No reliable way to whisper to all possible character names

Character names can include spaces and quotation marks. As a result, it's impossible to write a single macro command that reliably whispers to a given character. If you just whisper to the name, names including spaces will break it if there are multiple characters whose names start with the same word (think names starting with 'Sir' or 'Lord', for example). To get round that you could quote the name, but then it will break if there are characters with quotation marks in the name. Either the chat parser needs to be made more intelligent - so that it greedily matches what follows the /w until it finds the longest match with a character name from the journal; or there needs to be a way to whisper by ID.

I resorted to using @{target|token_name} and @{selected|token_name} for whisper macros but it does require selecting and targeting tokens on the map. Does not work so well for the Theatre of the Mind  maps where there are no tokens.

Doug E. said: I resorted to using @{target|token_name} and @{selected|token_name} for whisper macros but it does require selecting and targeting tokens on the map. Does not work so well for the Theatre of the Mind  maps where there are no tokens. That does not solve any part of the problem.

Doug E. said: I resorted to using @{target|token_name} and @{selected|token_name} for whisper macros but it does require selecting and targeting tokens on the map. Does not work so well for the Theatre of the Mind  maps where there are no tokens. Yeah, this really doesn't work as a generic solution for e.g. a roll button on a character sheet. There needs to be a reliable, non-ambiguous way to refer to a character for the whisper command, not a hacky workaround that only works for some specific situations and requires a redundant click on a token that might not even exist! Sorry - that's not meant to be a dig at you for suggesting it, I just don't want anyone being under any illusion that it constitutes an appropriate workaround for the problem, making it less important to fix it.

Jakob said: Doug E. said: I resorted to using @{target|token_name} and @{selected|token_name} for whisper macros but it does require selecting and targeting tokens on the map. Does not work so well for the Theatre of the Mind  maps where there are no tokens. That does not solve any part of the problem. As a matter of fact it does, in the "hacky workaround" situation Lucian describes. Lucian said: Doug E. said: I resorted to using @{target|token_name} and @{selected|token_name} for whisper macros but it does require selecting and targeting tokens on the map. Does not work so well for the Theatre of the Mind  maps where there are no tokens. Yeah, this really doesn't work as a generic solution for e.g. a roll button on a character sheet. There needs to be a reliable, non-ambiguous way to refer to a character for the whisper command, not a hacky workaround that only works for some specific situations and requires a redundant click on a token that might not even exist! Sorry - that's not meant to be a dig at you for suggesting it, I just don't want anyone being under any illusion that it constitutes an appropriate workaround for the problem, making it less important to fix it. I never said it was perfect but it works for us. The solution you are looking for needs to be system agnostic, not dependent on sheets, imo.

Doug E. said: I never said it was perfect but it works for us. The solution you are looking for needs to be system agnostic, not dependent on sheets, imo. Indeed. Roll20 either need a quoting system that actually works for their chat commands, or it needs to be possible to supply ids to avoid ambiguity. So: /w @{Sir Foo Bar|character_id} This is my text or /w "Sir John \"The Hand\" Bigby" This is my text

Or tell people not to use use silly titles and other stuff in the name that's going to be used in chat and record their full name and titles elsewhere. That's how I set up all my characters and pre-gens when I run one shots. That way the long ass names don't get in the way of each other on the tokens nor cause spam issues in chat with line wrapping and such.

SkyCaptainXIII said: Or tell people not to use use silly titles and other stuff in the name that's going to be used in chat and record their full name and titles elsewhere. That's how I set up all my characters and pre-gens when I run one shots. That way the long ass names don't get in the way of each other on the tokens nor cause spam issues in chat with line wrapping and such. Sure, that's fine when you're GMing a game. It's not so fine when you're supporting software, as I'm sure you're all too well aware. Relying on users not to do things that you haven't restricted through validation/UI guidance is not a valid approach to software QA. ;-)

You could use sheetworkers to put a bright yellow and black warning under the name if they're using characters that screw shit up.

SkyCaptainXIII said: You could use sheetworkers to put a bright yellow and black warning under the name if they're using characters that screw shit up. Indeed, we *could* do that (although good luck persuading Kryx to do that to his sheet, lol); or, alternatively, Roll20 could fix their chat commands so that they work. Having a scheme for handling spaces and special characters is not optional functionality for a CLI (which is what this is); it's core functionality, and it should work.

Just disallow " marks in names. Simple enough to do. Common enough in MMO's that people are going to understand that restriction.

SkyCaptainXIII said: Just disallow " marks in names. Simple enough to do. Common enough in MMO's that people are going to understand that restriction. That would also be a valid solution to the problem, yes. I guess we could try our best to impose that through the sheet, but obviously it's still possible to edit the name elsewhere, so ideally this would be a Roll20 fix.