238222 - extra tab in multi-channel join

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Other Applications Graveyard :: ChatZilla, defect)

Description

[Daniel Hyde]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113

When you attempt to join multiple channels at once in a single /join command,
ChatZilla produces an extra tab.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Type in a multiple-join command, like:
/join #mozilla,#ircmonkey,#foo

Actual Results:  
This automatically produces one tab for "#mozilla,#ircmonkey,#foo". The server
then sees you joining three channels and sends you back an appropriate JOIN
reply for each.

ChatZilla sees the three JOIN replies, and produces three new tabs, one for each
of #mozilla, #ircmonkey and #foo. The user ends up with four tabs when they
joined three channels.


Expected Results:  
ChatZilla should not open the "#mozilla,#ircmonkey,#foo" tab. 

The original IRC RFC (I don't recall the number off-hand) with which, to my
knowledge, the majority of IRC servers comply at least for
backwards-compatibility, allows for users to join multiple channels with a
single join command by separating channel names with a single comma (,) and no
space.

Eg:

JOIN #mozilla,#ircmonkey,#foo

Because this is a feature of the way the server parses the first argument to a
JOIN message, clients need not specifically support this for it to work.

What this all means is that, while ChatZilla appears unaware of the possibility
for this behaviour, it still works -- and ChatZilla isn't entirely sure what to
do with it.

example: typing the command in ChatZilla

/join #mozilla,#ircmonkey,#foo

Will automatically produce one tab for "#mozilla,#ircmonkey,#foo". The server
then sees you joining three channels and sends you back an appropriate JOIN
reply for each.

ChatZilla sees the three JOIN replies, and produces three new tabs, one for each
of #mozilla, #ircmonkey and #foo. The user ends up with four tabs when they
joined three channels.

As I see it, this can be fixed in two ways:

1) parsing the first parameter to /join locally and constructing tabs appropriately;

or

2) waiting for the server to respond with a JOIN reply before constructing the tabs.

The latter option will produce a visible delay if lag exists between the client
and the server, as the server must receive and respond to the JOIN message
before the client actually visibly "does something" -- not user friendly!

The former option is basically just tokenising the first parameter for commas.
Note that it does, however, become much more complex when channel keys/etc are
required.

Comment 1

[James Ross]

This 'feature' was sorted out in version 0.9.54a of ChatZilla, released
2003-12-10. This code was checked in to Mozilla on 2004-01-03. See here:
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsblame.cgi?file=mozilla/extensions/irc/xul/content/commands.js&mark=1472-1487#1470

The code takes approach 1, and parses the command and re-issues a /join for each
channel listed.

While this has got to be the best bug report (in terms of details, etc.) I've
seen in months (perhaps even the best one ever), I'm marking it WORKSFORME as
the bug does not exist in the current version of ChatZilla.

Comment 2

[Daniel Hyde]

Aha. That'll learn me to hunt down a more recent version than the bundled one (I
got this version from the Mozilla 1.6 bundle that I downloaded on the 8th of March.)

> While this has got to be the best bug report (in terms of details, etc.) I've
seen in months (perhaps even the best one ever)

Thanks. :)

I've encountered this problem myself in my own (unreleased, terminal-only) IRC
client, hence my intimate knowledge of the cause and solutions. ;)