[jandrew]

I sometimes want to send a passage from a text file as chat to the table.

I copy the passage and paste it into the chat box.

Usually, if the passage contains line breaks, only the first line is sent by chat, the rest is ignored.

Sometimes, the line feeds are filtered out and the passage is sent as an unbroken string. In this case, the passage is truncated after a set number of characters (about 500 ?) - presumably there is a maximum buffer size for the chat.

Is it possible to introduce some ascii code where the line breaks should be so that the chat is spread over a few lines and not truncated.

I often see multi-line chats on BBO but I don't want to use "Chat Assistant".

How do those other people create the multi-line chats?

jandrew

[diana_eva]

They use external software to do that - the chat assistant is one example, or another software called keytext.

FWIW I think being able to send long texts to BBO chat would be a bad idea, it could be easily misused to fill the chat area with walls of text. (The continuous scrolling in tourney chat in some of the free tournaments is an innocent case, but still highly annoying IMO)

This post has been edited by diana_eva: 2012-August-21, 06:01

[jandrew]

Thanks.
I did not envisage walls of text, but short passages to :

• Summarise the rules to a tournament just started;
  
• Send an invitation to a club for players to join a teams match;
  
• Warn named players in an upcoming teams match to take their leave of the table that they are playing at.

The passages might (as an absolute maximum) be 10 lines long.
Even at that low number of lines, it is a real pain to copy and paste each line.
A multi-line message would be much better.

I know that "Chat Assistant" will do the job, but I want to make a text file of suitable passages available to other hosts and directors who may not have or understand programs like Chat Assistant.

I was hoping that I could include codes in the passage which would create a new line without having to make several 'copy & pastes'.

jandrew

[Zelandakh]

jandrew, on 2012-August-21, 07:25, said:

I did not envisage walls of text, but short passages to :

You should envisage it John. There are regularly walls of text posted to the Acol Club that completely spam everything else out of the chat window. I also think that the ability to send such multi-line data streams should be withdrawn, or at the least discouraged.

[jandrew]

Wow Zel. Does that really happen - I missed it.

I suppose that there might be about 4 messages a week asking for players to participate in 'ad-hoc' teams matches. How else would you find 8 or 16 or sometimes 24 players who want to play?

jandrew

[mycroft]

10 lines is huge in most people's chat window (that's about 6 lines deep). Tourneys do that and:
- I can't read it all without scrolling
- I can't read the table chat that happened just before. That's a pain, especially if we have time issues, and I'm playing one of my crazy systems and the opponents are private-ing me about explanations.

If you can't keep it to two or three lines, it's a wall o' text on BBO.