Mass Message / PM history feature requests

[Lance]

• History should use CRLF; I'd like to be able to read these files in notepad.
• Outbound mass messages should be saved to the PM history with the "Mass message:" too instead of just the message itself (easier to understand the history)
• Currently, outbound mass messages with more than 50 recipients do not save locally to any history files. Perhaps they could save to the first 50 players selected, and then stop?

[Sam]

Yes good idea and helpful too!

[Fox1545]

Originally Posted by Lance

• History should use CRLF; I'd like to be able to read these files in notepad.

• I suggest that a XML based format be used, for more portability to other operating systems with different end-of-line markers, and less ambiguity when people paste blocks of PM history within a PM. Also, a XSL schema could be provided for nice formatted display in a web browser.
  
  

  Outbound mass messages should be saved to the PM history with the "Mass message:" too instead of just the message itself (easier to understand the history)

  Agreed, except you would use a different XML element for that because people prepending their regular PMs with `Mass message:' should not get to confuse my history!
  
  

  Currently, outbound mass messages with more than 50 recipients do not save locally to any history files. Perhaps they could save to the first 50 players selected, and then stop?

Disagreed! Give a configuration option to configure the number of players in whose logs the mass message shall be saved!

Also, someone should fix the display of list items without quoted blocks of text. Of course what I just did here was not legal but what is being displayed is certainly wrong!

[Admins]

Originally Posted by Lance

History should use CRLF; I'd like to be able to read these files in notepad.

You can use Wordpad

Outbound mass messages should be saved to the PM history with the "Mass message:" too instead of just the message itself (easier to understand the history)

Yes should fix that

Currently, outbound mass messages with more than 50 recipients do not save locally to any history files. Perhaps they could save to the first 50 players selected, and then stop?

It is not saving it because it can take quite a lot of time when adding the message to 100/200 pm history files, and normally Mass PMs are not that important (when sending). Don't know if it makes sense to add it to 50 people

[Lance]

Originally Posted by Stefan

You can use Wordpad

Yes, or UltraEdit, but I do not open text files in Wordpad or UltraEdit by default.

It is not saving it because it can take quite a lot of time when adding the message to 100/200 pm history files, and normally Mass PMs are not that important (when sending). Don't know if it makes sense to add it to 50 people

Well, I try not to send out unimportant mass messages. I would just like to have some record of the messages I send out when there are more than 50 players online. I understand the reasoning behind not updating 100-200 history files, and that is why I suggested only writing it to the first 50 so at least it would be stored somewhere. Does the mass-messaging process the list of selected players in the same order they appear on the playerlist? If so, then saving to the first 50 could guarantee that it is saved at least to buddies/staff, so you could more easily find the messages later. It's not the optimal solution but I'm hard-pressed to think of a better one.

[Admins]

Hmmm It's still increasing the overall size of pm files quite a lot though

Ok fixed the thing with adding mass-message in front of the message when sending it yourself

[Ibonic]

Originally Posted by Lance

Well, I try not to send out unimportant mass messages. I would just like to have some record of the messages I send out when there are more than 50 players online. I understand the reasoning behind not updating 100-200 history files, and that is why I suggested only writing it to the first 50 so at least it would be stored somewhere. Does the mass-messaging process the list of selected players in the same order they appear on the playerlist? If so, then saving to the first 50 could guarantee that it is saved at least to buddies/staff, so you could more easily find the messages later. It's not the optimal solution but I'm hard-pressed to think of a better one.

Hmm..
Maybe a log dedicated to just outgoing mass messages, as an option? It could also log all of the users who you sent it to if desired; If it's done in just a single file (account names separated by comma or so) it won't be so slow, though it could look a bit messy if not layed out well.

[Lance]

Originally Posted by Ibonic

Hmm..
Maybe a log dedicated to just (outgoing) mass messages, as an option? It could also log all of the users who you sent it to if desired; If it's done in just a single file (account names separated by comma or so) it won't be so slow, though it could look a bit messy if not layed out well.

I considered that, but I could think of no useful way to display the messages if they were stored that way. It certainly couldn't be integrated into the PM history without adding a ridiculous amount of overhead, and the goal I'm shooting for is to be able to see these messages in the history.

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What about only writing mass messages to selected buddies/staff if there are more than 50 online players?

[Ibonic]

Originally Posted by Lance

I considered that, but I could think of no useful way to display the messages if they were stored that way. It certainly couldn't be integrated into the PM history without adding a ridiculous amount of overhead, and the goal I'm shooting for is to be able to see these messages in the history.

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What about only writing mass messages to selected buddies/staff if there are more than 50 online players?

Well, I think having a separate thread with a queue to handle file writing (if it's expected to take an unreasonable amount of time) in the background would be nice. That way they could be saved to even 10,000 files (though it won't happen) without affecting the client / game play much. But to implement that just for outgoing mass messages might be a bit silly.