Allow manual multiline messages

[boothj5]

Allow users to send multiline messages, using ctrl-enter or some keyboard combination for the new lines.

Up/down arrow should behave accordingly and move through the message rather than previous commands.

[boothj5]

Related to #156 where a user may attempt to paste a multi-line message in one go.

[moorchegue]

👍

[yumitsu]

Any progress on this?

[mdosch]

I stumbled upon this Ncurses Multi-Line Text Editor and not being a programmer I don't know if this could be reused for profanity.
Although it might be a problem that there is not mentioned a license but maybe this is somehow comparable to MIT:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted
provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
  notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
  notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
  documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

[jubalh]

Thanks a lot for researching this!
I'll take a lot when I find time :-)

[jubalh]

mcabber does this via a /multi in the input field.

I stumbled upon this Ncurses Multi-Line Text Editor

Is actually ncurses only, but we use readline to handle the line editing.

Maybe we can look at rlwrap for inspiration.

[mjg0]

I was able to work around this with a simple Python plugin (inspired by @boothj5's syscmd.py) that allows one to use e.g. /printf "here is a\nmessage with a couple lines" to send multiline messages until there's native support:

import prof
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

def _cmd_printf(format):
    if not format:
        prof.cons_bad_cmd_usage("/printf")
        return
    try:
        cmd_string = '"' + format + '"'
        result = Popen("printf " + cmd_string, shell=True, stdout=PIPE).stdout.read()
        prof.send_line(result)
    except Exception as e:
        prof.cons_show("Internal error: " + repr(e))
    # TODO: real error handling

def prof_init(version, status, account_name, fulljid):
    synopsis = ["/printf <format-string>"]
    description = "Use your system's printf to send a formatted message"
    args = [["<format-string>", "the format string to print"]]
    examples = ["/printf \"this message will display\\non multiple lines\"", 
                "/printf \"my home directory is $HOME\"",
                "/printf \"here are the contents of my clipboard:\\n$(xclip -o)\""]
    prof.register_command("/printf", 1, 1, synopsis, description, args, examples, _cmd_printf)
    prof.filepath_completer_add("/printf")

It needs work and has only been tested on my system, but it's an easy way to send arbitrary multiline messages, with the added benefit of being able to incorporate the output of shell commands.

Feel free to modify/suggest changes, it's still kind of a rough draft.

[mdosch]

Also there is some workaround using Ctrl+V (^V) and Ctrl+J (^J):

• Write This should be the first line.This should be the second.
• Place your cursor between . and second This
• Press ^V and afterwards ^J
• Press Enter

[jubalh]

pasis found: https://github.com/ulfalizer/readline-and-ncurses
I should read that when trying to solve this issue.

[kaffeekanne]

An /editor command for extended message composing was introduced by #1485 and is discussed at #1521.

[jubalh]

As @kaffeekanne mentioned we have an /editor command now.
And for 0.12.0 #1645 (and #1648) was added.
The workflow seems to be quite nice now. Even more powerful than just regular multi line.
Let's close this issue.

[sjaeckel]

And there's a shortcut that spawns the editor, per default alt+c