcirc changes

[Ryan Yeske]

   Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 14:07:00 +0900
   From: Miles Bader <address@hidden>
   Sender: address@hidden
   Cc: address@hidden
   Content-Disposition: inline

   On 2/15/06, Ryan Yeske <address@hidden> wrote:
   > After running with your installed changes, I realize I don't really
   > like this particular feature (earlier I said "I like it" after only
   > reading the patch, not running it, sorry).  It breaks nick-completion
   > (you still complete the underlying nicks, not abbrev) and it doesn't
   > deal with nick changes which are abbreviated.  It seems like this is
   > adding a feature to solve a local problem... if your own nick is too
   > long, then you can just change it, can't you?

   That's the whole point, it changes the _presentation_ in a particular
   context, not the nick itself.  In one particular context -- the nicks
   inserted into the log with each message -- they are used so incredibly
   often, that otherwise acceptable nicks can become very annoying.  In
   that sense, it doesn't break completion or whatever, because what are
   inserted into the log when this feature is used are _not nicks_, they
   are abbreviations for nicks.  [I've actually used this to map
   different nicks (the same person on different IM servers) to the same
   name when inserted into the log.]

I'm not sure I totally understand.  But what I mean by breaking
completion is that I may see something like:

<miles> hello

when really your nick is snogglethorpe; I have just aliased it to
miles.  If I then cycle through nicks to reply to you, I find that
miles isn't in the list.  Maybe I should know this, since I know that
miles is an abbrev, but now the tab completion of nicks is pretty much
broken.  If I reply to you on a busy channel as miles, it won't make
any sense to anyone but me.

   As for whether I can "just change my nick", no I don't seem to be able
   to without actually changing my global IM name, and that is not
   something to be done lightly (i.e., I won't).  Most IM clients seem to
   have this sort of "local name" feature (which changes the printed form
   of the name, but not the name used in more formal contexts) for
   exactly the same reason.  Ihe IM translator I use with rcirc, Bitlbee,
   has a local rename feature, but (1) it doesn't seem to work on _my_
   name, and (2) it apparently can't handle ambiguous names.

That's true, you cant mess with your own nick on bitlbee once you have
registered it.  

What about not showing your own nick at all?  Just a copy of the
prompt and the text you submitted as it is?

<miles> hello
> hi there

   Anyway, if you take it out, I'm going to have to add it back in my
   local copy, and patches like that are a pain to maintain, so I'd
   really rather you didn't; if you can think of some better method that
   will accomplish what I want, that would be great, of course...

   One possibility would be to make the "abbreviated" form have it's own
   format letter in rcirc-format-response-string; for instance, %n would
   print the real nick, and %a would print the abbreviated nick; this
   would at least allow a bit more control.

I don't see how that really helps.  For the nick abbrev stuff to
actually do what you want, you would always want to see the
abbreviated form, wouldn't you?