It would be great if Tribunes could be saved as nodes and if separate Tribunes could be created for different sets of participants on different dates.

Any chance of that?

Perhaps some of it is already possible and I've just missed something.

Comments

SeeSchloss’s picture

SeeSchloss commented

There is a chance of that, though probably not in the near future. But that will be possible, eventually (today I've cleaned the javascript code to theorically allow several blocks from different tribunes to be shown at the same time).

markpenny’s picture

markpenny commented

Actually, It isn't clear to me how to generate separate tribunes. I only seem to be able to get one going at a time. Do I need to install something else?

markpenny’s picture

markpenny commented

Here's an idea: combining Tribune and Forums to create Synchronous Forums.

Basically, chats could branch and users could jump from thread to thread in real time. The inital chat would be the forum and the branching subchats would be comments.

How big a job would that be to make?

SeeSchloss’s picture

SeeSchloss commented

Err... I'm not sure I understand what you mean, and if I understand I'm not sure how it could work ?

But well, it looks like a big job that I won't have time to do soon, anyway.

Flying Drupalist’s picture

Flying Drupalist commented

+1, Not really sure on the forums thing, but multiple rooms would be wonderful.

Babalu’s picture

Babalu commented

subscribe

SeeSchloss’s picture

SeeSchloss commented
Title: Chat nodes » Chat (tribune) nodes
Assigned: Unassigned » SeeSchloss

Tribune nodes is the next big thing I am going to implement, however it needs rather big changes as I see it, especially for handling access to the nodes, it just can't be done via Drupal permissions anymore.

So, I'm going to do it, and probably release a 2.0 version once it is done (expect other minor versions in the meanwhile, though).

naheemsays’s picture

naheemsays commented

Is this ready for testing?

And the 1.x branch seems newer... which version do we test? 1.x-dev or 2.x-dev?

SeeSchloss’s picture

SeeSchloss commented
Version: 6.x-1.x-dev » 6.x-2.x-dev

Yeah I... ehm... messed up things a bit and only noticed it this morning. For now the 1.x-dev tarball actually contains HEAD, and the 2.x-dev tarball actually contains DRUPAL-6--1. Ehm...

It should be fine the next time they are updated in a few hours, but for now I'd suggest you take the DRUPAL-6--2 branch from CVS if you want to test.

But other than that... yeah it's ready for testing. Since the system isn't completely compatible with 1.x, after the update you get a message which takes you to a small migration page, which allows you to automatically create a new tribune node with the same settings as your old tribune, and moves all the old posts to this new node.

SeeSchloss’s picture

SeeSchloss commented

Just to say... the 2.x-dev tarball is fine now, the 1.x isn't, though, I'll have to see if I need to do something more to fix it

naheemsays’s picture

naheemsays commented

I just installed this on a local test server and things look good.

Gotta say though that the black border that tribune adds by default around the tribune message is IMO not that pleasant. I did not like it before, but the box was not shown if there was no message, however now the box/border shows even without a message.

How about just removing that CSS styling altogether? if people want it, that can add it.

markpenny’s picture

markpenny commented

You are so close to giving me what I want.

Tribunes as nodes is brilliant.

Here's what would send me over the moon.

I'd like to see a block in which new Tribunes can be started and where online users can see them in progress as they browse other pages. The new version of Tribune appears to have dispensed with that option. Users with permissions could then create Tribunes right in the block as they see other users online. That's how we've been using Tribune on my family website: like MSN, but on the website. Before Tribunes became nodes, the problem was that the site manager had to come along later to copy the chat into a node, save the node and delete the text of the Tribune. Now the problem is that the site manager must assign a Tribune to each block.

Put another way, I would like, when I see that my mother is online, to be able type a message in the Tribune block, chat with my mother, then save the chat as a node--all in and from the block, so that I can continue to browse and edit while chatting.

It would also be nice if Tribunes saved themselves as nodes after an adjustable period, in case people forget to save them. A Tribune would be saved in the name of the person who started it and the title would be a default, such as the first few words of text in the chat. Then again, the trick right now might just be to make the node editable from the block.

Multiple current Tribunes accessible in a single block would be handy, too, but I'm not greedy.

Anyway, thanks for keeping up the good work, Schloss!

SeeSchloss’s picture

SeeSchloss commented

nbz: I've removed the CSS border, and made sure the div isn't displayed if the message is empty (even if there's just a space or a newline or something like that).

markpenny: I just don't know how that would work, from the interface perspective. Creating tribunes isn't a problem, creating one in a block is doable (with all default settings, or something ?), but, what if your mother already has a tribune with someone else open ? Automaticaly adding blocks is not an option. Also I'm not sure I understand what you say about “saving” tribunes, tribunes are always nodes anyway, you don't have to “save” them or anything.

markpenny’s picture

markpenny commented

Sounds like there's hope, despite the muddiness between us. I'll try to make my situation clearer.

Previously, I had a single Tribune block in the left sidebar. I also had an Online Users block. Whenever users logged in to the site, they could immediately see who else was logged in and initiate and carry on instant messaging in the sidebar while freely browsing and editing other material in the main content area. There were only two hangups. First, there was no way to preserve a Tribune as a separate node except to copy it from the "full view page" (I've forgotten your term for it) and paste it into a newly created node. Second, only the site manager could delete the current Tribune to make way for a new one--and that only through moderation.

The new version frees the site manager from copying, pasting and deleting, but brings three new hitches. First, a particular Tribune block must have a particular Tribune assigned to it by the site manager and therefore can no longer be used to initiate instant messaging. Second (and this may not be a Tribune issue: I'm having the same grief with Chatroom), Tribune blocks will not display on my site. Third, Tribune nodes remain active, meaning they continue to check for new entries long after we've moved on.

Would it be possible to begin, conduct and end a Tribune in a block while still having it save as a node? Obviously, I'm talking about a slightly different form of the module than you've been developing, but I imagine (in my ignorance, perhaps), that you could provide options.

The gist of it for my site is that we want to have convenient instant messaging and a separate, self-generating, static record of each session. We now have separate self-generating records (Tribune nodes), but they remain dynamic and we've lost the convenient instant messaging.

I hope I'm not giving you a headache. I just think your module's got some potential you may not have had in mind.

markpenny’s picture

markpenny commented

Michael McDowell,

I believe your referring to this line in #14

Previously, I had a single Tribune block in the left sidebar. I also had an Online Users block. Whenever users logged in to the site, they could immediately see who else was logged in and initiate and carry on instant messaging in the sidebar while freely browsing and editing other material in the main content area.

It may have been a bit long to take in properly. Sorry. the Online Users block (a separate module from Tribune) allowed authenticated users to see who was online. The Tribune block allowed us to open a "chat" in the sidebar. Other online users could then enter the chat. There was no clicking on usernames.

That would be a nice feature, though.

Grzegorz Zbiński’s picture

Grzegorz Zbiński commented

How about setting # of tribune blocks in settings (default 1) - every block has its core identification. If there is more than 1 tribune block it means that we created separate room for chatting visible only for people using same room(block). While watching tribune block #2 we shouldn't see messages form other tribune blocks.
The /tribune page should has filter for every tribune blocks. Clicking on tribune title for 2nd instance opens /tribune page with filter for this block. People with permission to this filter can switch it.
With core blocks you can chose on what page it is visible, so its like making rooms, but actually its just simple filtering tribune. If block is gone we should choose to remove all tribune lines connected to that block or to assign chats to default tribune(room).

SeeSchloss’s picture

SeeSchloss commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

I'm closing this issue because 6.x-2.x was badly designed and going nowhere. And reading again this discussion, I believe that the features in question might be better handled by another node than tribune (this doesn't mean I won't implement it in the future, and interested parties can always post a new issue about it).