Colloquy should have option to show full names in room list

[macdome]

Colloquy should have option to show full names in room list

Kinda like how iChat does. It's often that someone mentions someone by real name on webkit-dev and I only know them by their nick from #webkit. I would learn those real names faster if there was an option for colloquy to display the real names in the room list. Possibly along side the handle.

Example:
Eric Seidel
or
Eric Seidel (MacDome)

instead of the current:
MacDome

I saw that there is an option to display full names in the chat, but that didn't seem to affect the room list.

[jane]

Just out of curiosity, where would the full names be coming from - a predefined name from the buddy list, or the realname field in the whois (which is user defined and more times than not doesn't contain the actual real name)?

[macdome]

So akempgen and I (whoever that is?! see the problem... :)
had a long discussion about this in #colloquy

Basically the results of which were that this would only be interesting if Full Names were used throughout the UI. i.e. if you could tab-complete to full names and if the chat log would automatically re-write to use full names instead of nicks.

There are several minor technical issues which we identified in this approach:
1. Real Names are often bogus -- need to filter out bad ones, like "Mirc User"
2. Real Names are expensive to fetch -- need to do so slowly, incrementally, and cache
3. Real Names are not always given -- need to display nick in that case
4. Does one support nick completion in this mode as well?
5. Which nick gets re-written on outgoing if multiple nicks with the same Real Name are in the room? Probably the one most recently typed from? Uniquing based on real name probably doesn't apply unless their a contact?

akempgen and I discussed that this would obviously require some significant work for not necessarily a better UI. Something more for the Colloquy 4.0 timeframe. :)

Coming from a Mac-user background, one who uses iChat, the idea of full name as a unique identifier is an appealing one. Making it work seamlessly in Colloquy could be a really nice feature for those who come to IRC/SLIC/Jabber from that sort of background.

@jane:
I had assumed that the name would come from both. First from buddy list (if available), second from realname field (if available and "valid") and if both are empty, you'd just display the nick. Basically, identical the ichat/gtalk behavior for Jabber. :)

[macdome]

Obviously if this sort of UI is not something the Colloquy devs are interested in, please close the bug. :) But I think it's probably at least worth considering long term.

[Rinoa]

Not many people was interested in the already implemented feature. This feature was removed in [4003].