Sidebar nicklist

[Hummer12007]

Disabled by default. Should keep things as is when not enabled.

[Hummer12007]

Needs to be improved a little first.

[casperstorm]

First of all, I like the feature. Good job implementing it. However, I don’t like the way we are “hammering” more complexity into the current side menu. The side menu is already quite a sore point for me. For once the position makes it feel a little awkward.

I have talked with @andymandias about a way forward, and we came up with a new system which also makes the entire thing a little more "halloy-ish". It will, however require quite a big refactor. A refactor which you shoudn't feel forced to do, i don't mind picking it up.

The main idea is simply to add two new pane_grid. A vertical one, and a horizontal one. For lack of better name we could call them pane_grid_horizontal and pane_grid_vertical here. Their purpose is to display different panes;

• pane1: external buffers: servers, channels, queries
• pane2: internal buffers: logs, highlights, file transfers
• pane3: nicklist
• pane4: ...

We can persist position and pane types to the dashboard.json file like the current pane_grid of buffers. Then the user is free to choose, resize and move the panes around as they want.

Each pane, eg external buffer, needs to answer a question of "can i be displayed both horizontally or vertically?" and if so implement that logic. For those panes that doesnt work horizontally, eg nicklist, we can then display a "This pane isn't supported in horizntal mode"

Then at the end of the day we end up with something like (pesudo code)

pane_grid_vertical
position: left
panes: nicklist, internal buffers

pane_grid_horizontal
position: bottom
panes: external buffers

Problems with this as i can see is:

• We might run down a rabbit hole just to figure out it isnt worth it
• When you click a pane we "select" it - that is not always something we want eg when switching channels.

Benefits:

• Easy to expand with new panes, eg network meter for ping to server etc.

This is up for discussion.

[casperstorm]

I'll prototype a bit to see how it turns out, and to see if this is a viable way to go.

[Hummer12007]

An important thing I wanted to account for here:
2 ways to display the nicklist:

• Inside a single scrollable with the buflist (for folks with a small number of channels wanting a neat look)
• A fixed split (e.g. 2/1) for folks idling in a lot of channels like me which don't even fit on a screen