There are a number of ways in which the Ember UI is not consistent. I will describe the inconsistencies with reference to the way I think the UI should work, though obviously this is opinion.
Typing text should always result in that text appearing in the chat text entry widget if that widget appears to have focus. If for any reason the state of the UI is such that pressing alphanumeric and other keys is not going to appear in the chat text entry widget, the widget should revert to its non-white state, and the text cursor should not be rendered. Ie. the widget should loose focus. Currently pressing the right button while the text widget has focus results in the mode changing back to using the keyboard for movement, but the text widget is still rendered as if it has focus.
Pressing the return key when the text widget does not have focus should always result in the text widget gaining focus, regardless of whether the client is in movement mode or not. This doesn't appear to work any way in either mode at the moment, though I thought we had discussed this feature earlier. The rational here is that there needs to be a very quick reliable way to switch in and out of chat, with minimal interference with movement.
Let me know your thoughts.
Hmm, I've already added a comment to this one, but I guess Launchpad just ate it. So I'll redo it.
Thanks for your input!
You're totally right about how the window which has input should remove it when in movement mode, and regain it when switching back. I'll add that.
I think the discussion you refer to resulted in the way tab works: pressing tab will achieve exactly what you describe: you'll get switched to the gui mode and focused on the chat. You can get the same feature with the enter buttton by adding the following line to the "[key_bindings_
return = "/console_focus"
However, what happens then is that while you'll get switched to the chat window (since the Ember gui system listens for key presses) you'll immediately get switched back to the movement mode (since CEGUI listens for key release events (when the focus are on edit boxes at least) and if you press enter without having entered anything into the chat box you'll switch to movement mode automatically). I'll see how I can arrange for that to work better, since it would be more stringent, as you say, to get to the chat edit box by pressing enter, and to exit from there by pressing enter on an empty line.