Cirk's Chatmanager

Cirk · 01-26-06, 02:00 AM

Chatmanager is an addon to help with managing and using chat channels in the WoW client.

Current version
Chatmanager is currently version 2.3.0.

Download page
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...fo.php?id=4535

Known bugs or issues
None known at this time.

-- Cirk of Doomhammer

dreamtgm · 01-28-06, 06:12 PM

While in a raid, I had joined specific channels for chat and healing messages, but found I could not type in them. I would enter "slash+channel number" (ex. /7 ) and start to type, but then I couldn't press the enter key to post my message. I got an error on one occasion saying something about the command not being a valid CT_RaidAssist slash command. I use CTRA v1.51. Is there any reason Chatmanager should have a conflict with CTRA, or not work while in a raid?

Cirk · 01-28-06, 07:15 PM

Originally Posted by dreamtgm

While in a raid, I had joined specific channels for chat and healing messages, but found I could not type in them. I would enter "slash+channel number" (ex. /7 ) and start to type, but then I couldn't press the enter key to post my message. I got an error on one occasion saying something about the command not being a valid CT_RaidAssist slash command. I use CTRA v1.51. Is there any reason Chatmanager should have a conflict with CTRA, or not work while in a raid?

Hmmm, I've not seen any problems running with CTRA and Chatmanager in raids (we also use class/function specific channels when raiding).

The CTRA error may be because somehow you were trying to send a message on the CTRA channel (CTRA creates and uses its own chat channel for sending all the information between raid members that it uses), which might indicate something amiss in the channel ordering. Alternatively, since I can't find anything in a quick look through the CTRA code that would generate such a message, it may have been due to another type of failure (nil access, etc.).

If it happens again, can you write down the exact text you see and post it here? That would be most helpful.

Also, when you pressed the enter key after typing text for a channel, did nothing at all happen (as if you hadn't pressed enter, so cursor stayed where it was, etc.), or did the text edit box disappear as you would expect it to, but then nothing got sent?

Thanks!
-- Cirk

dreamtgm · 01-29-06, 12:26 PM

Originally Posted by Cirk

Hmmm, I've not seen any problems running with CTRA and Chatmanager in raids (we also use class/function specific channels when raiding).

The CTRA error may be because somehow you were trying to send a message on the CTRA channel (CTRA creates and uses its own chat channel for sending all the information between raid members that it uses), which might indicate something amiss in the channel ordering. Alternatively, since I can't find anything in a quick look through the CTRA code that would generate such a message, it may have been due to another type of failure (nil access, etc.).

If it happens again, can you write down the exact text you see and post it here? That would be most helpful.

Also, when you pressed the enter key after typing text for a channel, did nothing at all happen (as if you hadn't pressed enter, so cursor stayed where it was, etc.), or did the text edit box disappear as you would expect it to, but then nothing got sent?

Thanks!
-- Cirk

It wouldn't accept my pressing of the enter key, as if I hadn't pressed it at all, so the edit box just sat there. I had to press ESC to get rid of the edit box. I'm pretty sure I wasn't using the wrong channel, as I would type /7 or /8 and the edit box would correctly change to that channel's title. I can check it again, but is there a way to turn of the mod while in game? I can't function well if I can't chat in these channels used during a raid, and currently I have to log out, disable the mod, then log back in.

Cirk · 01-29-06, 04:11 PM

Originally Posted by dreamtgm

It wouldn't accept my pressing of the enter key, as if I hadn't pressed it at all, so the edit box just sat there. I had to press ESC to get rid of the edit box. I'm pretty sure I wasn't using the wrong channel, as I would type /7 or /8 and the edit box would correctly change to that channel's title. I can check it again, but is there a way to turn of the mod while in game? I can't function well if I can't chat in these channels used during a raid, and currently I have to log out, disable the mod, then log back in.

I got some feedback from another player (Luap) describing this exact same scenario (I think they said they were working around it by leaving and joining the channel again). There isn't any way with Chatmanager to turn it off in-game unfortunately - I normally have that feature in my mods, but didn't add it to Chatmanager, sorry.

From the description that Luap gave, this is failing in a point in the code where the chatType of the editbox is being passed to the SendChatMessage API, and causing a failure due to an unknown chatType. Chatmanager itself doesn't alter the chatType parameter itself (although it does alter parameters that cause the client's default script code to set the chatType), so I'm wondering if there is another mod installed on your system that might be interfering with this? (Alternatively there is some logic in there that I haven't yet traced through). Chatmanager is not particularly "nested" friendly for hooked functions shared by other addons because it doesn't always call the original function that it hooked - sometimes it replaces its behaviour instead, which could lead to oddities if you have another addon trying to do something similar.

I'll keep hunting...

-- Cirk

Cirk · 01-29-06, 04:20 PM

In regards to suspected incompatibility with some other addon, Chatmanager works fine for me with my other addons, CTRA, Telo's, Auctioneer, Atlas, and Decursive. It also seems to be working fine for my guildmates who use various CTmod and Titan installs.

Could you tell me what other addons you are using? I could then try and have a look into what ones might be causing this problem (or which one might be exposing a flaw in my code

).

Thanks!

-- Cirk

Kortanis · 01-31-06, 11:44 PM

I believe your issues are coming from a conflict with Telltrack, I was able to narrow it down this far. Hope this helps!

** well disabling Telltrack fixed it for a while, now its doing it again, I'll try to get the exact error for you. Also, it seems that between WoW and chatman the channels are not the same IE chatman channel #1 "BFE" is WoW's channel #4.. wierd stuff like that.

Error: Interface\AddOns\CT_RaidAssist\CT_RASlashCmds.lua:550: Unknown chat type

Cirk · 02-01-06, 01:51 AM

Originally Posted by Kortanis

I believe your issues are coming from a conflict with Telltrack, I was able to narrow it down this far. Hope this helps!

** well disabling Telltrack fixed it for a while, now its doing it again, I'll try to get the exact error for you. Also, it seems that between WoW and chatman the channels are not the same IE chatman channel #1 "BFE" is WoW's channel #4.. wierd stuff like that.

Thanks Kortanis, the exact error would be helpful! I've looked at one possible place this could be failing (based on Luap's post) and have rewritten the code in Chatmanager that relates to passing of message types down to the original function. If your error message report confirms the same failure, I'll have some confidence that the change will fix it, and can upload a new version.

The different sequencing between WoW and what Chatmanager presents to you is on purpose. Rather than try and leave and rejoin all the channels in the order you have specified (like you would do manually, which has problems due to the client always putting the server channels first), Chatmanager translates the channel numbers that WoW uses into the ones you use. So in your example, you would do /1 for "BFE", and Chatmanager will translate that to the equivalent of /4 before passing it to WoW. Same thing happens in reverse when a channel message comes in from the server. This shouldn't have any impact on the problems you are seeing in theory.

-- Cirk

Kortanis · 02-01-06, 03:04 AM

k I disabled CTRA CTRT and CTboss, then I got this error

Error: Interface\AddOns\Sea\Sea.util.lua:654: Unknown chat type

perhaps this is the root? Ill keep digging deeper

Kortanis · 02-01-06, 03:16 AM

k its not ct like you thought, the problem is somewhere within Sea.. I am running Cosmos alpha, highly customized though... this might get interesting..

Kortanis · 02-01-06, 05:29 AM

Ok, after the testing we did, I messed around some more, with the modifications you made, it is working with SKY correctly, but only if you join a user channel that is new.

It seems that upon UI load, any user channels that have been stored are 'claimed' by SKY as "CUSTOM", until you change them up and down using the chatman ui or leave and then rejoin. If you logged out while you were joined to user channels, when the ui loads the next time it is claimed by SKY first (or maybe last?) and becomes CUSTOM. Sounds like this is an issue that can be overcomed at UI load. I believe that is now the only fix left. Hopefully the other ppl that had problems are also using SKY and not some other conflicting addon.

And then some drag and drop or clicking interaction with the channels in the chatman UI would be great.. i.e. a list of past user channels with a join/leave toggle on click but you can save that for 1.9.2

I'll look for the nxt alpha and test it this evening after work, just let me know in game when you have something rdy.

Anyway, Goodnight.

Greymalkin · 02-01-06, 06:07 AM

First off, wow this looks like an amazing AddOn!

A few suggestions/requests...
1) The ability to join an Out Of Zone channel (such as the newly renamed LookingForGroup - City)
2) A setting in the options panel to save all the settings and custom channels across all characters on a server.
3) The ability to create a channel from the Chat Manager.

Thanks for your hard work on this AddOn. I understand this is probably the bug squashing stage rather than the adding tweaks stage, but I just wanted to throw those ideas out there. Cheers mate!

Cirk · 02-01-06, 08:16 AM

First let me say a HUGE thanks to Kortanis for helping me determine what was causing the problems with Chatmanager today, with lots of whispered debugging and testing

.

Basically the Sky library (used by quite a few addons, particularly those you find in Cosmos) introduces a "CUSTOM" chat type that it expects to intercept before it is passed down to the client, and this was something that Chatmanager wasn't doing. I'm in the process of modifying Chatmanager to do this now, and Kortanis has been testing an early alpha version of it with me. But as it stands right now, sticky mode and item links still won't work reliably (as Kortanis noted above) because Sky processes slash commands (including those for /1, /2, etc.) itself without letting the default WoW slash command processing code handle them.

interestingly, Sky doesn't intercept the /c # and /csay # slash commands for talking on a channel, so you can "bypass" Sky by using that format, rather than just /#)

Anyway, working around this somewhat unusual mechanism in the Sky library to allow Chatmanager to work properly is going to be tricky, if it will be possible at all (I'm still investigating it). I'm also somewhat reluctant to add a lot of code in Codemanager to deal with Sky specifically, although for the sake of those using Cosmos or other Sky addons, it will be arguably worth it. And it is possible (maybe even probable) that even if I can get this to work that it may break some other feature of Sky (not all of which I've fathomed or understood the reason for yet).

And Sky's ChannelManager and my Chatmanager will doubtful ever work together (they both try to do similar things after all), so you will have to choose between the two. Sky's ChannelManager comes by default with the full Cosmos install, but you should be able to turn it off if you prefer to use Chatmanager.

And this is assuming I get it working with Sky at all - worst case you may have to disable Sky and all Sky dependent addons to get Chatmanager to work properly. I'll do what I can though...

Ok, on to some specific requests...

Originally Posted by Kortanis

And then some drag and drop or clicking interaction with the channels in the chatman UI would be great.. i.e. a list of past user channels with a join/leave toggle on click but you can save that for 1.9.2

The ability to drag channels to change their ordering was originally appealing to me, but in the end I decided it wasn't worth it, given that most people will set their channels up once, and then leave them, so being able to quickly reorder them would be a bit of a waste of development time (i.e., I'm lazy, hence the slower right-click-to-move-once-up-or-down solution

).

Adding a "join" option in the right-click menu for unassigned channel numbers will happen eventually (probably 1.9.2) although I don't know if I'll have a history for it - maybe only the last channel you were joined to. (Sky seems to use up a lot of channels all by itself, not sure why, which can leave you with a limited number of "free" channel slots, so I can see where a history would be more useful there).

Originally Posted by Greymalkin

A few suggestions/requests...
1) The ability to join an Out Of Zone channel (such as the newly renamed LookingForGroup - City)
2) A setting in the options panel to save all the settings and custom channels across all characters on a server.
3) The ability to create a channel from the Chat Manager.

Chatmanager allows you to join any channel just as you always could, using the /join command for normal channel names, or /script JoinChannelByName(name) for unusual names like the OOZ ones. However I believe Blizzard disabled OOZ channels in patch 1.9 when they added the new cross-city channels (Trade, LFG, etc.), or at least so I've been told, since I've not tested them.

Allowing settings to be saved for all characters would be very useful I admit (I have 9 toons myself

). I haven't thought of the best way to implement that yet, but it is something I'd like to see for sure.

And the ability to join a channel direct from Chatmanager (via a right-click on an empty slot) I will defintely be adding sometime soon (as noted above).

Thanks!
-- Cirk

Luap · 02-01-06, 01:23 PM

Not digested all this post yet but will do, but I am a cosmos user so Sky will be the problem. Thanks again Cirk for all the work and to all the others....

Mazzlefizz · 02-01-06, 01:45 PM

Originally Posted by Cirk

First Chatmanager allows you to join any channel just as you always could, using the /join command for normal channel names, or /script JoinChannelByName(name) for unusual names like the OOZ ones. However I believe Blizzard disabled OOZ channels in patch 1.9 when they added the new cross-city channels (Trade, LFG, etc.), or at least so I've been told, since I've not tested them.

Yes, they have disabled those, but they have promised to bring them in an upcoming patch.

Greymalkin · 02-02-06, 01:48 AM

Thanks for the reply Cirk. I look forward to this AddOn's development. /cheer

Cirk · 02-02-06, 04:03 AM

I've just uploaded Chatmanager v1.9.1 to the site (should update shortly) which has fixes for Sky library compatibility. The testing that Kortanis has been able to do so far show these to be working well.

This version also contains a new "sticky" chat logging option, where if you turn on chat logging, it will automatically be re-enabled next time you log in on that character. By default this option is disabled, so if you turn on chat logging, it will not be re-enabled by default next time you log in.

Hope this works now for all you Sky and Cosmos users!

-- Cirk

Luap · 02-04-06, 06:06 AM

got the new version on and all appears to be working well

Great work Circ

Cirk · 02-26-06, 09:04 AM

I've just uploaded Chatmanager v1.9.2, which:

Adds support for right-clicking on empty channel entries to join a new channel using that channel number, or even to rejoin a previous channel that you left in the current login session.
Has improved code for item linking in private chat channels.

Chatmanager won't remember channels that you have left between logins (or between console reloads) but the rejoin option allows you to quickly re-order your channels by leaving them and then rejoining them at the channel numbers you want. (The slower way to do this of course is via the Move channel up/down menu option).

The improved code for item linking should be backwards compatible with previous versions of Chatmanager. However, links sent to you from those previous versions that are for items that are not in your local item cache will appear in the normal chat color, not in the appropriate item link color. You will still be able to click on the item to see it however (which previous versions didn't support). Item links sent to you from this version of Chatmanager should always appear in the correct item-color.

Enjoy!

-- Cirk

Luap · 03-15-06, 04:14 AM

Not sure if this has been adressed, or mentioned but I have noticed the names are not showing propely in the chatmanager screen. Names of channel users that is, it has been breaking the names up and making it look as if there are more people in the chat channel. The same is happening on a friends machine as well and we are both cosmos users. Functionality appears to be ok though just the name display is a problem

Cheers again great Interface