Chat should provide a visual cue between past and present conversations

[HoboPrimate]

I resumed a Chat from neighbourhood, and since I've been in it before, all previous conversation appears. It becomes confusing to know who is in the Chat and who isn't by only looking at the "HoboPrimate is here" messages, because some of them belong to the previous conversations. Chat should have some divider line or other cue to differentiate between logged conversations and the new messages.

[Eben]

This is a really nice idea, actually. As a first pass, I'd probably suggest some whitespace with a horizontal rule dividing the sections, and a date/timestamp beneath the rule to indicate when the next session started.

As a future addition to this, it would be pretty fantastic if each section had a disclosure triangle, such that they could be expanded and collapsed as desired. When resuming a chat, previous sections might all be collapsed by default, with only their dates and perhaps a snippet of the first message (and maybe total number of messages; also, perhaps the participants of the chat if there are more than two in the whole activity...) visible within the collapsed bar.

[morgs]

Chat-41 includes a first pass at the whitespace with timestamp between historic conversations.

[gregorio]

Milestone FutureFeatures deleted

[morgs]

Chat-42 has some improvements - in particular the timestamp is shown as an elapsed time (1 day ago) instead of a date/time.

[morgs]

Tested Chat-42 in joyride-2153.

[joe]

Charlie,

Please check that enhancement.

Joe

[Charlie]

The whitespace appears properly, but the chat does not seem to be separated correctly.

I tested with two XOs both running Chat-43 on joyride-2230. Here's what happened:

G02 hosted the chat, and W08 joined from the Neighborhood view. The two laptops chatted for a few lines, then W08 left the chat.

A minute or two later, W08 rejoined the chat, and while the whitespace did appear properly with the text "1 minute ago", the chat up to the point where W08 not only appeared above the whitespace (correctly so), but it also appeared below the whitespace, where further conversation was concatenated to the old chat messages.

This behavior continued over several iterations of W08 leaving the chat and rejoining it; each time it rejoined, the entirety of the chat is added to a new "past chats" area above a whitespace, so the amount of space used in the scrollback buffer potentially could grow exponentially.

Here's how my chat history looked at the end on G02 (the host machine):

W08 joined the chat
G02: Ichi.
W08: Dos.
G02: San.
W08: Cuatro.
W08 left the chat
W08 joined the chat
G02: hm...
W08: beep
W08 left the chat
W08 joined the chat
W08: trsjhf
G02: dfjsg
     ghsfgh
W08 left the chat
W08 joined the chat

Here's how it looks on W08:

G02 está aquí
G02: Ichi.
W08: Dos.
G02: San.
W08: Cuatro.
            14 minutes ago
G02 está aquí
G02: Ichi.
W08: Dos.
G02: San.
W08: Cuatro.
G02: hm...
W08: beep
            12 minutes ago
G02 está aquí
G02: Ichi.
W08: Dos.
G02: San.
W08: Cuatro.
G02: hm...
W08: beep
     trsjhf
G02: dfjsg
     ghsfgh
            1 minute ago
G02 está aquí
G02: Ichi.
W08: Dos.
G02: San.
W08: Cuatro.
G02: hm...
W08: beep
     trsjhf
G02: dfjsg
     ghsfgh

I apologize for the lack of a real log file, I couldn't find it.

I'm not sure whether I should mark this as 'verified' and file a new ticket for the issue I found, or to leave it un-verified and bump it back to morgs. Thoughts?

[morgs]

Please retest with Chat-44.

The fix for #7692 stopped replaying the old messages again when you connect, which is what resulted in the duplication of messages.

Then you should be able to mark this one as verified... :)

[Charlie]

Tested with Chat-45 on joyride-2263. Working as expected, so I'll mark it verified.