[wishlist] autocomplete friends after typing "@"

[Sandy Armstrong]

After typing "@" in gwibber, I'd like to see an autocomplete option to help me enter the username of one of my friends.

I understand there may be issues with using multiple services, but I still think this would be very helpful even if it just listed all friends' usernames from all services.

A more advanced autocomplete might also indicate which service the user was from, so that the post could only be sent to that service if desired.

[Ryan Paul (segphault)]

This is a tough problem to solve. There is really no failsafe way to get full friend lists from all of the protocols. What I can do though is have it sort of remember everyone who you have sent an @ message to and also make it add to the completion list the nicks of everybody who has a message currently visible in the window.

Obviously, it would remember the protocol for each nick and send the message only to that protocol, kind of like how the reply mode works now.

Any thoughts?

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

Since I could sent an @ message to multiple protocols without gwibber knowing who I'm talking about, I think it would be best to follow the latter part of your suggestion, and remember (by protocol) the nicks of everybody who has ever written a message that appeared in Gwibber.

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

for starters cant we just make it easy to select several users by clicking on the arrows of available users?

[crashsystems (crashsystems)]

In many cases I have contacts I follow on both Twitter and Identi.ca, and these people have the same name on both. For such cases, I think it would be good for there to be an option to send notices to multiple protocols.

[kit (kitrule)]

I think sending the same @reply to the same person on multiple protocols is a waste of bandwidth. Autocomplete would, however, be an incredibly helpful feature. The dropdown list of possible users could prefix usernames with icons representing the protocol they're members of and their image.

If the friends list can't be received from the net at startup a cache of username with protocol could be constructed from the updates that come in.

[Ryan Paul (segphault)]

I'm working on doing this with cached usernames. I haven't committed the code yet, but it's going to be in the sqlite-storage-backend branch.

[Connel Hooley (connelhooley)]

I created a Brainstorm about this issue before I saw this bug report and just thought I'd leave a link but seems you guys are already working on it which is great!!! I hope what your planning on implementing works on Facebook too :D

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/24524/

[Ryan Paul (segphault)]

@Connel: Facebook is a little bit more challenging because it's messaging model is different. When the user sends a Facebook message to somebody with Gwibber autocompletion, should it just post the message to the person's wall?

[kit (kitrule)]

Maybe @ to tag them on your own wall, @@ to put it on their wall, @@@
to sent a private message?

On 4 May 2010 22:09, Ryan Paul <email address hidden> wrote:
> @Connel: Facebook is a little bit more challenging because it's
> messaging model is different. When the user sends a Facebook message to
> somebody with Gwibber autocompletion, should it just post the message to
> the person's wall?
>
> --
> [wishlist] autocomplete friends after typing "@"
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/247015
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in Gwibber: In Progress
>
> Bug description:
> After typing "@" in gwibber, I'd like to see an autocomplete option to help me enter the username of one of my friends.
>
> I understand there may be issues with using multiple services, but I still think this would be very helpful even if it just listed all friends' usernames from all services.
>
> A more advanced autocomplete might also indicate which service the user was from, so that the post could only be sent to that service if desired.
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/gwibber/+bug/247015/+subscribe
>

[Connel Hooley (connelhooley)]

No - on Facebook if I click on the "what is on your mind" box and start writing a status update pressing "@" displays a list of my contacts when I type. A bit like visual studio's intelisense :) Then once I have posted this Facebook status update that persons name in my status update becomes a link to their page and it also appears on their wall so they get notified.

E.g. "I really hate @joe bloggs"

This would post a status update just like any other but would also get sent to Joe's wall. Clicking on Joe Bloggs in the update takes you to his profile.

I've never used twitter but I think tagging someone in a Facebook update is different to what your trying to do in twitter. Do I need to create a fresh bug report for this? Or have I misunderstood! lol

[Alex Gaynor (alex-gaynor)]

ISTM the solution is to have autocomplete not change behavior at all, merely complete what you're typing. To that end all it should do is read in which protocols you're set up with, and either pull in all contact names, or something else for services that don't distribute contacts. There's no reason to add all sorts of magical behavior like @@ or @@@ as some people are suggesting, nor should the fact that a message is autocompleted affect what protocols it is sent out on.

[David Klasinc (bigwhale)]

In my follow-unfollow branch I am fetching all user ID's from all your friends and followers on twitter and putting them in the database. Additional meta data is fetched with messages and added to the database. So we have everything we need, now it is only a matter of getting this data from gwibber-service to gwibber client and then displaying it in a drop down box when someone enters @ in the input box.

It shouldn't be too hard.

[Greg (gharveyatwork)]

Does the storage of the user IDs include some sort of 'account' column, so an auto-complete can filter according to the current "Send With" setting? To make this work across all accounts people might have added, not just Twitter, the database will need to know which of the available accounts a user ID belongs to and only auto-complete based on the currently selected "Send With" account.

[Kai Mast (kai-mast)]

Any updates on this? Milestone is set to 3.2 but 3.1.* doesn't have this feature yet..