The following is a discussion related to
this bug report.
I am looking for feedback on the following.
There is a known issue with written languages which only affects people who have "Game Log Chat Text" enabled in their settings: when this setting is enabled, color codes are visible in log files. Written languages uses prolific use of color codes wrapping individual words to achieve its effect, effectively making logs very difficult to parse for those individuals who are using this setting. Color codes do not show up at all for the "Game Log Chat All" setting however.
I have done some more research into the topic of the "Game Log Chat Text" and "Game Log Chat All" settings. It appears that "Game Log Chat All" is a newer option that was added by NWNEE that does strip color codes (it also strips players' log-in names from appearing in front of their dialogue in the logs). There may be some other differences between the two settings but these were the main ones that I noticed ("Game Log Chat All" still logs combat rolls/combat information). It is also worth noting that you can have both of these options checked at the same time and you will see everything logged twice: once with color codes, once without.
So with that in mind, as of right now I would encourage anyone who is bothered by the presence of the color codes in their logs to try the "Game Log Chat All" setting and see if it serves your needs. If there is something missing from this setting that you absolutely can't live without and you absolutely can't deal with the color codes let me know and I'll try to work something out.
However I will explain why this is not such a simple thing to find a perfect solution for. The written languages feature wraps every single word inside of its own color code for two reasons: the first is that when reading, character comprehension is rolled once for every single word in the note, which is a large change compared to the spoken comprehension system which operates on larger chunks of sentences all at once. The color of the word changes depending on whether your character comprehended the word or not, as shown in this example:
The other advantage of wrapping every word in its own color tag relates to an aesthetic quirk with the NWN game. You have probably noticed this before but never thought much about it, as this is a bug that has always existed and only becomes noticeable when viewing large chunks of text that are wrapped in a single color code (such as say, a note!). If you drag your dialogue view bar down such that you cannot view the start of the color token, the entire chunk of text turns white. Here is an example I created to show this effect:
With the current implementation of written languages, this does not happen. You can drag the chat window wherever you want and the text will never turn white because the start of the color tags are always in view of the chat window:
If the goal was to cut down on color codes in "Game Log Chat Text" logs as much as possible, I could wrap whole paragraphs in a single color code and this would make these logs more legible. However, this ugly turning-white phenomenon would still happen and would look something like this:
So there is unfortunately no perfect solution for everyone, as when deciding how to proceed here I need to weigh the legibility of logs for people who use "Game Log Chat Text" (and I have no idea how many people use this setting) versus the aesthetic experience of everyone, as this white-text phenomenon is both very prevalent and visually distracting. I would like to choose the implementation that makes the most number of people happy but I will need feedback from the community to make that decision - so all that said, if anyone has thoughts or feedback on this, please let me know.
