Escape key closing conversation

[phantom]

Is there any way to stop the escape key from closing conversation windows? That's one of the things from MSN Messenger 6.2 that really bothered me, and I am disappointed to find out that it was copied into aMSN. It's rather annoying, nothing else closes when the escape key is pressed, and for good reason -- it is too easy to accidentally press, compared to alt+f4. So why should my conversation windows have to close?

[kakaroto]

Hi,
It was copied into amsn because users requested it. Those who are used to press escape to close the conversation wanted it in amsn too, but in aMSN we introduced a little something to avoid accidental escape keys that make you not see a message. If you press the escape key less than 3 seconds after receiving a new message, we assume you didn't have time to read it, so the escape key doesn't close.
There are unfortunately no options to avoid this behavior, so if you are interested, tell me, and I'll send you a patch to remove it from your amsn version. Or I could maybe add an option (although, we try to avoid unnecessary options because the preferences window is too bloated).
Thanks

[phantom]

Hi,
It was copied into amsn because users requested it. Those who are used to press escape to close the conversation wanted it in amsn too, but in aMSN we introduced a little something to avoid accidental escape keys that make you not see a message. If you press the escape key less than 3 seconds after receiving a new message, we assume you didn't have time to read it, so the escape key doesn't close.
There are unfortunately no options to avoid this behavior, so if you are interested, tell me, and I'll send you a patch to remove it from your amsn version. Or I could maybe add an option (although, we try to avoid unnecessary options because the preferences window is too bloated).
Thanks

Seriously? People wanted that? Wow.. Well, I am indeed interested in that patch, if you've got the time to make it.

Yeah, I've noticed it is really really hard to find an option in the preferences.. It takes me an average of 10 minutes to find an option when I look for it specifically.. I hate to say it but I think that thing needs some sort of search..

[kakaroto]

alright, easy one,
open the file chatwindow.tcl from the amsn source (C:\program files\amsn\scripts\chatwindow.tcl) and search for "<<Escape>>" (with the << and >> but without the quotes). You should see a bunch of them, only three are not commented (without a # in front), comment those lines out (by adding a # as the first character of the line) or delete those lines. Restart amsn, Escape key shouldn't close the chat window anymore.
That's it! tell me if you got any issues.

p.s.: you don't need to recompile amsn or anything, so don't worry about it (if you were..)
have fun

[H@t Trick]

Wow, I never realized this was in aMSN also. I hate this concept of escape closing a window. it is completely counter-intuitive and is contrary to even MS's own gui keyboard shortcuts (which for the most part make sense, though I am not sure if they were the original creators of the keyboard shortcuts).

Please make this an option even though the options window is way over crowded. I don't know about doing the coding yet but if someone with some tcl experience has some time I'd be willing to help out with a redesign and reorganization of the options and preferences window. I have some ideas that I think could help.

[kakaroto]

alright.. done
http://cia.vc/stats/project/amsn/.message/1c600b

[phantom]

I tried those changes you said, but it gave me this error:

invalid command name (I'm not going to try to write those characters..)
  while executing
(again)
  (file "chatwindow.tcl" line 1)
(...etcetera, it goes on)

Here's a screenshot:



I am very sure I made the changes right, and I am using a text editor that has always been good to me when editing code; not Notepad. Editpad Lite.

[kakaroto]

humm.. well obviously, you did something wrong because when you look at the error, it says command not found and the command has some weird characters in there... it shouldn't look like that.. humm.. it's on line 1, and the long line of ##### means.. that the file starts like that.. I know why, editpad lite is at fault!
Those characters, I know them, they are standard header for specifying a utf-8 file.. which means that editpad lite saved the file as utf-8, adding those bad characters there.. you won't see them if you edit the file.. just try saving the file again but with ANSI encoding instead of UTF-8 encoding...

p.s.: those characters will not appear if you edit the file no matter if you use wordpad, notepad or editpad.. they will just "disappear" when you open the file with a text editor, but they do exit in the file, as you can see if you use a hexadecimal editor...


p.s.2: if you don't want to bother with that, just grab the SVN version (http://amsn-project.net/wiki/SVN) and install it, then look for the option in the advanced preferences...

[phantom]

Thanks. I decided to go with the easiest option of changing the encoding.

And it works! Thanks for the help.

[dreamsoftmx]

In the version 0.98.3, the tip works fine!
Thank you so much.