Add support for message shortcuts.

roberthoenig commented 7 years ago

Idea:

It would be a useful feature for Zulip to include a system for message shortcuts, that is, shortenings for longer phrases and established wordings.

Examples:

Imagine a development help stream, where new users often ask redundant questions. Instead of typing answers over and over, one could simply type :<shortening-for-answer>. Zulip would then replace the shortening with the saved phrase for it.
#1684 proposed a similar feature for the quick composition of polite standard phrases. Instead of being lazy and typing "afk" when you're not available, one could add the shortening :afk, which would then get replaced by I will be away for a bit.

Implementation proposals:

This feature could be implemented similar to @-mentions: After entering : in the compose box, a drop-down list of all possible shortening would pop up. The user could then continue typing to narrow down his search. After pressing enter/tab, the respective phrase would get inserted.
In the settings menu, we could add a list where users can enter new shortenings. A few standard shortening (for established wordings) would be already included.

Discussion

Please share your thoughts on this in the comments or on in the Zulip discussion on this.

timabbott commented 7 years ago

This sounds like a great feature idea.

penCsharpener commented 7 years ago

can typeahead also be fired after two characters have been entered? I'd probably prefer it if it didn't mix with the emojis. something like >> I can se working. or two ## or ::. Another logical option would be ... because it suggests that more is coming.

roberthoenig commented 7 years ago

Yup, :: is definitely preferable to :. Rethinking this, it might be actually better to refrain from using any special combination, since that'd be again something new a user would have to learn. Instead, I think aliases are the way to go, with the default alias for a text snippet being the snippet itself. On entering the first few characters of an alias, it'll pop up in the compose box as an autocomplete suggestion, which could then be used by pressing e.g. alt+enter.

penCsharpener commented 7 years ago

agree, and if you wanted to use a special conbination you can integrate them in the alias yourself.

showell commented 7 years ago

I like this idea too. We'd need some discussion on the exact details before implementing it, but I think the initial feedback is positive enough that we'd probably find a a good approach.

JayjeetAtGithub commented 6 years ago

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JayjeetAtGithub commented 6 years ago

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dmagrinya commented 5 years ago

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dmagrinya commented 5 years ago

Hello everyone! I have some backend work ready to review. It's far to be finished (frontend work pending, define a real set of shortcuts, maybe make the list of shortcuts more "configurable", ...), but I'd appreciate some feedback about the current state and next steps. Meanwhile I'll start working in the frontend.

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dmagrinya commented 5 years ago

Still working on it.

jacktigg commented 5 years ago

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jacktigg commented 5 years ago

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salcodes1 commented 5 years ago

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rajvaibhavdubey commented 5 years ago

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Abhishek-Balaji commented 5 years ago

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Abhishek-Balaji commented 5 years ago

Working on it.

Abhishek-Balaji commented 5 years ago

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Abhishek-Balaji commented 4 years ago

@timabbott @roberthoenig Should I just stick to predefined shortcuts as of now or would you like me to enable a page for adding new custom shortcuts in organizational settings similar to custom emojis?

timabbott commented 4 years ago

I had been imagining (A) A totally generic system and (B) it being a per-user feature more like "alert words" (maybe with eventually the option for admins to set a few to be available to all users).

I think this probably isn't a great project for a first-time contributor; there's a few somewhat tricky design decisions we'll want to make.

Abhishek-Balaji commented 4 years ago

Screenshot from 2019-11-19 08-07-12 @timabbott I've been working on something like this. Is this the idea you are interested in? Should I continue or drop the issue?

timabbott commented 4 years ago

Well, the idea I'd had in mind was a bit more like GitHub's "saved replies" feature, with that sort of thing available as typeahead if one doesn't one to move one's hand to the mouse. With that in mind, I'd build the "saved replies" type feature first and then add the keyboard typeahead for it.

To start with, we'll want a backend for storing these; I think a table called SavedReply with backend fields user_profile, name, and content would be a good structure.

Abhishek-Balaji commented 4 years ago

@timabbott I got it. I'll go through this.

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Abhishek-Balaji commented 4 years ago

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