Export chat: in plaintext mode, use < > to more clearly differentiate between the username of the speaker vs the mentions

[nekohayo]

Steps to reproduce

1. Click the room name at the top of the UI
2. "Export chat", choose plaintext format

Outcome

What did you expect?

Output like this:

2022-11-15, 09:44:48 - bob left the room
2022-11-16, 22:59:22 - <jeff> alice: if you will need me to emergency smoke-test something with your branch this month?
2022-11-18, 08:28:16 - <alice> jeff: thanks, I've been testing with my xml from stable and finding a billion bugs.

What happened instead?

Hard-to-read (or to process) output like this:

2022-11-15, 9:44:48 a.m. - bob left the room
2022-11-16, 10:59:22 p.m. - jeff: alice: if you will need me to emergency smoke-test something with your branch this month?
2022-11-18, 8:28:16 a.m. - alice: jeff: thanks, I've been testing with my xml from stable and finding a billion bugs.

The <speaker username> format would make this visually and programmatically much clearer, quite similar to the kind of logs you'd get from an IRC client. Otherwise the stack of foo: bar: baz: whatever: makes it hard to quickly spot who is saying what when reading logs.

Interestingly enough, the < > format also gets parsed and colored when you use the markdown syntax to highlight the file:

(it's maybe not perfect, because if there are multiple words / spaces in the speaker's name, then it will use two colors in gedit/gtksourceview, but that's still way better than nothing for me)

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Note that the timestamps in my expected output respect the 24h time format setting, while they currently do not in practice. This is issue #23838.

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Operating system

Fedora 37

Browser information

Firefox 107

URL for webapp

app.element.io

Application version

Element version: 1.11.15, Olm version: 3.2.12

Homeserver

matrix.org

Will you send logs?

No

[uhoreg]

Interestingly enough, the < > format also gets parsed and colored when you use the markdown syntax to highlight the file:

FWIW, the reason it gets coloured is that in Markdown, < > forces the contents to be considered to be a link.

[grimhilt]

It seems that in your example you use "<>" on the sender, wouldn't be more logical to use it on the mention?
Could using "@" also be a good option?

[priyam3955]

Hello @uhoreg @nekohayo Can I take up this issue?

[uhoreg]

I think that this issue may require some discussion regarding how exactly the lines should be formatted (is < > what we really want, or do we want something else? Maybe something configurable?) You can choose to work on this issue exactly as-requested here, but be prepared to iterate on it when you submit your PR. Aside from that, I don't think there's anything preventing anyone from working on this.

[nawarajshah]

in the example, you not only use < > but there is also a color, is that color because of the link or just a color only to differentiate the user's role?

[nawarajshah]

I have sent PR, please review

[rameshsinghppc]

I have sent PR, please review

[dbkr]

I'm going to remove the "good first issue" etc labels from this as the discussion seems to have stalled on what's actually desired here, so it's not really ready to work on.