Meshtastic-Android icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
Meshtastic-Android copied to clipboard

[Feature Request]: add a a tag or special character to allow custom quick replies to a message

Open NomDeTom opened this issue 11 months ago • 2 comments

Contact Details

NomDeTom

Tell us your idea.

I'd like the app to use an unprintable character to turn the following word into a hyperlink that can be tapped to auto-fill a reply.

The primary purpose would be replying to a bot, auto responder or BBS with contextual replies, e.g. (n)ext, (b)ack, (m)ore, (d)elete, etc.

When I last looked, there were more suitable characters, similar to bel, for this purpose.

Relevant log output

No response

Code of Conduct

  • [X] I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

NomDeTom avatar Dec 07 '24 11:12 NomDeTom

Slight generalization

I like the idea of this quick reply feature, and I have an idea for how to make it more accessible and generic.

Rather than looking for a magic (perhaps unprintable) character, let's look for spans of text that follow the specific convention of "(n)ext". If the user enables the quick replies UI option in the app, the app can scan for and make tappable spans that appear to be quick-reply options in the same way that it detects and upgrades URLs.

Here's a slightly over-generalized way of detecting these with a regex:

String pattern = "\\w*\\([\\w]{1,3}\\)\\w+";

// These will match
"(b)ack"
"(4)email"
"re(t)urn"

// These won't match
"re(test)turn"  // too many chars in parentheses
"re()turn"      // empty parentheses
"re(t)"         // no chars after parentheses

In this design, no special keyboard is needed for human users to offer one another quick replies.

Major generalization

Interpret the message as Markdown text (applying formatting like bold, italics, lists, whatever), and give special behavior to links with no target. Treat a no-target link as something that should be copied into the message composition field. For example [web](http://example.com/) would display as a link that tries to open in a browser but [back]() renders a button (or link like back) that appends "back" to the current message.

rndmcnlly avatar Jan 16 '25 20:01 rndmcnlly

Woohoo! So back!

NomDeTom avatar May 25 '25 20:05 NomDeTom

D'oh

NomDeTom avatar Jul 03 '25 08:07 NomDeTom

@jamesarich you can pin this if you do intend to do something with it. Idk what would be required to turn this into a specification for interfacing, though.

NomDeTom avatar Jul 03 '25 12:07 NomDeTom

i do think it's a valid request - it's just not on my priority list

jamesarich avatar Jul 03 '25 13:07 jamesarich