When a contact is in a chat: PART instead of QUIT?

[daga@…]

If a contact is in your list and in a chat with you, they disappear from the chat room when going invisible because of the QUIT message.

This should be fixed by sending the "QUIT" message as a "PART" in that case.

[Wilmer van der Gaast <wilmer@…>]

Won't a PART have exactly the same effect?

[daga@…]

It won't in &bitlbee. QUIT messages are good to notify the user in PMs (primarily how bitlbee is being used) that the friend has logged off. This is because IRC clients generally print those messages in all active screens that involve the particular person who just signed off. A PART message only affects the channel named.

Even though you only get QUIT messages when you are in a channel with someone, they are server-wide. PART messages only affect the current channel.

[Wilmer van der Gaast <wilmer@…>]

BitlBee wrote:

It won't in &bitlbee. QUIT messages are good to notify the user in PMs
(primarily how bitlbee is being used) that the friend has logged off. This
is because IRC clients generally print those messages in all active
screens that involve the particular person who just signed off. A PART
message only affects the channel named.

You don't have to explain that to me, I designed the program and chose
to use QUIT instead of PART for exactly this reason.. :-)

Wait, now I see what the problem is: This is a person who's also in a
group chat with you? Good one. Which protocol BTW? This is a nice point.
And once the person becomes visible again, s/he still won't show up in
the group chat again.

[wilmer]

To clarify: I was jetlagged to realize you were talking about a chat *room* instead of a normal 1:1 chat. :-(

So is this on MSN? Jabber?

[daga@…]

Sorry, part of that was probably my fault in trying to avoid redundancy in the description. Yes, that is the problem and I'm currently using the chat [room] ability in AIM though, as you can see, it will also affect other protocols. :)

[Wilmer van der Gaast <wilmer@…>]

Yeah, although I wonder if MSN would allow being invisible while in a chatroom. With Jabber in anonymous rooms things are different because The JID in the room is completely independent of the JID outside the room. Not sure about non-anonymous rooms.

Using PART instead of QUIT would fix this, but I'd somewhat dislike the inconsistency. Also it'd still be convenient to get the QUITs in query windows.

How would a QUIT+JOIN to the chatroom look to you? Confusing?

[daga@…]

It could look messy when a contact toggles between hidden and online repeatedly, but one would hope the friends aren't that bored. When they are, everyone else would hear repetitive sound effects so it is probably forgivable.

The oddest part is trying to figure out if that friend is still in the chat or not after they've gone invisible. It could be mildly confusing for other bitlbee users but, yes, that will probably work.

[ilf@…]

I want PARTS instead of QUITS globally in BitlBee and am using "set offline_user_quits false" and ​http://frey.notk.org/bitlbee_watch.pl for this.