Improve users tags to allow highlighting users or roles in comments

[Matth7878]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When scrolling comments it's hard to spot your comments and OP ones. For your own comments tagging user allow to address it but highlighting would be better when user has a special role in comments. (Like original poster or yourself)

Describe the solution you'd like
Improve users tagging to allow the following :

• beside tagging, allow for a user to set an highlight color in comments
• add moderator as a default tag in "user tags" list and make it possible to choose a tag color. Do not offer to list users as it's not applicable and don't allow to tag manually an user with it
• add OP (original poster) tag and allow to set a color to use only for tag, for username highlight or both. Same as moderator, don't list users and don't allow to use it to tag a user
• eventually besides OP add a "Me" tag
• allow a no color to use if you just want a tag without coloring it

Not sure it's easy to do but highlighting would make it nice to easily spot OP and your own comments. Initially it was what I wanted to request but writing this feature request I thought it could be better to extend users tags feature.

[AkesiSeli]

I perfectly understand this request and it seems very sensible: I agree with the need to easily spot these three kinds "special" users (like the OP, mods, and yourself).

I also agree in that colorless bordered chips already used for OP and MOD clash with tags and are less visible than the new colorful tags.

I would rather do the following, though:

• make it possible to use colorless tags more easily (which are going to be displayed like the "old" MOD and OP indicators);¹
• treat "me", "op" and "mod" as special tags which can not be renamed, not opened to see the list of users (as you smartly pointed out!) but for which it will be possible to choose a custom color.

Do you agree that making those two changes solves all the five points of the original request?

Footnotes

1. actually if you open the dialog to edit color and cancel it the result is a colorless tag which is a near-bug ↩

[Matth7878]

Sure it would be nice. Still would it be possible to allow for highlighting username at least for OP and yourself. If not it may be less convenient to quickly spot such comments if other colored tags exists.
If not what you suggest would already be a nice improvement.

As a side note, it could be a good idea to add access to "users tags" to settings. It's where I first looked at and thought there was not such settings and that I was wrong about having seen it.

[AkesiSeli]

Ok, I'll consider also:

• color the username too (at least for "me" and "op");
• move user tags from the profile side menu to the settings screen.

The reason for the latter was to not overload settings with too many items but I agree its where it feel more natural.

[AkesiSeli]

I am seeing it working... finally...

@Matth7878 if I publish a new beta version (today or tomorrow), could you help me please to validate it? I just need to make sure:

• no bugs have been accidentally introduced;
• the implementation matches the acceptance criteria.

[Matth7878]

No problem to test. I will be able to do so tonight.

[Matth7878]

Below what I noticed when testing it. I would only consider the first one as some kind of bug (or unexpected behavior) :

• when adding tag to a user you got the list of existing tags in which roles are not listed. But if you create a new tag from dialog list it's updated to list your new tag but also special roles. It allow to assign them even though user shouldn't be able to do so
• It's possible to create tags with the same text but a different case. I think user shouldn't be allowed to create a tag if one with a different case already exists. It would also prevent creating "OP" or any other variations on roles.
• tags and roles should also be applied in comments view to original post. There is a special case imho for op role which shouldn't be displayed. It wouldn't make much sense imho.
• as a follow up, curiously "me" role is displayed for your own post. I tested to add a comment on one of my post to check what will happen as both "me" and "op" would apply for highlighting and "me" is highlighted => I think it's the correct behavior, I just wanted to mention it in case it was not something you anticipated

What I would consider like QOL (quality of life) improvement. So it's ok if nothing change :

• maybe "user tags" setting should be renamed "user tags and roles" to indicate that roles can also be customized
• dialog to choose a custom color display a text box with color code but you can't directly edit it : if you want to use a custom color for multiple tags it's hard to pick same color for each tag. It's the same dialog box used for application appearance which would also benefit from allowing to be edited directly by user.
• when applying a tag and returning to comment list you have to refresh or exit and get back to post to see comments updated with tags
• "user tags" screen could use sub heading or separator to list roles then list tags. It could feel more logical that you can't manage user for roles

It's really nice to instantaneously spot reply from OP or yourself ! Glad you added highlighting !

[AkesiSeli]

Thanks! I'll iterate on this I'm the next beta. Excellent tests and detailed description!

[AkesiSeli]

I'm done with almost everything, the only two things I'm leaving out are:

• manually inserting the color hex (which will be done in a future PR, I'll create an issue for it)
• having to refresh to see the changes applied, because that was intentional.

Having a sort of "hot reload" could have been feasible with Compose states but it implied quite a lot of extra work and tag editing is not a frequent operation nor strictly essential for the client to be operational, it's rather a setup one does occasionally so it was not worth spending too much time refactoring everything to support it.

[Matth7878]

Having a sort of "hot reload" could have been feasible with Compose states but it implied quite a lot of extra work and tag editing is not a frequent operation nor strictly essential for the client to be operational, it's rather a setup one does occasionally so it was not worth spending too much time refactoring everything to support it.

Totally understand. I was sure it would be difficult to apply change on fly without reloading. Thanks for your work. It's already great ! 😃