Notification: "other party is writing"

[hugin]

Hello:

iChat indicates that the other person is writing by a "cloud" in the messages window. Is there a similar feature for Adium as well?

[zac]

No, and I've been thinking a lot about how to do it recently. The problem is that Adium doesn't have a huge amount of control of the webkit view after we've pushed the content into the view. Undoing an add like a content "..." or a status "… is typing" is a lot more difficult than one would expect. I've got most of it working locally but again, it's an exercise in abstraction and doing it properly moreso than not.

[alcmaer]

In my Adium 1.3.1, when a contact is typing, there is a yellow pencil in front of his name in the contactlist as well as in the messagewindow, also such contacts gets another color(blue) in the contactlist.
I tried to find where it is in the preferences, but I can't find it anymore.

[zac]

In my Adium 1.3.1, when a contact is typing, there is a yellow pencil in front of his name in the contactlist as well as in the messagewindow, also such contacts gets another color(blue) in the contactlist.
I tried to find where it is in the preferences, but I can't find it anymore.

The coloring is in the "Contact List > Color Theme" in the Appearance preferences; click Customize….

[hugin]

Great. This also solves the problem. Thanks for the pointer.

[alcmaer]

I remembered there was something about it in Prefences and I just found out what it was. You can check an option under Prefences->Accounts->Privacy "Let others know that you are typing".

[hugin]

BTW, the feature of being notified at the contact list when the other person is typing reminds me of an improvement: When having a conversation, the focus is the chat window, not the contact list. Thus, it would improve conversations when this information could be displayed at the chat window additionally.

If it is difficult to do so as iChat does (i.e., a "cloud" inside the chat itself), it may we still beneficial to have a notification somewhere at the window, outside the actual chat area. For example, I could imagine a bullet (of the same color as the background in the contact list that notifies about typing) at the other user's picture in the top left corner of the chat window.

[alcmaer]

In my Adium 1.3.1, when a contact is typing, there is a yellow pencil in front of his name in the contactlist as well as in the messagewindow......

Try it, add yourself to your contactlist and start a conversation with yourself.

[hugin]

Thanks. In fact, I did overlook the little pencil icon.