Leave join (IRC) channels with click

[Etan Reisner]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 10:52:17AM +0100, David Balazic wrote:
<snip>
> > What benefit do you get from being able to leave a chat room without
> > closing the conversation window
>
> I can answer this like this: if it has no benefit, why is it
> already implemented in pidgin (currently only thru a typed command) ?

That isn't an answer that is an evasion, and yes I question the use of the
/part command in pidgin entirely but the /part command is an irc client
standard and we would hear complaints if we didn't have it, so since it
basically doesn't cost anything to have it exists.

> 1.) this allows one to temporarily leave a channel (to not be bothered
> By new message notifications) and then rejoin later
> 2.) alows one to read the channel content without new messages "pushing
> it up"
>
> I agree that on channels with few traffic there is not much difference
> between the channel as is (joined) and parted.

Scrolling up in the history window also prevents new messages from
"pushing" history messages up, so I don't really think part 2 is
particularly relevant, especially since I can't really imagine wanting to
read the back history of a room I am no longer in (other than in ways in
which a saved log works better).

As to point one closing the window has the same benefits (especially
since, as you point out below, that /join doesn't rejoin the current
channel by default). I would also argue that if you have a room you intend
to be joining and leaving that often putting the room in your buddy list
would be a superior method for handling this than would the ability to
join/part the room from an existing conversation window.

> Also in current version it can happen that a channel tab is open, but
> the user
> is not joined. Due to absence of the features in topic, he must join by
> typing
> A command (redundantly repeating the channel name*) instead of a
> convenient click.

The fact that you can't rejoin a room from the conversation window UI has
nothing to do with the topic under discussion and is, in fact, something
that is reasonable to support. I have no problems with a change to make
this happen.

> * - unless "/join *" would work, but I doubt, since "/part *" does not
> work either;
> Enhancing these two commands to mean the current tabs channel when
> called without
> paramaters would be a nice "half-implementation" of the requested
> features

/part by itself does in fact part the current room (despite the apparently
incorrect help text for this on the xmpp version of the command). That
/join does not is only questionably a problem, not least because while I
understand wanting to be able to send slash commands in a parted channel I
wonder about the sanity of an interface that allows that but doesn't (for
obvious reasons) allow sending of normal messages.

> Regards,
> David

    -Etan