Chat paradigm idea

[Zoltán Nagy]

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:20:42 -0500
"Pete Tirrell" <pete at fiestyturtles.com> wrote:

> Hello all!  I've been using Pidgin for a long time now, and love it.
> My coworker and I were discussing something this morning, and I
> wanted to throw out on the board for discussion since I'm not sure
> where else I might put something like it.  Anyway....
> 
> I notice that a lot of my chat conversations with people bounce
> around from topic to topic, within the same chat session.  Maybe it's
> my lack of focus or ADD or stream of consciousness or
> something....but even with a one on one with someone I'll rattle off
> 2 or three different points, and then he'll respond to a couple, I'll
> respond to one of those, then the other after we've gone back and
> forth on one of the earlier points, etc...  All in all it can make
> for a disjointing linear conversation.  I keep track of it, but it
> led me to this thought:
> 
> What if there were a way to "thread" chat conversations?  I have no
> idea how this would work, or what kind of UI could possibly make it
> easy to understand, but I thought that if within a single
> conversation with someone, if there were a way to keep track of
> different "threads" within that converstion, it could be really
> cool.  I'm not aware of any sort of chat client mechanism that does
> something like this.
> 
> I'm sure it's a crazy idea, full of holes, but thought I'd throw it
> out for discussion.  Enjoy!

The idea is great, but IMHO the problem is that Pidgin can't determine
by itself which message to put in each thread. Maybe with separate
windows/input boxes for outgoing messages, but - as Felipe wrote -
incoming messages can only be sorted with protocol support.

As such, the messages would have to be sorted manually - which is more
bookkeeping than I'd be willing to do. Kedar's prefix idea is neat, but
again, it's actually a protocol - even if the protocol is applied by
the users.

I'm just guessing here, but I think a plugin that uses reserved
prefixes (mby control sequences, something usually not used) to
separate threads on transmission, and windows/colors to separate
threads on the UI could be possible. Add in a button to start a new
thread, and the bookkeeping is mostly abstracted away.
As it would be a plugin that modifies only the message, it should be
usable over any actual protocol (XMPP, Google Talk, MSN, whatever).

-Zoli