Command prefix

[gaeorn]

Originally Posted by steve

Sorry, this is the Feature Request forum after all, so that's why I posted here about it, thinking it could be changed. I just didn't understand why it couldn't be changed to pass commands back and forth.

Even if that were done, how does the chat server know when it's a command rather than just more chat? We would still have to have a special character at the beginning of the chat text for it to recognize. Since that is true, how is it an advantage using the chat server rather than say? Say goes directly to the process that executes the commands. Regardless of where the command gets sent, it has to be identified as a command. The # sign is what does that under the current system. As realityincarnate said, you can change the character used to some other character, but in any case, you would always have to type at least two characters. One for the EQ shortcut to say or chat and the other to identify the text as a command.

Given that there is no advantage to using the chat server, why would a developer want to invest the time to get interprocess communication going between the chat server and the zone process? Add to that the chat server may or may not be on the same machine as the zone process and it gets to be a bit of work.

I hope I didn't offend with this post. I simply wanted to explain why your insistence could be frustrating since there was no advantage to what you were asking for. It isn't that it couldn't be changed. It's that there is no advantage gained by doing so.

[trevius]

Originally Posted by trevius

If all you are wanting is to save yourself the 1 extra keystroke, then just either buy a keyboard that can have hotkeys programmed into it and set one to do "/say #", so it works no matter what chat you are in, or you can probably download some free 3rd party hotkey app somewhere to do the same thing with your current keyboard and then just set it to something like \ or something.

I think in this particular case, the best option for steve is quoted above. Most gaming keyboards even have special keys (and software) for making such macro strokes (mine has a ton of them), and if he doesn't have a keyboard that supports it, I am sure there is 3rd party software out there that can easily do it. I think it might even be built into some versions of windows under accessibility options or somewhere like that.

Maybe something like this would work:
http://www.autohotkey.com/

[So_1337]

AutoHotkey will absolutely work, as you can script it to do anything you'd like. I use it for many, many tasks that it isn't really required for. I'm just lazy.

However, the time it'd take you to write a proper script is less than the amount of time it'd take to do the extra strokes =P