cocoaforge

Right, err, well. I'm trying to whip up my own message style for adium, and it goes well enough except for the fact that there is something amiss which totally messes up the whole thing. Yeah.

I mean, when the mockup (shot in safari) looks like this and the actual style turns out like (shot in adium) this (it doesn't scroll up in adium, as it should, either), there's obviously something wrong.
(Oh, and, nevermind the ugly placeholder graphics/colour scheme and silly usernames, just trying to learn how to do the code first.)
The mockup uses the segments of code from the incoming and outgoing folders, the main.css css and the code from the header.htm file. I donnu how they can differ so badly.

So, my question is, and I apologize if I've overlooked something obvious.. where can I read up more on how to do message styles (I've read in the wiki and this outdated tutorial already)? Like, more examples and maybe some tutorial or another? Looking through other message styles just confused me more, as I don't see what I'm doing wrong.

If someone wants to have a look though the files and tell me what I'm doing wrong, well, that would work too I guess, though I wouldn't recommend it. 'Tisn't pretty. Yet anyway. :B And 'sides, I prefer to learn by myself with the help of reading, hence why I asked for more resources and such.

From what I've gotten from other people, when they prettied up the source code a lot of stuff just sorta started working. You might want to try that.

Neat idea btw

What about the tutorial is outdated? Perhaps therein lies the source of the problems you're seeing.

If I'm honest that tutorial is pretty terrible, it reads like someone trying to show off their computing knowledge.

Why does someone making a message view need to be lectured on escaping spaces in the terminal. When I followed it I spent most of my time skimming through it to find where it actually talks about the message views rather than frankly inconsequential things about the terminal and so on.
Plus it manages to miss out a huge pile of intricacies of the theme system, I've given up on my theme for now because it didn't explain the ins and outs of headers.

It would be nice if someone could write a tutorial that focuses on users who have a moderate to advanced understanding of CSS, just explaining the plists and so on without the smug overtone that covers up half the information you actually want. Also telling you the essential things for adium message views, for example I was making my style just using floats and clears but for some reason when a header is in the equation the adium content is offset by the side of the header so you cant see messages till about 3 more have been posted.

Anyway I'm going off track a bit here, but that tutorial is actually quite terrible as far as tutorials go, it includes far too much irrelevant information to the actual task and it has an incredibly smug and borderline patronising overtone.

The_Tick wrote:From what I've gotten from other people, when they prettied up the source code a lot of stuff just sorta started working. You might want to try that.

Neat idea btw

A sound plan. 8) I'll try to do that tomorrow to see if it helps. Might even start over from scratch. That usually helps.

Really? How so?

evands wrote:What about the tutorial is outdated? Perhaps therein lies the source of the problems you're seeing.

Well, I've read through it a couple of times, checked my codes and suchlike, with little avail. Might just be me being tired, long day. I'll try again tomorrow.

But really? That's all there is to it? No other resources?

df0notfound wrote:If I'm honest that tutorial is pretty terrible, it reads like someone trying to show off their computing knowledge. [...]

Yeah, well, I donnu if I'd go as far as calling it all that, but sure. The terminal stuff was sort of unnecessary (unless it was necessary back then? The tutorial is somewhat dated after all).

But yes, a better tutorial would be wonderful.

kunai wrote:But really? That's all there is to it? No other resources?

The wiki's page defines the format in all the details I'm aware of it needing -- folder/file heirarchy plus the keywords that can be substituted at load time and message display time. Besides teaching CSS and HTML, I'm not sure what it's missing...

But I've just worked with the code that powers it. Haven't written a line of CSS in my life... though I should change that at some point.

df0notfound wrote:If I'm honest that tutorial is pretty terrible, it reads like someone trying to show off their computing knowledge. [...]

But yes, a better tutorial would be wonderful.

Perez put a lot of effort into it; perhaps y'all could contact him and suggest how you would or could improve it. Alternately, make a new one -- the more tutorials, the merrier, certainly.

evands wrote:The wiki's page defines the format in all the details I'm aware of it needing -- folder/file heirarchy plus the keywords that can be substituted at load time and message display time. Besides teaching CSS and HTML, I'm not sure what it's missing...

But I've just worked with the code that powers it. Haven't written a line of CSS in my life... though I should change that at some point.

The wiki is somewhat hard to navigate sometimes, though .. And I wasn't missing out on much, just why it messes up the paddings and margins. Not too sure of what to search for when it comes to that, though I suppose I should try. (Unless it's my own fault, and then there really isn't much to it. The point of this topic was just to ask if there were any additional resources.) We'll see tomorrow or something.

evands wrote:Perez put a lot of effort into it; perhaps y'all could contact him and suggest how you would or could improve it. Alternately, make a new one -- the more tutorials, the merrier, certainly.

I'm sure he did, I never said it was bad. I probably wouldn't have gotten as far as I've already have without it. I said a better - improved - one, more to the point and a little more detailed, would have been nice. Wishful thinking?
And really, he hasn't updated his tutorial for all this time, what are the chances that he would be interested in it now ?

[edit]: eeh. gotta go get some sleep. I'll be back.

The Kopete team has a tutorial up as well. I'll dig up a link later if I remember, in the meantime google will probably find it.

kunai wrote:The wiki is somewhat hard to navigate sometimes, though .. And I wasn't missing out on much, just why it messes up the paddings and margins. Not too sure of what to search for when it comes to that, though I suppose I should try. (Unless it's my own fault, and then there really isn't much to it. The point of this topic was just to ask if there were any additional resources.) We'll see tomorrow or something.

Ah, I think there's just the one page on message style creation -- I didn't mean you should be searching all over the place.

evands wrote:Perez put a lot of effort into it; perhaps y'all could contact him and suggest how you would or could improve it. Alternately, make a new one -- the more tutorials, the merrier, certainly.

I'm sure he did, I never said it was bad. I probably wouldn't have gotten as far as I've already have without it. I said a better - improved - one, more to the point and a little more detailed, would have been nice. Wishful thinking?
And really, he hasn't updated his tutorial for all this time, what are the chances that he would be interested in it now ?

[edit]: eeh. gotta go get some sleep. I'll be back.

You're looking at the only two resources that exist... until some interested and knowlegable person creates a third

Catfish_Man wrote:The Kopete team has a tutorial up as well. I'll dig up a link later if I remember, in the meantime google will probably find it.

you mean this one? http://kopete.kde.org/chatwindowstyleguide/index.html

evands wrote:Ah, I think there's just the one page on message style creation -- I didn't mean you should be searching all over the place.

Ah, right, gotcha. Nevermind, then.

evands wrote:You're looking at the only two resources that exist... until some interested and knowlegable person creates a third

I see. Ah, well, thanks anyway. (:

Wengero wrote:

Catfish_Man wrote:The Kopete team has a tutorial up as well. I'll dig up a link later if I remember, in the meantime google will probably find it.

you mean this one? http://kopete.kde.org/chatwindowstyleguide/index.html

That looks neat, but isn't that for another IM client? Or are all the keywords, structure and suchlike the same anyway?

Well im not a message-styler but from what i gather from the following links, theres some support with kopete styles
http://forums.cocoaforge.com/viewtopic.php?t=7515
http://www.customizetalk.com/forums/vie ... =2521#2521
Both arent very useful for you, but i guess it just shows theres some similarities.

Thanks for the links m2e. Interesting.

The kopete message style format is (delibrately) the Adium one -- they adopted it. Things marked "kopete extension" are supported in Kopete but not Adium 0.8x... but will be supported in Adium 1.0.

evands wrote:The kopete message style format is (delibrately) the Adium one -- they adopted it. Things marked "kopete extension" are supported in Kopete but not Adium 0.8x... but will be supported in Adium 1.0.

Thanks for confirming that.

Hm, I've been working on it some now. Progress, most certainly, but not all the way yet. The reason it wouldn't scroll down earlier had to do with two lines of css, apparently. I removed them and it works swell now. Well, most of the time. I never thought about this, but if you've scrolled up a bit in the chat window, and the other user messages you, the window isn't supposed to jump to the bottom, right?

Still wondering what's up with the added padding and suchlike though. Reference: mockup - actual, using the exact same css file. The margin between the messages (and the status messages for that matter) is set to 10px in the css file. This turns out as it should in the mockup, while in the actual shot, as you can see, it turns out a lot larger. (It is 44px for some reason. Why 44? Strange.)

[edit] The header didn't work earlier in Adium, but now it does, strange. Ah well. I updated the 2nd actual screenshot to reflect the current progress. :B

So yeah. I'll continue working on it now. Just wondering if anybody's got some input or another.

kunai wrote:And really, he hasn't updated his tutorial for all this time, what are the chances that he would be interested in it now :o?

Pretty good, if he gets constructive criticism and a good description of the information people want/need (and, of course, time to do it). It's unmodified because the message style spec. hasn't changed much; it includes potentially irrelevant information because it was just aimed at being detailed, without a specific request / audience in mind.

And in all fairness, not everyone is familiar with Terminal so they might such a level of hand-holding. Assumptions make for problems usually, at least in my experience.

Perez wrote:Pretty good, if he gets constructive criticism and a good description of the information people want/need (and, of course, time to do it). It's unmodified because the message style spec. hasn't changed much; it includes potentially irrelevant information because it was just aimed at being detailed, without a specific request / audience in mind.

Neat, so you are around. Well, then, first of, thanks for your work on the tutorial. As for constructive crit', I'onnu, it's not that your tutorial is bad. One thing it might be lacking, though, is things not to do, to make it balanced, y'know? Though, I cannot say exactly what. For instance, and I'm not too sure about this one, putting width and size to 100% in the body (or was that html? I had it in a "body, html" clause) causes some pretty, err, funky results. That sort of thing? But then again, you could never predict all the code the end user might try, so it's pretty pointless, eh ? *shrug*

And bgannin, say what now? Not sure I am following.

[add] Hey. What is the best way to debug a message style? Quitting and relaunching Adium to remove/update one is awfully tedious..

I think having the terminal part of the tutorial is beneficial. Some people just don't know what they are doing there, so it makes some sense to have it rather than not have it because you guys think you are being talked down to (which you aren't).

df0notfound wrote:If I'm honest that tutorial is pretty terrible, it reads like someone trying to show off their computing knowledge.

Why does someone making a message view need to be lectured on escaping spaces in the terminal. When I followed it I spent most of my time skimming through it to find where it actually talks about the message views rather than frankly inconsequential things about the terminal and so on.

This is what I was talking about.