windowctl(SET <winref> CURRENT_ACTIVITY <number>)
windowctl(SET <winref> ACTIVITY_FORMAT <number> <string>)
windowctl(SET <winref> ACTIVITY_DATA <number> <string>)

This feature gives you, through the %E status line expando a fully customizable replacement for the %F status line expando. This is specifically intended to be able to create irssi-like colorized window activity notification on your status bar. See the activity script for a sample use of these features.

The %F status line expando tells you which hidden windows have had output since they were hidden. You can always turn this feature off for each window with window notify. You cannot control the appearance of the window's refnum with %F

The %E status line expando performs the same task, but you can control how the window refnum appears on a per-window basis.

Each window has associated with itself 11 activity levels, numbered 0 to 11. Activity level 0 is special, because it stores default values. There is nothing special about the other levels, you can make them mean whatever you wish. For each activity level, you may associate one activity format, and one activity data. It is expected you will ordinarily not change the activity format often, but will change the activity data.

Each time the status bar is regenerated, for each window that is hidden, that has had output since it was hidden, the client looks at the current activity level. It expands the corresponding activity format using the corresponding activity data as the value of $*, and then uses the resulting value as the name of the window, in %E.

The default values for all these values are the empty string. If you set the activity_format or activity_data for level 0, that acts as a default for all the other levels that don't have values. Unless you actually set values, nothing will appear in %E.

This allows you to have colorific notify levels in the way irssi does:

on #window_create -110 *  {
   @windowctl(set $0 activity_format 0 ^C3$$*);
   @windowctl(set $1 activity_format 1 ^C4$$*);
   @windowctl(set $1 activity_format 2 ^C7<$$*>);

   @windowctl(set $0 activity_data 0 booya)
   @windowctl(set $0 activity_data 2 hazmat)
}

If I were to

@windowctl(SET //<refnum>// CURRENT_ACTIVITY 1)

then it would use

^C3$$*

as the format string (because it is specifically set), and

booya

as the data string (because it is not specifically set, so it uses level 0) which would result in a green “booya” for this window.

If I were to

@windowctl(SET //<refnum>// CURRENT_ACTIVITY 2)

then it would use

^C4$$*

as the format string (because it is specifically set), and

hazmat

as the data string (because it is specifically set), which would result in a bold red “hazmat” for this window.

This feature gives you full control to customize everything that %F does. You could associate an event with each level (msgs = 1, publics = 2, notices = 3, joins = 4, etc), a color with each level (red = 1, blue = 2, green = 3, yellow = 4, etc), and any string you desire for each window. Then using some very simple ons,

on #-public -110 * {
   if (windowctl(GET $winchan($1) CURRENT_ACTIVITY) < 2) {
      @windowctl(SET $winchan($1) CURRENT_ACTIVITY 2)
   }
}
on #-join -110 * {
   if (windowctl(GET $winchan($1) CURRENT_ACTIVITY) < 4) {
	@windowctl(SET $winchan($1) CURRENT_ACTIVITY 4)
   }
}

it would all automagically allow you to have different windows show up in different colors on your status bar, depending on what happened last!

Window activity handling first appeared in EPIC5-0.0.6.