Allow chat formatting (bold, underline, italic, code)
JenniWindrider Resident
We already have emojis and link formatting, it would be great if we had the option to allow chat formatting as a toggle.
Whether it's Discord's
BOLD
, italic
, __underline__, code
or some markup is open for debate. Considering the 1024 character limit for chat I'd prefer to keep it simple.I do not think color support would be feasible or sensible. For one, this would break against light/dark themes. And considering chat length limits it might simply not make sense unless this is parsed into compressed RGB or RGBA bytecode before sending it to the server.
THIS SHOULD BE COMPLETELY USER-SELECTABLE: If a user prefers to see the plain text as it is now, they should have an easy-to-find toggle to turn this on and off. I'd default it to off to preserve compatibility to older viewers and to not potentially break scripted chat.
Considering that this is purely client-side parsing and doesn't require server-side changes, I am hoping this would not be too hard to implement. It gets more complicated if group chat moderators would like this on a per-group toggle. To begin, I'd purely keep it client-side, maybe limiting it to nearby and IM/Conference.
Please note that I am NOT advocating for GIFs or "Stickers". If that would be desired I'd very much prefer to keep it separately toggle-able for privacy reasons.
Log In
SaskiaWood Resident
The BOLD is reserved in chats for the group staff or for shouting. The italic is reserved for whispering
Kameo McCullough
This is one of the many things that would be very "nice" to have; but, when you look around at all the things that really "need" to be done, it pales by comparison. The good folks at LL do their best, but we users must take the hundreds and hundreds of asks into account as well.
Linn Darkwatch
Doesn't really seem necessary to me. There are plenty of other ways to add
emphasis
to a CHAT line =if= necessary. Adding it just client-side would insert even more confusion, as no one could be sure that anyone else was seeing what they sent as they sent it. And it seems like it would add lag and confusion, especially for those who set the group mods to be bold or italic by default.
Holocluck Henly
No. More lag. More burden on the servers. Not necessary. It's about communication not composing a word processing document.
The emoji used in SL are based on ASCII symbols.
Fionne Burleigh
I like this idea overall, but I do have one caveat. Many of us chose to BOLD and/or italicize the mods in groups so the stand out. As a moderator in a group, I wonder if allowing bold and italics could be used to cause griefing in groups.
AlettaMondragon Resident
Fionne Burleigh It could, but many times a moderator's chat randomly doesn't show in its highlighted format, even if you have two accounts receiving the chat at the same time, one might receive the same message in bold while the other doesn't. This way sometimes it's not clear if it's a moderator in the chat. It might be better if group moderators could get a [mod] suffix to their names in their chat messages, that way occasional bold text coming from non-mods wouldn't be a problem.
By the way if you don't have bold text in a group you can still paste text in a bold font that will look similar, so if someone wants to abuse bold text, they can already do so. Moderators have to watch out for that too.
Fionne Burleigh
AlettaMondragon Resident, true enough - there is the SL glitch that often "un"bolds mods who log in after you do. A MOD suffix would be a great thing to suggest. And its easy to copy/paste group chat to a notecard or external writing program and then make any changes to it that a person may want in order to abuse the chat system. Its far from perfect. Not that I've ever had that done to me as a mod...... /rollseyes
Blaise Timtam
That would be nice to have in notecards too.
misstoriblack Resident
Simple standard markdown formatting would be nice to have.
Christi Maeterlinck
Yes. I'd like to add a related formatting feature. Would it be possible to provide a 'handle' in the lower right-hand corner of the chat window to enlarge it? At present, it's rather difficult if you want to edit what you've just put into the chat window as the text scrolls within the limited space available.