For many years I ran a MajorBBS, which had an excellent command line chat system.
I would like to see a similar chat system implemented in SL.
Basically, use only a single text entry field for chat, say, shout, and IM, rather than different windows and modes.
In the text field, you can send public messages, IMs (called pages back then), whisper to others in your area and more:
The commands could work like this:
message - just sends a regular message to everyone like regular chat
Directed messages:
>user message - sends message addressed TO that user, but where everyone can see it.
Example:
> Launa hey!
Everyone sees: Allen Kerensky (to Launa Fauna): hey!
>group message - same thing, but to a group
Whispers:
/user message - sends a message JUST to that users in your area
/group message - same thing, but to a group
Pages (instead of IMs):
//user message - sends a message to that user in ANY area
//group message - same thing, but to all group members anywhere
shout message - would shout the message
Reading Messages:
rather than chats on the main screen, and IMs in different tabs in a seperate window, have all messages directable to the console, and just prefix them with where they came from.
What I would like to see overall is 1 place to read ALL communications and one place to send them from (excepting notecards).
I would also like to see some system messages (like user is online) able to just report in console window rather than in seperate popups... i suppose just try to imagine running SL text only... or if you were blind.
All GUI UI elements should/could have corresponding command words that could be entered to activate them, and all GUI popup messages etc could be directed to the chat window instead.