Whispers used to flash on the recipient's terminal and disappear with
the next redraw. No history, no record, no signal if you weren't
looking.
Now whispers are stored per-recipient in a bounded inbox (16 slots,
FIFO eviction):
typedef struct { time_t timestamp; char from[]; char content[]; } whisper_t;
whisper_t whisper_inbox[16];
int whisper_inbox_count;
_Atomic int unread_whispers;
Sender side (:msg / :w):
- resolves target as before
- pushes the whisper into target->whisper_inbox under target->io_lock
(so two simultaneous senders to the same recipient don't tear the
ring)
- bumps target->unread_whispers atomically
- sends a single \a bell + triggers redraw_pending
- no longer writes whisper text directly to the channel (which used
to get clobbered by the next redraw)
Recipient side:
- new :inbox command in COMMAND mode prints the snapshot under
io_lock, in M7 chat-list style:
悄悄话 · whispers · 3
05-17 13:42 alice: 一会儿要不要喝咖啡
...
- viewing :inbox resets unread_whispers to 0
Title bar (extends UX-11):
- bright magenta "✉ N" chip alongside the yellow "★ N" mention chip
- same priority / degradation rules as ★
Whispers remain private — they're never broadcast to the room and
never persisted to messages.log. The inbox lives only in client_t,
so disconnecting drops it.
The bell + brief yellow highlight on the chat line meant that if you
weren't looking at the screen the moment someone @-mentioned you, you
had no way to know.
Now the title bar carries a sticky chip:
tester · 在线 3 · NORMAL ★ 2 ? 帮助
- bright yellow "★ N" appears whenever client->unread_mentions > 0
- count is bumped atomically in notify_mentions() for each target
- cleared automatically when the user returns to attention:
* pressing 'i' in NORMAL to re-enter INSERT mode
* pressing 'G' in NORMAL to jump to the live tail
- never dropped by the narrow-terminal degradation (UX-6) unless
every other optional chip has already been shed — it's the highest
priority signal in the bar
Counter is _Atomic int so the cross-thread bump in notify_mentions
doesn't tear against the local thread's reads / resets.
The original UX-10 was "give the client a readable reason on
disconnect" — turns out the libssh server API doesn't let us send
SSH_MSG_USERAUTH_BANNER, ssh_set_banner is GET-only on the linked
versions (0.9.6 on oss, 0.10.6 on ali), and pre-auth rejections
(max_connections / ratelimit / firewall) happen before any SSH
exchange the client could parse.
The realistic improvement is documentation: README now has a
troubleshooting table mapping the generic close to the actual cause
and how to verify (journalctl) + fix. Also documents the idle
timeout disconnect for completeness.
Server-side stderr already prints rejection reason with the
offending IP, so journalctl gives the admin enough to debug.
Typing @al<Tab> in INSERT mode now resolves to @alice and appends a
trailing space so the next word starts cleanly.
Algorithm:
1. walk back from end-of-input until '@' or ' ' is seen
2. '@' counts as a mention start only when at start-of-input or
preceded by a space (avoids matching e.g. email@host)
3. case-insensitive strncasecmp against current g_room usernames
4. first hit wins; the search ignores the local user when the prefix
is empty (so a lone "@<Tab>" defaults to the first *other* member,
matching the typical "ping someone" intent)
If the buffer is too short to hold "@<match> ", the completion is a
no-op rather than silently truncating the match.
Standard chat-client behaviour — much less typing for @mentions.
:list used to look like an ASCII printout from the 90s:
========================================
Online Users / 在线用户
========================================
Total / 总数: 3
----------------------------------------
* 1. alice (5m)
2. bob (12s)
3. carol (1h2m)
========================================
* = you / 你
Now it matches the rest of the TUI:
在线用户 · online · 3
▎ alice · 5m
bob · 12s
carol · 1h2m
- bold cyan title chip, dim grey total count
- 1-column ▎ gutter on your own row (same vocabulary as UX-1
message gutter)
- dim grey "· duration" separator instead of parentheses + ASCII rule
- no trailing rule, no legend explaining "* = you" because the
gutter speaks for itself
:search dumps the matching lines with username and content, but the
query word itself was just rendered as-is. In a result set with 15
matches you had to eye-scan each line for the keyword.
Now each occurrence of the (case-insensitively matched) needle is
wrapped in a reverse-yellow ANSI chip both in the username column and
in the content column. Original casing of the matched substring is
preserved.
Helper:
append_highlighted(output, buf_size, &pos, text, needle)
emits text into the output buffer with every case-insensitive hit
wrapped in `\033[7;33m … \033[0m`.
strcasestr() needs _DEFAULT_SOURCE / _DARWIN_C_SOURCE feature macros;
the same dance message.c already does is now mirrored in commands.c.
When the terminal is too narrow to hold
username · 在线 N · MODE [静音] ? 帮助
the chips and hint would visually collide. Now the renderer measures
required width against render_width and drops optional segments in
reverse priority until what's left fits:
1. drop the "? 帮助" hint
2. drop the "静音" marker (if shown)
3. drop the mode chip
4. drop the online-count chip
The bold username is always shown. A minimum 1-column gap is kept
between left and right halves so they never touch.
Mostly cosmetic on a regular terminal, but matters on phones /
tmux split panes / narrow side windows.
The NORMAL chat mode has Ctrl+D/U (half page) and Ctrl+F/B (full page)
scrolling, which is what vim users reach for. The help screen had
none of these — only j/k single-line and g/G top/bottom — so reaching
the bottom of a help dump meant mashing j.
Now the help screen accepts the same four shortcuts. The page size
is computed from client->height (matching what NORMAL mode does), so
half/full page scroll size scales with the terminal.
Both the EN and ZH help text have been updated to advertise the new
shortcuts.
The chat input is bounded at MAX_MESSAGE_LEN (1024 bytes). Past that
limit the input loop silently drops further keystrokes — which is fine
mechanically but leaves the user typing into the void.
tui_render_input() now appends a right-aligned gauge to the input line
once the buffer crosses 80 % full:
› some long message that goes on and on … 187 B (dim grey)
› this one is almost at the limit … 12 B (bold yellow > 95 %)
Below 80 % the prompt is unchanged. The gauge eats display width from
the available content area so the existing horizontal scroll-truncate
logic keeps working — long input still scrolls cleanly past the gauge.
(Paste handling, which is the other half of the long-input UX gap,
lands separately as UX-13.)
:nick used to swap client->username unconditionally, so two clients
could both end up named "alice" — and the subsequent :msg / :w
disambiguation would just hit whichever came first in g_room->clients.
Now the rename happens under wrlock with an explicit scan: if any
*other* client already owns that username, the change is refused with
Nickname 'alice' is already taken
If the requested name equals the current one, return a short
"Nickname unchanged" instead of broadcasting a no-op system message.
The room-lock-held scan is O(n) over current clients (n ≤ 64 by
default) and folds naturally into the existing wrlock, so there's no
new lock acquisition.
ESC in INSERT mode used to switch straight to NORMAL. Now it follows
the same arrow-key probe COMMAND mode already does: if the next two
bytes are "[A" or "[B", treat as Up / Down and walk through the last
16 messages this client has sent. A plain ESC still falls through to
NORMAL — the 50 ms probe timeout keeps that path responsive.
Storage: new client_t fields
char insert_history[16][MAX_MESSAGE_LEN];
int insert_history_count;
int insert_history_pos;
Recording: every Enter that broadcasts a message pushes the input
buffer onto the ring (with FIFO eviction at 16) and resets pos.
Down at the bottom of the ring returns to an empty input.
This is the standard chat-client recall that vim users (and anyone
who's ever used a shell) expect.
Self-messages were rendered identically to anyone else's, so scrolling
back to find "what did I just say?" meant scanning every author name.
Now every rendered chat line carries a 1-column left gutter:
- ▎ (U+258E, cyan) when the message is from the local user
- single space otherwise — keeps the rest of the line aligned
Detection handles both regular messages (username == my_username) and
/me action messages (which use "*" as the author and prefix the actor
into the content). System messages ("系统") always render with the
space gutter regardless.
Gutter width is folded into the existing truncation budget so long
messages still fit the terminal.
The MOTD used to ride on tui_render_command_output's coattails — text
got stuffed into client->command_output prefixed by "=== 公告 / MOTD ==="
and rendered under a reverse-video " COMMAND OUTPUT " title bar. Two
different things (a transient command result vs. a one-shot service
notice) wearing the same chrome.
Now MOTD has its own renderer with its own aesthetic:
╭─ 公告 / MOTD ────────────────────────────────╮
欢迎来到 TNT 公共聊天室。
请互相尊重，不要刷屏。
管理员：m1ng
╰─ 按任意键继续 / press any key ────────────────╯
- title chip embedded in the top border (bright cyan)
- footer hint embedded in the bottom border (dim grey)
- 2-column left padding on body lines, blank top/bottom pad rows
- dim cyan borders, no full-line reverse anywhere
Wiring:
- new tui_render_motd() declared in tui.h
- new client_t.show_motd flag selects the renderer; command_output
remains the text storage (no extra buffer needed)
- input.c MOTD path sets show_motd = true and calls tui_render_motd()
- handle_key's dismiss path clears show_motd alongside command_output
- main-loop redraw dispatch checks show_motd before command_output[0]
When the rendered message snapshot crosses a date boundary, insert a
single dim grey divider line before the first message of each new day:
── 2026-05-14 ──────────────────────────────────────────
16:00 alice: 早！
16:01 bob: 早呀
── 2026-05-15 ──────────────────────────────────────────
04:30 alice: 晚上一起吃饭？
...
The divider also fires for the *first* visible date, so the user always
knows what day the top of their viewport belongs to.
Dividers and messages share the fixed msg_height budget — dividers
don't push other content off the bottom. In the worst case a viewport
with one message per day shows half the rows as dividers, which is the
intended trade for readability.
Real win for a long-lived public chat where messages span many days
and timestamps alone only show HH:MM.
NORMAL mode status line:
before: "-- NORMAL -- (3/100) ↓ 5 new"
after : "[reverse-yellow NORMAL] 3 / 100 ▼ 5 new"
- the mode is now a small reverse-video yellow chip so it visually
echoes the mode colour in the title bar
- position is dim grey with em-spaced slash, "▼" replaces "↓" so the
unseen-message marker matches the same downward-triangle vocabulary
the help screen uses
INSERT mode prompt:
before: "> "
after : "› " (U+203A, dim grey)
- single-glyph chevron is quieter than the ASCII ">", aligns with the
thinner aesthetic of the new title bar
- applied both in tui_render_screen() and tui_render_input() so
per-keystroke redraws match the initial paint
COMMAND mode prompt:
before: ":foo"
after : "[magenta :]foo"
- the leading colon picks up the COMMAND mode colour so it reads as
"you are in command mode now" rather than as part of the typed text
