154602 - Bugzilla should implement smilies :D

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Bugzilla :: Bugzilla-General, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Dan Houson]

Bugzilla should impliment smilies to add a little joy to the monotany of bug 
tracking so :-) would become a picture of a face :)

Comment 1

[Minh Nguyễn]

And don't forget winkies ;-), frownies :-(, scornies >:-(, and confusies %-(.
:^) If this actually get's implemented, HTML comments will probably be next. :^(

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

If this feature is implemented in the bugzilla codebase that is fine with me (I
can't really stop it) but it won't be turned on in bmo if I'm still around.

Comment 3

[Jouni Heikniemi]

Cool, but this is definitely something that a plugin architecture is called for.

Comment 4

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Should probably be a user preference, not an installation preference.

I can't wait.

Comment 5

[Alex Hosking]

Any news of developement on this :-D

Comment 6

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

I have higher-priority items to work on.  If someone else impliments this, go
for it.  I agree with the above comments, should be a param (system wide
"default on, default off, don't allow", defaulting to "don't allow" probably)
and a per-user pref ("use this") that defaults to off.

Comment 7

[jay ball]

it's here, the most excitingly useless Bugzilla feature since quips, smiley support!

now, bugzilla comments with :-) will be translated into wondrous emoticons. 
ooo, aah, ooh.  the drama of it all!  coding will become less prone to error and
embark on new highs in efficiency as moral improves from the joy of seeing
graphics in the comments section.  imagine on friday afternoon reading "if you
don't fix this serious problem by monday, the company will go out of business
:(" versus seeing that with graphical smileys turned on.  you don't care that
your weekend with a super model in a secluded cabin is ruined because the pretty
picture is there!

a demo of a working smiley Bugzilla system is at
http://veggiespam.com:2000/show_bug.cgi?id=1 (will be enabled until at least
2003-may-10).  create a user and post your tests.  right now, it supports all
smileys used in yahoo's IM and all smiley variants such as :) & :-) along with
common typos like b-) instead of B-).  there is a system wide preference which
turns smiley support on and off.

the code i developed is against the latest CVS tip (apr 20).  it's not pretty,
but i'm not a perl guru.  i'm in the process of redoing the code with a few more
features and cleaner implementation, but i'm having trouble with complex hashes;
so if someone can help, drop me a line off-list.  i'll attach the whole patch
once i get it this figured out. 

opinions?  thoughts?  help?

Comment 8

[Jouni Heikniemi]

Jay,

mind considering putting the smiley images onto a public web server instead of 
a 192.168.x.x server? Would really help testing...

>features and cleaner implementation, but i'm having trouble with complex 
>hashes; so if someone can help, drop me a line off-list

You can also attach the current patch and learn from the review comments.

Comment 9

[jay ball]

the patch with new and improved features is attached (i found my stupid error).
 the test web site had the urlbase set to my local network, so that is corrected
too.

* the system wide smiley pref has options for per-user smiley support, but i'm
unsure how to actually implement that.  i could make it a "flag" in the user
record of some sort, but as far as i understand bugzilla, there is no non-email
general per-user flag list.  thoughts on this?

* there is a tgz with the "smileys/" dir of png files.  this dir is divided into
two sections: 'fire' and '2x'.  These are "Smiley Themes" - you can easily add
more themes and select which one is displayed on bugzilla.  

* the 'fire' theme contains images imported from the IM program Fire
(http://fire.sourceforge.net ) and the '2x' theme is just the Fire images
doubled in size to show how themes work.  in the future, more dirs can be added
so users can pick which "theme" they want (hello kitty, zilla, etc).

* Fire's tiff files are included for beta completeness - they won't be in the
final product.

* An option for user-selected theme could be added while we're added user-smiley
on/off options.


to install:

1) untar the images into your bugzilla root and the smileys sub dir will be created.

2) apply the patch file to the code in your dir.  this patch was created against
the latest cvs tip - i do not know if it will work against 2.17.3 pure - but i
suspect it will work correctly.

3) run ./checksetup.pl - since new parameters were added.  this also generates a
new file data/smiley which contain a big hash.

4) log into the admin pages and turn the parameter supportsmileys to something
besides "System wide OFF".  choose a smileytheme too.

5) create some bugs with smileys in the comments

6) view and repeat step 5

enjoy

Comment 10

[jay ball]

Attachment: v0.1 of the smileys/ image dir

Comment 11

[jay ball]

Attachment: patch to add smiley support

Comment 12

[jay ball]

Attachment: patch for the june 21 cvs tip

Comment 13

[jay ball]

Attachment: v0.2 of the smileys/ image dir

this is a different set of images and definitions that v0.1.  the previous set
contained many more smileys but had to be withdrawn since the authors were
unable to license via MPL.  these new images are taken from mozilla iteself so
we have no licensing problems.

Comment 14

[jay ball]

Attachment: patch vs july 9 cvs tip

this patch includes defaults for the v0.2 smiley image dir.

Comment 15

[jay ball]

as far as i can tell, this is 95% done, but i'll let someone else be the judge.

see comment 9 for installation instructions.

you may test on my own server:  http://veggiespam.com:2000/show_bug.cgi?id=1

list of all smileys: http://veggiespam.com:2000/smiley_themes.html

possible bugs:

* i may not be setting the file permissions/user/group correctly in
checksetup.pl - not sure of the right way.  could someone verify.

* system parameters mention per-user-smiley-on|off, but these features do not
yet exist.  the mention should be removed.

future items which probably aren't bugs:

* there is a bareword in ROOT/data/smiley generation for the theme's
description.  there is probably a better way to do that.

* checksetup.pl generates a poor man's list of all smileys into the file
ROOT/smiley_themes.html.  we should create a nicer looking version of this using
perl templates.  however, this involves moving theme generation before template
generation and actually writing the template where the looping was a bit beyond
me.  

* as coded, we have system wide support for smiley on/off and system wide
support for choosing a single smiley theme.  we need to enable per-user support
for each of these.  however, per use support would require users actually having
personal settings; something that does not exist (except for email) right now. 
overloading email setting for this feature is dumb, so let's add support once we
get per-user settings.

* if smiley support gets integrated into the tree, can we turn it on for a day
or two on b.m.o to show people the new feature.  we can shut it off permanently
afterwards (i agree with Asa that it should not be on b.m.o in general).

* the html template filter routine makes the assumption that the comment has
already been html-escaped before the filter runs.  thus, the &stuff; in the
variable hash.  i see no problems with this, but someone might in a year when
another new feature is desired.  :) 

* if we add another theme of smileys to checksetup.pl, localconfig's list of
themes will not show the new smileys - only the old ones.  somehow we need to
update localconfig?  but wouldn't that confuse things if the admin added his own
smileys or removed ours?  perhaps a "using_defaults" option?  since 99.99% of
users won't do customized icons, this isn't a problem.


all of that said, do we have soup yet?  are we done?

Comment 16

[Christopher Heiny]

My immediate reaction on hearing of this enhancement is "Don't touch it!  It's
evil!!" (see Time Bandits)

More seriously: While I agree this should be user selectable on sites that
choose to implement it, it also must be a site selectable option (even it it's
simply a NoFreakingSmilies theme).  It certainly won't be selected on the
Bugzillas I support, but others are quite welcome to do whatever they wish.

Comment 17

[J. Paul Reed [:preed]]

Comment on attachment 127320 [details] [diff] [review]
patch vs july 9 cvs tip

I know you didn't request a review, but while it's being discussed on
developers@, I thought I might as well give a couple of opinions on things I
noticed:


>+   choices => [ 'Disabled System Wide (SWoff)',
>+     'User choice - OFF by default (USERoff)',
>+     'User choice - ON by default (USERon)',
>+     'Always On System Wide (SWon)' ],
>+   default => 'Disabled System Wide (SWoff)',

Historically, options are something small, not full descriptions; so, these
should be systemon, systemoff, useron, uesroff, etc. Then eq against those
strings, not =~ against some substring.

If it's not clear, explain what the shorthand means in the description.

Comment 18

[Tobias Burnus]

> <br/>
This should be <br> since we use HTML 4.0 not XHTML (they are not completely
compatible). Even with XHTML one should use <br /> because some older browsers
don't find the "br" tag otherwise.

> <img src="smileys/mozmail/smile_n.gif" />
Can you always add a 'title=":-)"'? This makes it possible to actually see what
someone has typed?
(This is something I like in Chatzilla and miss in Moz. Mail. The problem is
e.g. that "=>" becomes a ":-)" image but was ment as "from A follows B" (A => B).)

Comment 19

[Eyal Rozenberg]

IMHO this is pure bloat. Start with smileys, next people are gonna come round suggesting HTML comments, and we'll end up with phpBBugzilla 8-X .

Comment 20

[Paul]

sorry but the "slippery slope" arguments have no place here.  They are for discussions on other (future) bugs.

This is a fairly good idea and would help put some of the *fun* back in Bugzilla.

The look of Bugzilla is important, that's why it's now skinnable. ;)


I would like this bug to be reconsidered.

Comment 21

[Frédéric Buclin]

Bugzilla comments are not supposed to be "funny" or "nice" or to "bring some colors in your life". Each smiley must be detected, filtered and replaced by an image. I already see this being a real pain when you review a patch and some parts of the code are replaced by a stupid smiley. IRC clients give an excellent example of what I mean. I totally agree with Asa, that's not something we want to see turned on, and having a parameter or a user-pref for this is definitely out of question.

Comment 22

[Paul]

that's more than a little hypocrytical when the aristocrats gave themselves an icon next to their names of the little Bugzilla guy.