[XBoard-devel] ICS console

[h . g . muller]

I just got an idea:

It is a recurring irritation that the ICS console is a separate x-term
window, not controllable by XBoard. In the mean time I added a Chat-Box
window to XBoard 4.7.0, which can be switched between 5 different private
chats or channels, and has it own input field.

Now the idea that came up was if we shouldn't use that Chat Box also for
displaying all other ICS traffic, just like it was one of the chats. It
would be comparatively simple to treat the "Chat Partner" name 'ICS' as a
special case, where everything typed in the input field of the Chat Box
should not be prefixed by "xtell CHATPARTNER ". The names 'shouts',
'cshouts' and 'whispers' are already treated as such exceptions (leading
to other pre-fixing than tell/xtell). And everything what now goes to the
console could go to that 'ICS chat' (possibly as a duplicate).

The main obstacle to replacing the xterm by our own dialog window has
always been the fact that Xaw did not support per-line colorization, as is
used in the x-term. But in GTK this no longer is a problem (and in fact I
already use this in other windows, to highlight a selected PV during
PV-walking or the current move, in yellow). So we could add this special
treatment of the ICS name, so that GTK users or Xaw users that don't want
colorization could use it by writing ICS in the Chat Box field.

Perhaps the ICS Input Box should be abandoned, and replaced by the Chat Box.

What do youthink of this?