aaclayton
commented
3 days ago @Fyorl have any thoughts you want to share about the tradeoffs here? I think our goal was to have one (and only one) text input field. Maybe that is an expectation we could relax.
User Experience
Please, do not remove the textarea from the popped out chatlog.
I have been a foundry user for 1 year. I am primarily a text roleplayer. Foundry has always felt someone lacking in the text roleplay department, but I never expected a feature I use every single play session would be removed. Please reconsider this decision present in the second prototype.
I suspect that the new textarea which appears below the notifications, and when a tab other than the chatlog is expanded, is probably intended as a replacement. And I have no problem with that element itself, or its use. But it is not a sufficient replacement for the textarea on the popped out chatlog, as it does not fill the same role: it cannot be repositioned by the user.
I believe repositioning the chatlog via the chatlog popout, and thus repositioning the message textarea, is an accessibility feature. It may be completely fine for non text roleplayers, who rarely manually compose messages, to only write them in the bottom right. And I'm sure it's okay for many text roleplayers too. But I certainly don't find it ergonomic, enjoyable, or even usable in that state. Luckily, in 12 and prior, I could simply pop out the chatlog and compose messages wherever I liked.
It would be perfectly reasonable to place this beyond a setting, and to have it off by default, if for some reason it is viewed as antithetical to the 'main' use of foundry, which does not cater to text roleplay. But please, do not remove it entirely. Or provide an alternative method for a textarea to create messages that users can reposition.
The v13 prototype 2's chatlog popout seems quite broken (error due to undefined element during render, and a lack of render hook entirely, or at least not one visible via
CONFIG.debug.hooks), so I have been unable to determine if the lack of textarea is due to a bug. My naive layman's reading of the chatlog class would indicate that it is not one. I apologize for not investigating the bug further or filing a proper bug report. It is hard for me to understand what the problem is. That said, if my request is actually already the intended state, and it is simply blocked by a bug, please disregard this issue.I will be unsubscribing to this issue after posting it. I have already decided to move on from foundry due to inability to keep up with the development cycle, but I felt I could not leave without making my feelings clear on this. Apologies for getting emotional, and thank you for your hard work.