#1176 Request/question about 6.0

[Anonymous]

Hello, I have a maybe unusual question. My family actually uses BeeBEEP not in an office - but for writing. Specifically, several of us write stories together in a roleplay sort of way, now using our own home network (which is awesome). This has been a hobby for 20 or more years; we used to use AIM, then Yahoo, and then Skype through Pidgin, specifically for one feature - an old-fashioned, non-bubbled text layout (easily copy-pastable to a doc for editing). All of those options are now defunct, and we've been using BeeBEEP for a couple years now. We have both Windows and a newer Mac in the house, and are looking forward to full M1 chip functionality for that computer on the updated 5.9.2 or 6.0 versions, since Rosetta will be going away.

However, it looks like BeeBEEP 6 is specifically designed to look like a modern messager, with bubbled messages. While great for conversations, that doesn't work for our (admittedly uncommon, but beloved) purposes.

My question is this: Will 6.0 have a display option to revert to the current plain-text interface if desired? (Which I can imagine any computers out there still with old Windows versions might also prefer, in truth.) Or should we update the Mac to 5.9.2, keep Windows at 5.8.6, and stay there?

Thanks for your time. You run a great app!!

[Marco Mastroddi]

Hello,
Thank you for the kind words, and for such a lovely use of BeeBEEP. Twenty years of stories written together is exactly the kind of thing I like to hear about.

First, some reassurance. BeeBEEP 5.9.2 keeps the same look as 5.8.6, with the plain, non-bubbled text layout you're used to, and it will also be built natively for Apple Silicon Macs. I develop on an M1 Mac mini myself, so your Mac won't depend on Rosetta. You can move the Mac to 5.9.2 and keep Windows on 5.8.6. The two versions talk to each other without any problem.

You're right about BeeBEEP 6: it is designed around message bubbles, as modern messengers are. But your use case is a good one, and I'm seriously considering a plain-text display mode for it. No bubbles, each message shown as a simple block with the sender's name and the time, easy to select and copy as clean text into a document, and with a way to quote the lines you select, as the old BeeBEEP did. I can't promise it yet, or give you a date, but I'd like to build it in a way that really suits the way you write.

One more question, because it affects the design. BeeBEEP 6 has a single window: you switch between chats inside it, rather than opening a separate window for each chat as 5.x can. Do you need several chats open side by side, for example one window per story, or a chat window kept next to your document while you write? If you do, it would be useful for me to know, since it's not something I had planned.

To help me understand all this, could you send me one or more screenshots of BeeBEEP as you use it today (a chat during a story is perfect, and feel free to blur the text if it's private) at marco(dot)mastroddi<at>gmail(dot)com? A picture of how the windows are arranged on your screen would be especially useful. Seeing it will tell me much better than a description what you need: how long your messages are, how many people write at once, what you copy out, and so on.</at>

Thank you again, and happy writing!