Replicating Chat Channels across Characters, or making your own chat

zgrssd · May 2014

One thing that slightly annoys me (just enough to write an addon for it) is that each Character has it's own list of chat channels, each with thier own settings.
While it is not totally wrong for the average MMO, it is quite a problem for ESO where things like Guildmembership is done on account level.
I prefer having the default channel include NPC chat, having an extra group chat (only group, tell and NPC post there; for dungeons/group content).
And I will propably need a Guild-only chat (mayber per guild) once I get more then 1 active guild. I would really prefer it to set up my channels once and then just apply this setting to all characters. And the keep them synched across characters.
Until Zenimax adds such a feature, it might still be solveable via Addon and persited data.

Is see two appraoches
1) Somehow read out the current tabs (along with each channel). Persist that data. Reapply it on explicit order or automatically each time the Addon is loaded on a Character.

2) Writing your my chat
There are some other things I want to solve (like previous messages vanishing after you use /reloadui) wich a handwriten chat might solve. And I even figured out how to get and store the messages.
But it would propably be incompatible to most other chat addons and is quite a bit of work for this problem. So I would prefer 1) or any way to add tabs to the chat.

zgrssd · May 2014

I think I figured out how to do version 1) using the API.
First there is a group of 10 "Chat Containers". Each chat container has a number of tabs.
Edit: Actually there can be 0 too 10 containers. The count of containers is persisted even past logout and restart of the client. At 0 normal chat is not working and if you have a value of 0 during login the container for the normal chat get's created by default

There are (currently) 61 Chat Categories.
For each category each tab can be either enabled or disabeled (wich propably means means wheter the Checkbox is set or not for this tab and this chat).

There is also the concept of chat channels but I am not sure what they mean. Propably they mean the output channel (as they are used in SendMessage).

If I understand it right one sends to Channels or persons (target argument of SendChatMessage).
But receives in Categories. And what I want to set is wich tabs there are in any chat container and how each tab relates to each Category.

Cairenn · May 2014

There are a couple of different addons that you may want to check out, to help at least somewhat with the things you want:

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info463-RavenDTsChatLogger.html
http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info233-ChatMultiWindow.html

zgrssd · May 2014

Cairenn wrote: »

There are a couple of different addons that you may want to check out, to help at least somewhat with the things you want:

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info463-RavenDTsChatLogger.html
http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info233-ChatMultiWindow.html

Those help in the long run.

But what I propably need most right now is a simple way to put out lines of text (to check the content of varriables including a rather large jagged array).
I could not find any addon for this on esoui.com and my tries to add a TextBufferControl using modified xenimax exampel code but failed.
I am working with a Label and manual connaction for now, wich is not very effective.

Cairenn · May 2014

You should pop into the IRC channel. There's 30 or so folks in there at any given time, and they're all great at helping new authors learn.

irc.freenode.net
#esouidev

zgrssd · May 2014

[EDIT]:
This used to be a lenghty piece of code I posted in hopes somebody would tell me what I was doing wrong. Figured it out within three posts, so I removed this unessesary big post.

zgrssd · May 2014

Did some more test. Best as I can tell this line in getTabData:

result[Tab]["Categories"] = getCatData(chatContainer, Tab)

is executed as if it was this line instead:

result = getCatData(chatContainer, Tab)

zgrssd · May 2014

Problem solved:
Due to the nature of Lua all varriables are by default global. If I want function scope or local file scope for anything I have to preface it with local during first assignment (you cannot realy speak of declaration here).

zgrssd · May 2014

Almost there. After some serious reworking the code for extraction and application of ChatTab settings finally stands.
Only need to figure out how to add an options page (there are only 3 options) and where to add the automatic save check (there are no events for adding/removal/changes to chat tabs).