[Erc-help] smoke's TODO list

[<sm...@wa...>]

Ok here is my enormous list of bugs and ideas.

These are all easy to fix, and I volunteer to fix or implement these
myself.  I'm mainly posting this to get some discussion going, and to
get feedback on which features seem useful, and what I should and
should not do to make erc even more useful and amusing than it already
is.

erc-switchb:
- An alternative to iswitchb-buffer for erc buffers only.  The
following snippet shows the basic action, but the buffer names are too
long, and I see no easy way to make iswitchb use shorter alternatives
(iswitchb-read-buffer would return the abbreviated buffername, which
has to be mapped back again; this is A possibility, but perhaps there
are better alternatives?).  See also the next point about buffer
names.

  (defun erc-switch ()
    (interactive)
    (let* ((choices (progn
		    (set-buffer (process-buffer erc-process))
		    erc-buffer-list)))
      (let ((iswitchb-make-buflist-hook
	     (function (lambda ()
			 (setq iswitchb-temp-buflist choices)))))
	(switch-to-buffer (iswitchb-read-buffer "Buffer: ")))))


Buffer names:
- Buffer names could perhaps be abbreviated to "#emacs, #emacs<2>,
#lisp, MisterX" to denote #emacs on 2 different servers, and a query
to MisterX.  This would be useful both for switching and display in
the mode-line.  I have not found a convincing method on how to exactly
name the buffers, though.

Buffer list:
- There is now a list of buffers _per server_.  It seems better to
have one global list for all buffers.  It would be nice to make this a
property or alist, so that more data could be put in there.  Think
about flags like "modified", "someone sent you a personal message
there", ..

Inconsistency in feedback of input text:
- A message makes the entry prompt disappear, but for a /ME command it
doesn't.  Should be easy to fix, but perhaps there's a reason for this
behaviour?

Timestamps:
- The code for adding of timestamps seems a bit messy.  I
found this snippet repeated many times throughout the code:

  (if erc-timestamp-format
      (format-time-string erc-timestamp-format
			  (current-time)) "")

This should obviously be taken into a function.  Perhaps it would be
better to have a hook to reformat a line of text though?  Also, a
timestamp is not prepended to messages sent by yourself, nor for
server messages (topics &c.)  I think other irc clients have a
timestamp-level value to select which messages should get a timestamp,
and which shouldn't.
[Note: I have done a bit of work on this already, but it doesn't
support timestamp levels yet.  A generalization would be nice.]

Scrolling:
- "M-x term" manages to keep the entire window in use, having the
input line near the bottom of the window.  This seems to be
implemented by having a _lot_ of (recenter (1- term-height)) calls all
over term.el.  Not the most elegant method, but it is effective.
Could a somewhat cleaner method be used for erc, or should I just add
recenter calls everywhere where needed?

Pop-up buffers:
- On incoming messages, with auto-query enabled, the query pops up,
and interrupts my typing.  It'd be nice to have these buffers buried
by default (the mode-line change is enough).  Nice customization
option -- seems I could hack this in somewhere.
[Note: Fixed, by adding a "bury" option to erc-join-buffer.  It might
be nice to rename erc-join-buffer to erc-new-buffer.]

Persistent buffers:
- It would be nice to be able to save (C-x C-s) a buffer log, and
continue with it later.  A message like ">> disconnected" could mark
where one picked up again.  Something analogous like (desktop-read)

Nick change tracking in queries:
- Subject says it all :-)  It seems that MIRC and some other irc
clients are capable of doing this, but I don't know the relevant
commands to send to a server in order to be notified of nick changes.
"Someone should research this"

Tracking channels [,#bug]:
- The extra comma is an obvious bug.  It seems better (at least to me)
to have a _list_ of buffers that are changed, instead of using a
_string_ to store the changed buffers.  When updating the modeline,
the list can be processed to produce the string, but the other way
around seems to be cumbersome, the current method is prone to errors.

Misc.:

- When quoting using "\C-RET", leading spaces should not be stripped
(try quoting a lisp function for instance)

- Transform "/join elisp" into "/join #elisp".

- Mimick the /quote feature of TinyFugue.

- Give some feedback when signing off.

- DCC (zenirc seems to support dcc get, and dcc chat for incoming
chats) How would one interface with a subprocess in a compatible
way?

- Unset a topic

- A way to toggle "/" into some other character.  Sometimes one wants
to type text starting with a "/" character.


Of course there are many more ideas, but this seems to be enough for
now :-)

Have a very nice day,

--
Tijs van Bakel, aka smoke, <sm...@wa...>