purple-facebook
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dequis
Alternative options to mark messages as read
As of now, the plugin only marks messages as read once the conversation has been read via the user interface. The method of doing this within libpurple is very non-standard, and leads to many clients not supporting it properly (#144). And not everyone (more people than I expected) likes the focus based approach of marking messages as read (#118).
In order to make things more compatible with other clients (and to please everyone's preference), the plugin should add two new modes for marking messages as read. The first being to mark messages as read as soon as a message is received. And the second being to mark messages as read when a reply is sent to a message. These new modes will then accompany the two current modes of focus based marking and being disabled entirely.
Sounds good. :) I preferred mine to mark as read when I reply, but not before. [Redacted]. ;) I was also wondering why my messages were mysteriously marked as read before I had even read or responded to them. This explains why.
@dequis is this being worked on? is there a way we can help or work on it ?
Sure, patches. The canonical source location is the pidgin mercurial repo, default branch, and you can send bitbucket pull requests there. But if dealing with that is too much hassle, I can take plain old patch files attached to github tickets.
Hm, I was adding an option to mark messages as read when replying, only to notice that this is the behavior when we don't do anything. That is, the server interprets a reply as marking the conversation as read. So... that's pointless.
What is left to do here? I don't really see the point of marking threads as read as soon as messages are received, that sounds more like an anti-feature to me. Does anyone care? Any other ideas of things to do here?
What I'm doing is renaming the option to "Mark messages as read on focus" and adding "Mark messages as read only when available" (because bitlbee-facebook has that)
Hey @dequis , thank you for your reply. Even though it has been almost two years since I reported this issue ( #144 ), I think it is still very much needed.
For what it's worth, I care and I'll tell you why - AFAIK with telepathy-haze (the default messaging system on SailfishOS), the 'mark read on focus' is not supported, so other ways to mark messages as read are needed.
What happens now (at least from what I have tried on commits newer than 3d30d24fdbef) is that messages arrive over and over again (the phone is constantly showing the notification) unless you mark them as read - by replying. I hope you understand that is unsustainable to use, since:
- sometimes you want to think through what you want to reply
- sometimes there is no reply needed
- if two users of SailfishOS messaging app (or any other telepathy-based messaging system) want to communicate over Facebook Messenger, then there is no way for them to stop the notifications unless they communicate constantly
Therefore having an option to mark messages as read on arrival might be seen as anti-feature by some, but it is an absolute necessity in this use case.
I hope you can take it into consideration.
Disable where and how? Could you please elaborate?
The problem is that messages arrive over and over again (until marked read), not the notification itself. I should have made that clearer.
Dear @dequis, Thank you for looking into this!
I am not sure why you mention that the server marks them as "read". Can you please detail how you detect that ? Is it simply sending a message with purple-facebook to someone and checking that on their side it appears as read ?
I am asking because the server does not seem to mark messages as read on my side. In other words, I reply to someone but, as @nodevel remarked, the notification on my phone that I have a message from them doesn't disappear. This is not the case when I reply from Messenger on my laptop.
Moreover, I think this would help with the issue of duplicated messages, i.e. from time to time I re-receive past messages to which I replied from Pidgin. These are always only the ones that I have not "seen" from an official app. I stop re-receiving them after I visit an official Messenger (phone/desktop) and read the conversation.
Many thanks for the efforts !
Disable where and how? Could you please elaborate?
Well I seriously hope your client lets you access these settings because otherwise nothing I add will help... Anyway, for the sake of the example, in pidgin, edit account -> advanced tab.
(This is from currently unreleased code, the first checkbox is slightly renamed and the second checkbox is new, but you should have the rest)
Those settings have internal names, some clients represent them like that:
-
"Mark messages as read [on focus]" ->
mark-read -
"Mark messages as read only when available" ->
mark-read-available -
"Show self messages" ->
show-self -
"Show unread messages" ->
show-unread -
"Open new group chats with incoming messages" ->
group-chat-open
Anyway, if show-unread is enabled and mark-read is disabled (or not supported), you'll get that effect of fetching unread messages that were never marked as read.
Is it simply sending a message with purple-facebook to someone and checking that on their side it appears as read ?
Yeah, pretty much. I'd have to look further into this, but what I tested earlier was the "seen" marker (a small icon with your avatar) in the messenger.com UI. Would be interesting if it turns out that it isn't a good indicator of read state.
my understanding is that unchecking "show unread messages" would result in the possibility of lost messages due to temporary connection issues.
unfortunately, the best internet service available where i am is a shaky DSL connection. there are constant interruptions to the connection -- sometimes around a minute at a time, but many are just a few seconds. as an example, my logs show there were 209 disconnects yesterday. that's a lot of potential to miss messages if the IM client isn't checking with the server to ensure that it has received messages it hasn't confirmed as read. and so the suggestion for an option to "mark messages as read as soon as a message is received" would be helpful for those of us who want to ensure they don't lose any messages but who also are concerned about the privacy implications of telling the other user at exactly which point we have read the message (which can be detrimental e.g. if other priorities prevent you from taking the time to reply right away, or if you've been put on the spot and need longer than the other person might like to formulate a reply). consistently marking received messages immediately as read would prevent the other person from knowing at which point you really see the message. it would at least provide plausible deniability and the opportunity for the other user to learn that their own client always telling them the message to you is read right away does not really mean it was read.
i'm also under the impression unchecking "show unread messages" would prevent ever receiving messages which were sent to you while offline.
