Miranda NG's weird way of tab closing

[Whiplash]

I already made one post about this on old forum, but it wasn't discussed much since it was closed right after that.
Basically, it's about one of the most problematic Miranda's thing I experienced so far - about its way of tab closing for group chats.
As I also said before, while I was configuring Miranda NG for the first time, I was kinda surprised (disappointed) seeing that it has limited "Maximum number of events in the message window" (5000 is the biggest number). That's because it wasn't the case with some other clients I used (Pidgin or HydraIRC). The only software where I also saw this kind of limitation is Instantbird.

Then I was wondering "Why the hell Miranda couldn't work just like Pidgin or HydraIRC does" (don't understand this as some kind of other softwares advertising - I'm just trying to describe the problem as best as I can),..."why Miranda must have such a bad limitation?" So, I opened both of those softwares in order to see what's exactly their difference compared to Miranda. I realized that it's a weird kind of Miranda's tab closing.

That thing produces one another big problem - weird kind of tab (message session) loading. This means that I always have to wait few irritating seconds in order to open desired IRC channel tab. This is also the thing that never happens in those other softwares - so, they have no message events limitations, and they don't have any kind of tab loading.

Their basic difference compared to Miranda is that they don't close messages tabs on the way that Miranda does. They obviously do only a simple tab minimizing.
So, I decided to see if Miranda could do the same thing. And yep, it can! The option I needed to check on was in: Options > Message Sessions > Tabs and layout (tab) > and under the "Miscellaneous options" I checked "Close button only hides message windows". With this checked, Miranda can finally fallow unlimited number of message sessions and it opens instantly!

And just when I've thought my problems are solved, I experienced 2 new ones:
1. Now I had to open each channel manually first, so that every new opening will be instant. This is solvable if I uncheck "Do not pop up th window when joining a chat room" in Options > Group Chats > Settings (tab). Now all my channels will be opened automatically when Miranda starts and after I close them, they will be opened instantly every next time.
But, damn, I just hate any kind of pop ups. Now whenever I get disconnection and reconnection, I'm still getting tons of irritating pop ups, so not only when Miranda is started. This could be solved if we had option like "Pop up the window when joining a chat room for the first time only"
2. Second problem is that with this kind of tab closing (minimizing) my "chat activity" icon (that small yellow smiley) doesn't appear in the contact list anymore. Seems like it doesn't recognize difference between opened and minimized tab. 

I also tried to describe all these problems to ghazan, but his reaction was simply "Man, tab closing does nothing to chat". Maybe it's hard to see the problem when "Maximum number of events in the message window" is set to default (100) and when you're having some good PC. But for an IRC user like I am, that's all just too irritating. It's so bad to have any limitations there. Even 5000 (which is the biggest value) is just not enough - it results with only about 4-5 hours of fallowed some active IRC channel. And that "loading thing" is just killing me. So, in order to show you the difference of these 2 types of tab "closing", I made a simple video this time.
HERE you go.
Its quality is poor, but it shows the point. It's made in few secs. Be patient while watching.

[White-Tiger]

Do you really re-read 5h and more? That will probably take hours itself

Anyway... can't help you with that... loading 5000 entries from history is quite a lot... maybe one could do it like it is for normal chats... limit loading from history to x, but use "endless" for opened windows.

Have you tried to use Scriver yet? And compared it's performances to that of TabSRMM?

PS: your video repeats endlessly...  not that good
PPS: quite late reply isn't it?

[Whiplash]

Do you really re-read 5h and more? That will probably take hours itself

I'm actually being in few of the rooms where people contact each other by writing their nicks. So, whenever people want to make me notice their message, they just mention my nick, like: "xWhiplash: What's up man, I need one favor...?"
But most of the time I'm not sitting in front of the PC, so I read it few minutes/hours later. So, If I set 100 lines of chat to be readable, that's just not enough. And that's why I can only except unlimited number of chat lines.

PS: your video repeats endlessly...  not that good

It's not just about repeating. It actually shows 2 types of tab closing. One is incredibly slow, and the another is instant (because it actually doesn't close the tabs, but just minimizing them). If you're patient, you 'll see the difference. That's why I'm now using that 2nd setup even it has some other disadvantages that I reported up there in the first post.

[ghazan]

ugh... so, let's divide flies from cutlets.

1. there's a message limitation in tabSRMM (there's no limitation in StdChat, for example) because of relatively heavy footprint of the RTF control. also it migth behave badly on 32-bit systems when a lot of messages were entered. that's why that limitation exists.

2. you don't have to click anything to join your channels on startup. open IRC account settings, Advanced/Perform, and add some /j commands in its window for an account event.

3. these 'irritating seconds' when you open a channel mean only that IRC is incredibly slow (especially FreeNode). in this case the automatic channel join might help alot

4. the chat activity indicator has no relation with the window state (opened, closed, minimized etc). it just fixes the presence of new events in this channel

[Whiplash]

1. there's a message limitation in tabSRMM (there's no limitation in StdChat, for example) because of relatively heavy footprint of the RTF control. also it migth behave badly on 32-bit systems when a lot of messages were entered. that's why that limitation exists.

I already said up there that this problem can be solved just like on any other IRC software.  Tab closing should just be disabled totally and that's exactly what I did.

2. you don't have to click anything to join your channels on startup. open IRC account settings, Advanced/Perform, and add some /j commands in its window for an account event.

Sure. But that's not what I was talking about. Auto-join commands will not start your chat-rooms in new tabs. They just makes Miranda to join them. Opening chat-rooms in new tabs you have to perform manually. And once you do it, they will be opened instantly every next time (no matter how many lines is that in chat). And that's what I'm doing now too. That's how Pidgin and HydraIRC work by default.

3. these 'irritating seconds' when you open a channel mean only that IRC is incredibly slow (especially FreeNode). in this case the automatic channel join might help alot

This is not the true. I don't have a problem about waiting the server and channels to start up. Irritating seconds comes when I'm opening the active channel in a new tab. By default, opening channel in a new tab happens always, because every time you press X, tab will be closed again. I already said up there how I solved this. The only problem is that I have to open every channel tab manually for the first time. So, every time I press X now, tabs are just minimized, so they don't need to be loaded by those irritating seconds anymore.

4. the chat activity indicator has no relation with the window state (opened, closed, minimized etc). it just fixes the presence of new events in this channel

True. But chat activity indicator (yellow smiley) has relation with the tab state. If tab is opened, it automatically understands that message has been read. That's not the problem if the tab is in focus, but this is actually happening always. Even if the opened tab is minimized, Miranda will treat its messages as read and the message indicator will not show up. That's why it should work with another logic. It should't show up only when tab is in focus. In all the other situations, it should be there.

[ghazan]

Auto-join commands will not start your chat-rooms in new tabs. They just makes Miranda to join them.

Of course they will. Joining a room automatically creates the appropriate object in memory, that begins to gather all info from a channel. When you open a window, you only visualize that object.

Opening chat-rooms in new tabs you have to perform manually.

You can automatically pop up chat windows on start, there's an option for that.

Irritating seconds comes when I'm opening the active channel in a new tab. By default, opening channel in a new tab happens always, because every time you press X, tab will be closed again

It's impossible that adding 3-5K lines into a window takes some seconds.

The only problem is that I have to open every channel tab manually for the first time

No, there's no such problem, look above.

But chat activity indicator (yellow smiley) has relation with the tab state. If tab is opened, it automatically understands that message has been read. That's not the problem if the tab is in focus, but this is actually happening always. Even if the opened tab is minimized, Miranda will treat its messages as read and the message indicator will not show up. That's why it should work with another logic. It should't show up only when tab is in focus. In all the other situations, it should be there.

well, I could look into it, if you leave a ticket in a tracker

[Whiplash]

You can automatically pop up chat windows on start, there's an option for that.

Yes, there is the option "Do not pop up the window when joining a chat room". It is unchecked by default. The reason why I had to check it is that it's irritating. I actually don't want anything to pop up and disturb me, especially when many tabs are opening together. One of the biggest problems with this is also disconnecting/reconnecting. Miranda will pop-up all the tabs in those situations too and that's really irritating. That's why I feel more comfortable while doing it manually.
A perfect solution here would be if you could make that new chat rooms are also joined in hidden instead of just in popped-up tabs (windows).

About the chat activity indicator - O.K., I 'll create the ticket.

[soopah]

You should look in to using a irc bouncer so that you can log any text lenght you want even when you are disconnected!

http://wiki.znc.in/ZNC (if you can host it)

https://panicbnc.net/ (they provide it for free)

[Whiplash]

Let's not complicate things.