Add short numerical ids to tweets, for easy replying/retweeting of individual tweets

[TauPan]

help set commands tells me I can reply/retweet individual tweets by their id, however the (long) is only displayed on the web interface, and if I'm already there, I can just as well use it to retweet or reply.

I'd like to configure a format string for each tweet, with expandos for %i - id, %t - tweet or something like that (maybe also %c for client, %d for date if not equal to the timestamp).

So with tweet_format ="<%i> %t" I'd get:

friend: <12> Check out www.bitlbee.org, it has twitter support!
dude: <13> I'm bored.
friend: <14> Status: Yawning @dude

I can "rt 12" to retweet the more interesting tweet.

Verbatim of our conversation on irc:

12:47       TauPan > hi... I can't find a lot of documentation about nick_format anywhere. I'd like to see the ids of tweets in my twitter "home/timeline" group chat, preferably at the start
                     of each tweet, so I can reply/rt certain ids.
12:47        Willd > wilmer:  yupp
12:49        Willd > I really ought to get out of bed..
12:50 = bbommarito [~bbommarit@c-107-5-141-26.hsd1.mi.comcast.net] quit (Ping timeout: 480 seconds)
12:51        Flexo > TauPan: that's not what nick_format is for; currently the only way to get tweet IDs is via the web interface, but you might want to look at 'help set commands' for
                     retweet/reply functionality
12:52       TauPan > "the web interface"? you mean the one on twitter.com?
12:52       TauPan > yeah, help set commands tells me I can rt <id> and reply to an id, but it's not displayed anywhere
12:53       TauPan > So if I want to rt your next-to-last tweet, I need to use the web interface anyway.
12:53        Flexo > Yes.
12:53       TauPan > ok
12:53       wilmer > TauPan: Yeah, it's like that at least for now. Showing IDs in every line will look extremely ugly IMHO.
12:53       wilmer > At that point IRC has lost and one needs to use a more suitable UI.
12:54       TauPan > twirrsi translates the ids to shorter numerical ones between 1 and 99
12:54       TauPan > so you can target that number of tweets from a user, without using a long hex-string or something
12:55        Flexo > the problem there is that you have to keep a mapping between them, which adds some overhead.
12:55       TauPan > sure
12:56       wilmer > TauPan: That's a pretty decent idea. IT requires some caching though, although that's only something like 800 bytes per connection. Not that bad.
12:57      bitkid_ > Nihplod: LOL!!!
12:57        Flexo > If you add that, could you make it an option as to whether it's displayed or not? I'd prefer to keep my twitter window neater :)
12:57       TauPan > I'd like it as an optional format expando or something.
12:57      bitkid_ > Nihplod: (that was at the IKEA image)
12:58       TauPan > message_format = [%i] %t or something
12:58       TauPan > %i being the id, %t the message or so
12:58       TauPan > Flexo: I agree, something like this should not be the default.
13:00       TauPan > wilmer: the tweet-ids from 1-99 are per-contact in twirssi, so I guess that would require a bit more than 800 bytes for some people... but probably a total of 99
                     tweet-ids should be enough for most people.
13:00       wilmer > Flexo: Yeah, I don't really want it either.
13:01       wilmer > The problem is BTW, for replies you also have to cache the user who posted that id.
13:01       wilmer > Certainly not going to do 100 id's per contact.
13:01        Flexo > If you did the numbering across the board rather than per user, you could optionally use 'rt <number>' instead of 'rt <nick>'
13:02        Flexo > assuming twitter doesn't allow all-numeric usernames
13:02       wilmer > TauPan: In general I don't want to go too far to stretch IRC into fitting around Twitter. If some things just become to hackish or depend on IRC client scripts, we've
                     already lost.
13:02       wilmer > They do. \o/
13:02        Flexo > blast :)
13:02       TauPan > apparently it does http://twitter.com/#!/123
13:03       TauPan > wilmer: I understand... I also have to say that I would not use this feature very often... just once in a while... maybe every second day or so?
13:04       TauPan > so going to the web for retweeting that clever tweet from last night is kind of ok
13:08 + Whoopi [Whoopi@p54BBF3B0.dip.t-dialin.net] joined #bitlbee
13:10       wilmer > TauPan: Exactly. I generally believe people who want all features should use dedicated clients. Multi-protocol clients usually only offer the more common functionality.
13:10       wilmer > But the [00..99] idea seems reasonable, feel free to file a bug and maybe some day I'll get to it.
13:10        Flexo > I tried Tweet Deck the other day, suddenly all these random hashtags people make up all make sense.
13:11       TauPan > wilmer: is it ok if I paste this conversation into the ticket?
13:12       TauPan > (*after* a concise description of course)
13:12       wilmer > Sure. Just make sure you preview it to see if trac doesn't screw up the layout :-)
13:14       TauPan > I'm used to trac, fortunately.
13:17        Flexo > oh, I just noticed why everyone's asking about how to fetch the ID. Hadn't noticed the ID was a valid argument for undo and rt.

[wilmer]

This is all done now in bzr. And I love it. :-) Just enable the show_ids setting.

[anonymous]

Yay! Lovely new feature! ;)

​https://twitter.com/TauPan/status/60265569957588992