[pmwiki-users] ZAP chat?

[The Editor]

On 11/10/06, Jiri Hladůvka / OBUTEX <admin at obutex.com> wrote:
>
>
> The Editor napsal(a):
> > ...The main chatroom page can have a counter of present users and some
> > {$lastArchivedTime}.
> >
> >
> > Yes, but what about people that don't log out?
> >
> That is why to test {$lastArchivedTime}>1 day . Of course after cleaning
> the counter is to be set to 1
> >> When a user enters the room (opens the main page) then if he/she is the
> >> only person or {$lastArchivedTime}>1 day
> >> the room cleaning could start which means the old individual pages are
> >> integrated (appended) into chatroom's archive daily-file
> >> and then are destroyed. ...
> Best regards,
> Jiri


[warning: bit of brainstorming ahead...]

Without wanting to make this too complex, couldn't you also have a
page set up for each user (that's chatting in a given room) storing
the time of their last post, and then do a pagelist of all users that
have posted within the past x minutes, to list the names of active
chatters?  (Would require a custom but doable conditional)  And of
course, when they log out that user page is deleted.  Wow!  Would work
great!

Also, I think rather than having daily chat logs cleaned up by user
actions, you could have a markup (like the newsletter module) that is
triggered by cron, maybe once every hour--that cleans up old chat
pages (more than one hour old--and inactive user pages also!).

Of course the big question is--which is best:  a single log file only,
like my original suggestion, or a separate page for each remark, and
then include them all by a pagelist?

Pros of Single Log File--Far less file reading. No need to clean up files.
Pros of Multiple Pages--No problem with sumulataneous chats. Easier to
limit display to controlled time frames.  Very easy to get it to work.
ZAP could probably do already.

Then again, do we really need to retain old log files? What about just
moving old chat remarks into an archive group and if needed, use a
pagelist to retrieve these old records?  Perhaps a simple markup like
(:zapchatarchives room|begintime|endtime:).  Cut and paste for
something you want to keep.

I really like the pagelist idea, but am a bit concerned about
processing demands. Might work for some applications...  Any thoughts
by others on the list?

Cheers,
Caveman